Theresienstadt Ghetto

50°30′48″N 14°10′1″E / 50.51333°N 14.16694°E / 50.51333; 14.16694

Location of the concentration camp in the Czech Republic

Theresienstadt concentration camp (often referred to as Terezín) was a Nazi concentration camp during World War II. It was established by the Gestapo in the fortress and garrison city of Terezín (German name Theresienstadt), located in what is now the Czech Republic.

History

The fortress of Terezín was constructed between the years 1780 and 1790 by the orders of the Austrian emperor Joseph II in the north-west region of Bohemia. It was designed to be a component of a projected but never fully realized fort system of the monarchy, another piece being the fort of Josefov. Terezín took its name from the mother of the emperor, Maria Theresa of Austria who reigned 1740–1780. By the end of the 18th century, the facility was obsolete as a fort; in the 19th century, the fort was used to accommodate military and political prisoners.

From 1914 till 1918 it housed one of its most famous prisoners: Gavrilo Princip. Princip assassinated Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria and his wife on June 28 1914 which led to the First World War. Princip died in cell number 1 from tuberculosis on April 28 1918.

On June 10, 1940, the Gestapo took control of Terezín and set up prison in the Small Fortress (kleine Festung), see below. By 24 November 1941, the Main Fortress (große Festung, i.e. the town Theresienstadt) was turned into a walled ghetto. The function of Theresienstadt was to provide a front for the extermination operation of Jews. To the outside it was presented by the Nazis as a model Jewish settlement, but in reality it was a concentration camp. Theresienstadt was also used as a transit camp for European Jews en route to Auschwitz and other extermination camps.

Dr. Siegfried Seidl, an SS-Hauptsturmführer,^[1] served as the first camp commandant in 1941. Seidl oversaw the labor of 342 young men, known as the Aufbaukommando, who converted the fortress into a concentration camp. Although the Aufbaukommando were promised that they and their families would be spared transport, eventually all were transported to Auschwitz-Birkenau in 1943, for Sonderbehandlung, or "special treatment", i.e. immediate gassing of all upon arrival.

As in other European ghettos, a Jewish Council nominally ruled over the ghetto. The first of the Jewish Elders of Theresienstadt was Jakob Edelstein, a Polish-born Zionist and former head of the Prague Jewish community. In 1943, he was deported to Auschwitz, where he was shot together with his family. The second was Paul Eppstein, a sociologist originally from Mannheim, Germany. Earlier, Eppstein was the speaker of the Reichsvereinigung der Juden in Deutschland, the central organization of Jews in Nazi Germany. In the course of the liquidation transports in autumn 1944, when some two thirds of the ghetto population were deported to Auschwitz, Eppstein was shot in the Small Fortress. He died on Yom kippur, the holiest day in the Hebrew calendar, after he informed the deported people what was awaiting them in the "East". Benjamin Murmelstein, a Lvov-born Vienna rabbi succeeded Eppstein. His popularity in the ghetto was similar with the one of the SS command. In the last days of existence of the ghetto, rabbi Leo Baeck served as the Elder. In 1943 to 1945, he was the speaker of the Council of Elders of Theresienstadt, after being deported from Berlin, where he served as the head of the Reichsvereinigung der Juden in Deutschland.

This camp was established by the head of the RSHA and Reich Protector for Bohemia and Moravia, Reinhard Heydrich. It soon became the "home" for a great number of Jews from occupied Czechoslovakia. The 7,000 non-Jewish Czechs living in Terezín were expelled by the Nazis in the spring 1942. As a consequence, the Jewish community became a closed environment.

On 1 May, 1945 control of the camp was transferred from the Germans to the Red Cross. A week later, on 8 May, 1945 Terezín was liberated by Soviet troops.

Many of the 80,000 Czech Jews who died in the Holocaust were killed in Theresienstadt, where the conditions were extremely difficult. In a space previously inhabited by 7,000 Czechs, now over 50,000 Jews were gathered. Food was scarce and in 1942 almost 16,000 people died, including Esther Adolphine (a sister of Sigmund Freud) who died on September 29, 1942; Friedrich Münzer (a German classicist), who died on October 20, 1942. Medicine and tobacco were strictly prohibited; possession could be punished by hard labor or death. Men and women were officially forbidden to meet, or to communicate with a Gentile without German permission.

