(20 Aug 2002)
1. Wideshot, streets of Terezin
2. People gathering in front of the city council and complaining animatedly about the situation
3. Close up of woman crying
4. SOUNDBITE: (Czech), Vit Bures, deputy mayor:
"At this moment the water level is decreasing, however cleaning up will be a really really hard job to do. It will take a while."
5. Damp books from Terezin local library being laid out to dry.
6. Wideshot of the concentration camp
7. Close up of flooded graves
8. Flooded bunks in concentration camp where the water has now been retrieved
9. Camp documents from museum drying out on a rope
10. SOUNDBITE: (Czech), Vit Bures, deputy mayor:
"Imagine, almost two metres of water have covered the memorial centre, so damages are really huge." (talking about the concentration camp)
11. Wideshot of the camp
12. Close up on a David Star at the memorial
13. SOUNDBITE: (Czech), Vit Bures, deputy mayor:
"We still can not figure out the final cost of this damage will be and we can't yet reach all the places which have been destroyed in the camp."
14. Water being pumped out of the graveyard by firemen
15. Wideshot of the concentration camp
STORYLINE:
On Tuesday, workers were assessing the damage after a cemetery where 10-thousand Holocaust victims are buried in the Czech Republic was swamped by floodwaters.
The flooding created a vast, stinking lake at the site of the former Nazi concentration camp, Theresienstadt.
At the site where visitors normally stand in quiet tribute, dozens of firefighters were using water pumps to dry out the graveyard.
The task is immense, and authorities may need months to restore the site of the Terezin memorial which is visited by 250-thousand people each year.
Floodwaters from the Ohre River a few feet (metres) away swept over the rows and rows of squat gravestones surrounded by grass on Thursday, engulfing the soccer-field sized area in a wave of dank water, mud and sewage.
The town surrounding the site is also besieged, with water levels hitting as high as 3 metres (10 feet) on the walls of the Hapsburg-era houses.
The camp is about 35 miles (55 kilometres) outside of Prague, the capital.
Over 73,500 Jews from the Czech lands were brought to the camp and its surrounding ghetto from 1941-1945.
Most were sent to Auschwitz and other death camps.
Tens of thousands of people suffered inside the camp's dingy cement cells.
Only a fraction, including 1,600 children, survived to see Terezin liberated by the Soviet Red Army.
A prison fortress on the site that dates to the late 18th century was also used by the Nazis to torture Gypsies, homosexuals and other so-called undesirables of the regime.
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