History & Overview
As Hitler transported tens of thousands of communal objects to Prague,
their owners were rounded up and shipped first to a city built northwest
of Prague in 1780 by Joseph II. Ironically, this city served as a fortress
to protect Prague from invaders to the north. Joseph II named this village
after his mother, Maria Teresia, calling it Terezin.
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Hitler, the world was to be told, had built a city for
the Jews, to protect them from the vagaries and stresses of the
war. A film was made to show this mythic, idyllic city to which his
henchmen were taking the Jews from the Czech Lands and eight other countries.
Notable musicians, writers, artists, and leaders were sent there for
“safer” keeping than was to be afforded elsewhere in Hitler’s
quest to stave off any uprisings or objections around the so-called
civilized world. This ruse worked for a very long time, to the great
detriment of the nearly two hundred thousand men, women and children
who passed through its gates as a way station to the east and probable
death.
Of the vast majority of Czech Jews who were taken
to Terezin (or Theresienstadt), 97,297 died among whom were 15,000 children. Only 132 of
those children were known to have survived.
The Red Cross was allowed to visit Terezin once. The
village of Terezin was spruced up for the occasion. Certain inmates
were dressed up and told to stand at strategic places along the specially
designated route through Terezin. Shop windows along that carefully
guarded path were filled with goods for the day. One young mother remembers
seeing the bakery window and shelves suddenly filled with baked goods
the inmates had never seen during their time at Terezin. Even the candy
shop window overflowed with bon bons creating a fantastic illusion she
would never forget.
When the Red Cross representative appeared before
this young mother, she remembers being asked how it was to live in Terezin
during those days. Her reply implored the questioner to look around.
Be sure and look around, as she herself rolled her own widely opened
eyes around in an exaggerated manner. The Red Cross reported dryly that
while war time conditions made all life difficult, life at Terezin was
acceptable given all of the pressures. The Red Cross concluded that
the Jews were being treated all right.
There were so many musicians in Terezin, there could
have been two full symphony orchestras performing simultaneously daily.
In addition, there were a number of chamber orchestras playing at various
times. A number of distinguished composers created works at Terezin
including Brundibar or the Bumble Bee, a children’s operetta
and a number of chamber compositions which only now are being resurrected
and played in Europe and the United States.
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Terezin developed a deep feeling of family according
to many of the survivors. As larger numbers of people were crammed into
smaller spaces, a sense of community deepened. In the town of Terezin,
the population had normally been around 5,000 people before the war.
At the height of the war, the Ghetto/Concentration Camp Terezin held
over 55,000 Jews. As a consequence, starvation and disease proved rampant.
Thousands died of malnutrition and exposure. Their bodies were cremated
at the small crematorium with its four gas ovens.
This was not a death camp, by the usual definition. There is no way
to compare Terezin to Auschwitz-Birkenau or Treblinka or any
of the other death camps where hundreds of thousands were gassed or
murdered in other ways each year. Terezin, by comparison was a place
to which people would apply so as to avoid a worse fate.
The elderly and families were brought in large numbers
to Terezin. Then, in large groups, they were transported to the east,
to Auschwitz-Birkenau, when it was fully operational in late 1942. There,
the elderly were sent immediately to the gas
chambers while the younger inmates who still could work, were temporarily
spared. Terezin families were, in some instances, kept together at Birkenau,
in family barracks, until their fate was met.
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The Little Fortress at Terezin, a star-shaped thick-walled
fortress, had long served as a prison. Few people were incarcerated
here from the time it was opened in 1780 to Hitler, the one exception
being the assassins of Archduke Ferdinand and his wife in 1914. The
Nazis brought political prisoners and others to this hellish place never
to emerge again. It was here that the Jewish artists were sent after
having been caught stealing paper and other supplies with which they
produced writings that recorded daily life in Terezin. It was their
work which allowed the outside world to know dramatically about life
in Terezin.
These artists also stole materials so the children
could surreptitiously create their works of art. Six thousand drawings
were hidden and later successfully retrieved to be displayed telling
their poignant stories to thousands of viewers in Prague, Israel and
at the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, D.C.
Sources: Copyright © Project
Judaica Foundation. Photos by Mark Talisman.
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