Summary

The day after visiting Vera, Austerlitz traveled to Terezín, the former ghetto where Agáta was taken. On the way, he felt as if he were in “a kind of trance,” unsure who he was (185). He got off in Lovosice and walked to Terezín. The town’s emptiness struck him and he struggled to imagine the people who had lived there.

Austerlitz came up the Antikos Bazar and stood outside the closed store studying the antique displays in the windows. He felt drawn to the “hundreds of different objects inside,” imagining their origins and lives (195). Afterwards, he walked to the Ghetto Museum. He was the sole visitor and wandered around for hours. He realized he had avoided discovering “the history of the persecution” his family and people suffered (198). While reading one of the plaques from the year Agáta arrived in...