Theresienstadt

“I shall never forget how I was roused one night by the groans of a fellow prisoner, who threw himself about in his sleep, obviously having a horrible nightmare. Since I had always been especially sorry for people who suffered from fearful dreams or deliria, I wanted to wake the poor man. Suddenly I drew back the hand which was ready to shake him, frightened at the thing I was about to do. At that moment I became intensely conscious of the fact that no dream, no matter how horrible, could be as bad as the reality of the camp which surrounded us, and to which I was about to recall him.”

~ Viktor Frankl, Austrian Psychiatrist and Theresienstadt Survivor

Theresienstadt.

I've been trying for several days to start in part 2 of my great-grampa's story, but the more and more I read about it, the more I find that it deserves an entry on its own, especially given how many of my family were deported there.

I do not think I can adequately describe Theresienstadt in my own words, in no small part because I feel so sickened by this project at the moment (and therefore more determined to see it through), so I am going to put together chunks of information from articles I've found on Yad Vashem, the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, and other selected sites, with links to sources at the end of each part.

Selected portions of the timeline found here:

March 15, 1939
Nazi Germany occupies the remainder of the Czech provinces and establishes the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia as part of the Greater German Reich. The Czech garrison town of Theresienstadt (Terezin), less than a mile southeast of Litomerice, is located within the Protectorate near the extended German border.

October 10, 1941
RSHA chief Reinhard Heydrich expresses his preference for Theresienstadt as the site for a Jewish “settlement” for those German, Austrian, and Czech Jews who were
1) over 65 years of age;
2) disabled or highly decorated World War I veterans; or
3) of sufficient regional, national or international celebrity to encourage domestic and foreign inquiry.

November 24, 1941-April 15, 1945
The SS and police deport between 73,608 and 75,958 Czech Jews residing in the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia to Theresienstadt.

January 9, 1942-October 22, 1942
The SS and police deport approximately 42,005 people, most of them Jews residing in the Protectorate, from Theresienstadt to killing sites, killing centers, concentration camps, and forced-labor camps in the Baltic States, Belorussia, and the Generalgouvernement. 224 are known to have survived the Holocaust (one half of one per cent of those deported).

June 2, 1942-April 15, 1945
SS and police authorities deport approximately 58,087 Jews from the Greater German Reich (excluding Protectorate Jews) to Theresienstadt...

October 26, 1942-October 28, 1944
German SS and Police deport approximately 46,750 Jews from Theresienstadt to Auschwitz-Birkenau in 27 transports. ... Perhaps 3,450 survive.

May 15-18, 1944
The SS and police deport approximately 7,503 prisoners from Theresienstadt to Auschwitz to lessen crowding in the camp-ghetto in preparation for a visit by the Red Cross.

June 23, 1944
Two representatives of the International Red Cross and one representative of the Danish Red Cross visit Theresienstadt. The International Red Cross later issues a bland report about the visit, indicating that the two representatives were taken in by the elaborate fiction.

February 5, 1945
The RSHA transports approximately 1,200 Jews from Theresienstadt to Switzerland.

April 30, 1945
Nazi dictator Adolf Hitler commits suicide in Berlin.

May 9-10, 1945
Soviet troops enter the camp on May 9 and take responsibility for caring for the prisoners from the International Red Cross on May 10. Around 30,000 prisoners are in the camp at the time of liberation.

The Via Dolorosa

"History, despite its wrenching pain, cannot be unlived, but if faced with courage, need not be lived again."

Maya Angelou

I have hit a point in researching the Holocaust where I can look at a photograph of a decapitated head or an emaciated dead baby lying on top of a large pile of emaciated dead children and not scream in horror. I'm not sure I'm OK with that.

Every child in America learns that the Holocaust happened. Facts and figures. 6,000,000 Jews killed, including 1,000,000 children. Eugenics. Murder of the Romani. Pictures of somewhat emaciated, nameless figures and blurry pictures that hint at piles of bodies but seek to protect our delicate sensibilities from the sight of torment and death.

The Holocaust education I received in school was to my experience doing this voluntary, in-depth research as jumping on a trampoline is to sky diving. There are these moments of hope - "Oh! A transport left Theresienstadt with 1196 children on it! Maybe it was post-war and they were being sent to freedom!" - which are instantly dashed as I find that they were sent to Auschwitz and murdered in the gas chambers within hours of arrival.

