Laughing in the Face of the Gate of No Return

We live in Holešovice, Prague 7. It's not the swankiest district, but we've come to think it's the coolest. It's flanked to the north and south by the city's best parks,

Stromovka Park, from my Springtime in Stromovka post in 2011

it's loaded with creative ventures in art/dance/theater,

Prior to boarding, Garrett and Karl admire Gulliver, the airship at DOX Centre for Contemporary Art.

not to mention Prague's hippest cinema,

Bio Oko Cinema

and its architecture — much of it built during the population boom of the late 19th and early 20th century — is glorious and special both for its beauty and detail as well as its avoidance of being white-washed and Disney-fied. Thus far, anyway.

It can be a gritty neighborhood, no doubt about it, but it's gorgeous and vibrant. And there's much to love and explore.

I went out for a walk one fall evening, heading off to the east of our flat toward an unfamiliar area of Holešovice. Lively music drew me to a big driveway/parking lot right near an old railway station.

Praha-Bubny train station is part of the Prague railway network, now a minor stop for commuter trains on the north line out of Prague. The area around it is rather desolate, depressed, and altogether incompatible with the festive atmosphere that lured me. 

The music had almost a klezmer/polka feel to it. Definitely foot-tapping quality. As I got closer I saw that the stage was filled with musicians who were all having a ball ...

... as were the folks gathered to watch the performance. Children were running around, audience members were bobbing their heads as they drank beer and ate sausages — just a regular concert. But it seemed so random to have this stage set up near an almost-defunct train station for a concert on a Thursday evening. 

I stood and watched for awhile, even took some video of an upbeat song whose opening notes inspired a cheer from the crowd. By that point I realized that a number of the musicians were in wheelchairs or displayed other physical challenges.

After taking in the music for about 10-15 minutes I headed home. Karl was fixing dinner as I lit out on my walk, it would have been rude to stand him up. As I left, I took note of a piece of art by Aleš Veselý erected in the driveway entitled, "The Gate of Infinity." Obviously this place merited further investigation.

Brána Nenávratna

Sometime later I returned with the boys to see what we could see. With the stage gone we were able to check out the station more closely. 

And that's how we learned of the history of the place.

Praha-Bubny was the point of deportation for about 50,000 Czech Jews to Nazi ghettos and concentration camps during World War II. And following the war it was the site of expulsion of the German population from the Sudetenland region when the area came back under Czechoslovak rule. For many years, however, there wasn't any acknowledgement of these events at the site, and few Czechs were even aware of its history.

In late 2012, Prague Shoah Memorial was founded with the mission of converting Praha-Bubny station into a modern center for contemporary history called the Memorial of Silence. From the Memorial web site:

"The Memorial of Silence is the planned transformation of Bubny railway station into a center for discussing the legacy of the past as a stigma of the present.... This stigmatized place will now become a memorial with a modern exhibition commemorating the complex history of the 20th century, and also a space for discussion and critical reflection of the recent past."

It got me thinking about the sculpture. The artist wanted it to represent railroad tracks heading to heaven as a symbol of Jacob's Ladder.

The translation on the plaque is The Gate of Infinity, which in light of the Jacob's Ladder connection makes sense. But in other places it's translated as The Gate of No Return. Given Praha-Bubny's history, that certainly feels apt.

After unearthing all of this information, I really wanted to know more about the band that had been playing at the station. I'd taken note of a name on their van, The Tap Tap.

The Tap Tap Orchestra was formed in 1998. The musicians are students and graduates of the Jedlička Institute and School, a Czech medical and educational facility which specializes in care and education of disabled children and adults. The band is lead by Šimon Ornest, an instructor at Jedlička, who insisted that the students needed to be challenged more. He didn't think people expected enough of them but instead tended "to be too solicitous of them."

The group has evolved from its start as a local cover band. Tap Tap's tours take them all over Czechia, sure, but also around the world. Last summer they performed in New York City, Washington D.C., and Chicago. They now perform original pieces. The song that was welcomed with cheers when I saw them is their big hit, "Řiditel autobusu"/"Bus driver," a song written by one of their percussionists following a frustrating encounter with a bus driver who wouldn't let him bring his bicycle on a city bus.

In addition to the music, dark humor is an integral part of the band's presentation and identity. Their logo is the two-tailed Bohemian lion, snarling and shaking a closed fist from his seat in a wheelchair. From their web site (some of the translation on the site is a little clumsy, but I'm grateful that the English was provided!):

"The sense of black humor is a specific Czech property and it is crossing our entire society. Have fun with our jokes about handicapped people.... All the selected jokes have passed the hard censorship of band members Tap Tap — the darkest shade of black fun is really guaranteed."

Obviously it was no accident that Tap Tap was asked to perform at Praha-Bubny. In fact they were invited to be part of an ongoing program addressing "otherness" sponsored by Memorial of Silence in 2017.

"We will be talking about the concept of otherness, which has many commonalities with the selection of people according to their perceived quality – as reflected in the Nazis’ Final Solution but also in contemporary expressions of xenophobia and racial enmity. We invite everyone to visit the site of the future Memorial of Silence who, based on their own personal experience, have something to say on the subject of ‘modernism within us.’ 

During our concerts and theatre performances we will talk with contemporary artists with various kinds of ‘handicaps’, all based on the concept of ‘us and them.’"

I love that this hard-working, fun-loving band was featured on a stage at the site of this grim history. Picture them snarling and raising a closed fist at those who would question their perceived worth, doing so with song and boisterous laughter.