Austerlitz

The narrative continues with Austerlitz’s time in Prague:

Austerlitz leaves Vera’s apartment and travels to the nearby town of Terezín, the site of the Theresienstadt concentration camp where his mother was interned. He feels this short trip east has lasted weeks and sent him back in time. A star-shaped fortress sunk into the surrounding marshlands protects Terezín. Inside the town, Austerlitz feels oppressed by the near total silence and stillness. The town’s gates and doors (some of which are pictured) seem to conceal an impenetrable darkness.

In the display of the town’s only store, Austerlitz sees his faint reflection amidst the objects, which include a taxidermied squirrel (for which he suddenly recalls the Czech name), a hero on horseback rescuing a woman, and an “endless landscape painted round a lampshade in fine brushstrokes, showing a river running quietly through perhaps Bohemia or perhaps Brazil” (212). He wonders at the significance of the frozen-yet-eternal moments captured in these objects.

Austerlitz visits the Ghetto Museum, which documents Terezín under Nazi control. For the first time in his life, Austerlitz learns about the Third Reich and the diabolical order with which the National Socialists executed their campaign of enslavement and extermination.