I tried watching some of the remaining clips of the propaganda film made at Theresienstadt on the coat-tails of the successful ruse to convince the Danish Red Cross that the prisoners were being treated humanely. There's nothing grotesque in it. No bodies, no death, no murder, but its very quotidian mundanity is almost worse than a pile of bodies. I had to stop, I was so offended by the fact that anyone could consider doing this was somehow alright, so horrified by the thought of how terrified the inmates in the film must have felt that it seemed reasonable to play along with this scheme, and so disappointed that there were governments who were fooled by this act of legerdemain.

I worked night shifts in a psychiatric emergency room for several years, so I've developed a sort of gallows humor in order to cope with difficult situations. There are moments in a psych ER that are so profoundly surreal - getting screamed at by an Egyptian goddess, being attacked by someone flailing their prosthetic limb around like a baseball bat, watching a patient start calling one of the big muscly macho safety officers "Pookie" - that the mind's only way to accept what it's seen is to decide that everything is some sort of bizarre Terry Gilliam-esque fantasy... and to laugh.

I've actually found myself laughing at some of the Holocaust images I've seen, not because I find piles of bones and ashes to be in any way funny, but because it's become a defense mechanism; I laugh so I do not cry. I'm actually worried about the day when I come across a severed head and somebody catches me laughing, because I don't know if it's possible to adequately explain hysterical disbelief.

The only anodyne I've found is, oddly enough, watching episodes of Ancient Aliens, as the utter surrealism it provides is even greater than that which I experience when I realize I'm looking at something so completely and terribly inhuman. I know. I'm strange. But the dude with hair makes the real world seam a little more sane.

Laughing and sarcasm may not be the best coping mechanism in history; it certainly doesn't follow the Buddhist approach of breathing into one's experience. But it's working for me now, so I'll try not to feel too guilty about it.

I just needed to get that out of my system, because I've been feeling nauseated and jittery the last few hours with what I've read. Thank you for listening. Feel free to give me other suggestions for how to cope with the absurdity that such a wide-scale abomination of a tragedy could actually happen.

Oh, and...

Dr. Siegfried Peltesohn, Part 1

Note: This is only part one, as it was getting a bit long for one post. I will also edit it as I find more information or corrections; edits will be noted at the end of the post. All photographs without source citations come from my family archives and have been watermarked as such. I will provide a list of sources used at the end of the part 2.


My great-grampa was a bad-ass.

No, seriously. My great-grampa (who for the sake of brevity shall henceforth be referred to as my GGP) survived 5 years as a front-line army field doctor in World War I, persecution for his ethnic descent, the seizure of his fortune, and two years in a Nazi concentration camp, and you know what he did after? He published a case study in a major German medical journal as a giant “%&$@ you! I survived!” to all of his anti-Semitic colleagues who’d conspired against them.

Siegfried Peltesohn c. 1945

See that? Total. Bad-ass.

But I am getting far, far ahead of myself. Let’s backtrack a bit, shall we?

Anna Pelteson: World's First Jewish Institute Leader - My High School Bio-Sketch

While digging through mountains of genealogical information I have stored in the depths of my computer in order to write an account of my great-grandfather (including historical context), I came across the following. It's the biographical sketch I wrote in high school for our social studies genealogy project. I present it to you sans any editing, so I must apologize that it is very much written by a fifteen- or sixteen-year-old. Also, there may be some inaccuracies that I will try to clear up in a future, more thoroughly researched post; as is, the only thing I can directly point to now is that it's just as likely that her birth date was used as her date of death for convenience as it is that she actually died on her birthday.

Without further ado,

Transcription

I wanted to post something so nobody thinks I've suddenly given up on my search. Far from it! I'm in the midst of writing up a post about my great-grandfather, Siegfried Peltesohn, for whom I have a wealth of information. The problem is that most of the primary sources I have are in German with somewhat squiggly handwriting:

As you can see, I've been hard at work deciphering documents in order to write what is destined to be a long and amazing post. Hopefully it will be up in the next day or three.