Jews over the age of 65, including those injured or decorated during the First World War, were sent there, supposedly for a happy retirement. The deceit was so complete that when the Red Cross requested access to check whether the rumours circulating were correct, the Germans even organised a concert with shops and food. It was a huge cover-up. They did not know where they were going. Extermination was by now a reality in Czechoslovakia.
Many were eventually deported to Auschwitz , in southern Poland. However with the ghetto placed in quarantine, epidemics broke out, and so during the liberation 1, prisoners and 43 health workers died. A visit to a concentration camp allows us to glimpse the full horror behind a history lesson.
In this very place, thousands of people suffered atrocities just a few years ago. Many historical aspects have been preserved in the town, and enable visitors to get some idea of the suffering endured by those prisoners. The tour is in two parts: There is the visit to the garrison town itself, built in the star-shape characteristic of Vauban-style fortresses.
Then there is the visit to the Small Fortress in the outskirts, the hellish Nazi prison, the concentration camp. This military stronghold has a precisely planned layout, with square blocks of buildings and perpendicular streets set around a central square, the Marktplatz. This became the site of the ghetto to which thousands of Jews were sent under the illusion that they were destined for a happy retirement. Its walls are tainted with terror and suffering, and a shadow will forever hang over this place.
As the film was not completed until near the end of the war, it was never distributed as intended, although a few screenings were held. Most of the film was destroyed, but some footage has survived. Click here to read about Terezin cast members meeting a Holocaust survivor. Born in the same year as Anne Frank and raised in Prague.
On December 4th, she and her parents were interned at Terezin. In October , aged 15, she and her mother were moved to Auschwitz. She survived Ausschwitz by persuading the Nazis that she was older than she really was. She remained there through the camp's liberation on 5 May by the US Army. Using her gift for painting and drawing, Helga wrote a diary, including images from her life in the camps, which survived the war. Her drawings and paintings have become well know and document life in the camps.
Anna Smulowitz. The Play. The Film. Support Terezin. History of Terezin. Info Kits. It had recognizable features of both ghettos and concentration camps. In its function as a tool of deception, Theresienstadt was unique. Theresienstadt served an important propaganda function for the Germans. The publicly stated purpose for the deportation of the Jews from Germany was their "resettlement to the east," where they would be compelled to perform forced labor.
Since it seemed implausible that elderly Jews could be used for forced labor, the Nazis used the Theresienstadt ghetto to hide the nature of the deportations. In Nazi propaganda, Theresienstadt was cynically described as a " spa town " where elderly German Jews could "retire" in safety.
The deportations to Theresienstadt were, however, part of the Nazi strategy of deception. The ghetto was in reality a collection center for deportations to ghettos and killing centers in Nazi-occupied eastern Europe. Succumbing to pressure following the deportation of Danish Jews to Theresienstadt, the Germans permitted the International Red Cross to visit in June It was all an elaborate hoax. The Germans intensified deportations from the ghetto shortly before the visit, and the ghetto itself was "beautified.
The Nazis staged social and cultural events for the visiting dignitaries. Once the visit was over, the Germans resumed deportations from Theresienstadt, which did not end until October Beginning in , SS authorities deported Jews from Theresienstadt to other ghettos , concentration camps , and killing centers in Nazi-occupied eastern Europe.
German authorities either murdered the Jews upon their arrival in the ghettos of Riga , Warsaw , Lodz , Minsk , and Bialystok , or deported them further to killing centers.
Transports also left Theresienstadt directly for the extermination camps of Auschwitz , Majdanek , and Treblinka. In the ghetto itself, tens of thousands of people died, mostly from disease or starvation. In , the death rate within the ghetto was so high that the Germans built—to the south of the ghetto—a crematorium capable of handling almost bodies a day. Of the approximately , Jews transferred to Theresienstadt, nearly 90, were deported to points further east and almost certain death.
Roughly 33, died in Theresienstadt itself. Despite the terrible living conditions and the constant threat of deportation, Theresienstadt had a highly developed cultural life. Outstanding Jewish artists, mainly from Czechoslovakia, Austria, and Germany, created drawings and paintings, some of them clandestine depictions of the ghetto's harsh reality.
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