Recruits waded through mud at Terezín’s Small Fortress, muster took place at the former Hamburg barracks and a number of the town’s streets appeared in the film. Soldiers headed for the front via the intersection of the streets Prokopa Holého and Legií. In reality, the Small Fortress had not been used for military purposes during WWI. It was a prison whose inmates included Gavrilo Princip, whose shots triggered the Great War.

Today the fortress is home to the Terezín Memorial, which recalls the suffering of tens of thousands of people – prisoners at a collection and transit camp here during WWII. The Small Fortress houses an exhibition focused on the tragic war years when it served as a jail for the Prague Gestapo. The Memorial includes a Ghetto Museum with an exhibition on the so-called “final solution of the Jewish question”. The Magdeburg barracks, meanwhile, contains an exhibition dedicated to the art created in the ghetto.

The latter barracks is close to the street 28. října, which also appeared in the famous war movie. Corporal Himmelstoss, the despot who bullied the conscripts during exercises, strode about there.