Theresienstadt supplied the German war effort with a source of Jewish slave labor. Their major contribution was the splitting of mica mined from local Czechoslovakia. Blind prisoners were often spared deportation by assignment to this task. Others manufactured boxes or coffins. Others sprayed military uniforms with a white dye to provide camouflage for Nazi soldiers on the Russian front.

456 Jews from Denmark were sent to Theresienstadt in 1943 . These were Jews who had not escaped to Sweden before the arrival of the Nazis. Included also in the transports were some of the European Jewish children whom Danish organizations had been attempting to conceal in foster homes. The arrival of the Danes is of great significance as the Danes insisted on the Red Cross having access to the ghetto. This was a rare move, given that most European governments did not insist on their fellow Jewish citizens being treated according to some fundamental principles. The Danish king, Christian X, later secured the release of the Danish internees on April 15, 1945. The White Buses, in cooperation with the Danish Red Cross, collected the 413 who had survived.

On February 5, 1945, the SS chief Heinrich Himmler allowed a transport of 1,210 Jews from Theresienstadt, most of them originating from the Netherlands, to Switzerland. According to an agreement between Himmler and Jean-Marie Musy, a pro-Nazi former Swiss president, the group was released after $1.25 million were placed in Swiss banks by Jewish organizations working in Switzerland.

After the victory of the Allies in 1945, Theresienstadt was used by Czech partisans and former inmates to hold German SS personnel and civilians as retaliation for their atrocities.

Cultural activity of inmates

File:Petr-Ginz-drawing.jpg

Earth as seen from the moon, drawn by young camp inmate Petr Ginz. A copy was taken onto the Space Shuttle Columbia.

Theresienstadt was originally designated to house privileged Jews from Germany, Czechoslovakia, and Austria. Many educated Jews were inmates of Theresienstadt, and the camp was known for its rich cultural life. At least four concert orchestras operated in the camp, as well as chamber groups and jazz ensembles. Several stage performances were produced and attended by camp inmates. Some prominent artists from Czechoslovakia, Austria, and Germany were either born in Theresienstadt or found their death there. There were artists, writers, scientists and jurists, diplomats, musicians, and scholars.

The community in Theresienstadt ensured that all the children that passed through continued with their education. Though the Nazis decreed that all camp children over a certain age must be gainfully employed, working on stage was considered employment, and the children's education often continued under the guise of work or cultural activity. Daily classes and sports activities were held and the magazine Vedem was edited there. This affected some 15,000 children, of whom only about 1,100 survived to the end of the war. Other estimates place the number of the surviving children as low as 100.

Artist and art teacher Friedl Dicker-Brandeis created drawing classes for children in the ghetto. This activity resulted in the production of over four thousands children's drawings, which Dicker-Brandeis hid in two suitcases before being sent to Auschwitz. This collection was thus preserved from destruction by the Nazis and was not discovered until a decade later. Most of these drawings can now be seen at The Jewish Museum in Prague, whose Archive of Holocaust section is responsible for the administration of the Terezin Archive Collection. The children of the camp also wrote stories and poems, some of which were preserved and later published in a collection called I Never Saw Another Butterfly.

The composer Viktor Ullmann was interned in September 1942 and murdered at Auschwitz in October 1944. He composed some twenty works at Theresienstadt, including the one-act opera, Der Kaiser von Atlantis (The Emperor of Atlantis or The Refusal of Death), first performed in 1975, shown in full on BBC television in Britain, and still performed today. It was to be performed in the camp, but permission was withdrawn when it was in rehearsal, probably because the authorities perceived its allegorical intent.

Used as propaganda tool

On June 23, 1944, the Nazis permitted the visit by the Red Cross in order to dispel rumors about the extermination camps. The commission included E. Juel-Henningsen, the head physician at the Danish Ministry of Health, and Franz Hvass, the top civil servant at the Danish Foreign Ministry. Dr. Paul Eppstein was instructed by the SS to appear in the role of the mayor of Theresienstadt.

To minimize the appearance of overcrowding in Theresienstadt, the Nazis deported many Jews to Auschwitz. Also deported in these actions were most of the Czechoslovakian workers assigned to 'Operation Embellishment.' They also erected fake shops and cafés to imply that the Jews lived in relative comfort. The Danes whom the Red Cross visited lived in freshly painted rooms, not more than three in a room. The guests enjoyed the performance of a children's opera, Brundibar, which was written by inmate Hans Krása.

The hoax against the Red Cross was so successful for the Nazis that they went on to make a propaganda film at Theresienstadt. Production of the film began on February 26, 1944. Directed by Jewish prisoner Kurt Gerron (a director, cabaret performer, and actor who appeared with Marlene Dietrich in The Blue Angel), it was meant to show how well the Jews lived under the "benevolent" protection of the Third Reich. After the shooting most of the cast, and even the filmmaker himself, were deported to Auschwitz. Gerron and his wife were executed in the gas chambers on October 28, 1944. The film was not released at the time, but was edited into pieces that served their purpose, and only segments of it have remained.

Often called The Führer Gives a Village to the Jews, the correct name of the film is: Theresienstadt. Ein Dokumentarfilm aus dem jüdischen Siedlungsgebiet (Terezin: A Documentary Film of the Jewish Resettlement). (Cf. Hans Sode-Madsen: The Perfect Deception. The Danish Jews and Theresienstadt 1940–1945. Leo Baeck Yearbook, 1993)

Statistics

File:Theresienstadt-10kronenb.jpg

10 Kronen — money that was part of the propaganda presented to the Red Cross committee. In fact, these were just papers without any real value and were never used.

Approximately 144,000 Jews were sent to Theresienstadt. Some 40,000 of them originated from Germany, 15,000 from Austria, 5,000 from the Netherlands and 300 from Luxembourg. In addition to the group of approx. 500 Jews from Denmark, also Slovak and Hungarian Jews were deported to the ghetto. Some 1,600 Jewish children from Białystok, Poland, were deported to Auschwitz from Theresienstadt; none survived. Most inmates were Czech Jews. About a quarter of the inmates (33,000) died in Theresienstadt, mostly because of the deadly conditions (hunger, stress, and disease, especially the typhus epidemic at the very end of war). About 88,000 were deported to Auschwitz and other extermination camps. When the war finished, there were a mere 17,247 survivors. There were 15,000 children living in the children's home inside the camp; only 93 of those children survived.

Small Fortress

Small Fortress (Malá pevnost in Czech, Kleine Festung in German) was part of the fortification on left side of river Ohře. Since 1940, the Gestapo used it as a prison (the largest one in the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia). It was separate and unrelated to the Jewish ghetto in the main fortress on the river's right side. Around 32,000 people arrived there and were usually sent to a concentration camp later. 2,600 people were executed, starved, or succumbed to disease there. A possible 1,100 children survived of the 15,000 sent there. Anton Malloth was a notorious prison guard there. After escaping justice for 55 years, he was finally convicted for beating at least 100 prisoners to death, and sentenced to life imprisonment, in 2001.

References

^ Shoa.de - Theresienstadt - einige wichtige Tatsachen

Music in Terezin, 1941-1945 by Joza Karas, Pendragon Press, 1990, ISBN 0-918728-34-7

External links

Beit Terezin, Theresienstadt Martyr's Remembrance Association at kibbutz Givat Haim Ichud
Terezín Memorial
Terezín Initiative Institute
http://www.cwporter.com/hoess.htm
Tours of the Ghetto and Small Fortress
The Archive of Holocaust at The Jewish Museum in Prague
Terezín Chamber Music Foundation
Terezin memorial at Find-A-Grave
[3] List of Lecturers in Ghetto Theresienstadt
[4]
US Holocaust Museum Steven Spielberg Video Archive entry for the surviving propaganda film excerpts. (Not yet on-line)
Surviving Fragments of Der Führer schenkt den Juden eine Stadt at Youtube Part I and Part II

[1] Shoa.de - Theresienstadt - einige wichtige Tatsachen

[1]