“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.
---
In 1941 the Nazis established a ghetto in Theresienstadt (Terezin), a garrison town in Northwestern Czechoslovakia, where they interned the Jews of Bohemia and Moravia, elderly Jews and persons of “special merit” in the Reich, and several thousand Jews from the Netherlands and Denmark. Although in practice the ghetto, run by the SS, served as a transit camp for Jews en route to extermination camps, it was also presented as a “model Jewish settlement” for propaganda purposes. source
RSHA chief Heydrich announced Theresienstadt's function as a “settlement” for certain categories of Jews to SS, State, and Nazi Party functionaries gathered at the Wannsee villa on January 20, 1942 ... He stated that Jews residing in Germany and Austria who were 65 years old and above would not be “evacuated” to the east for “labor,” but would be “transferred to a ghetto for the elderly” at Theresienstadt. Also to be "transferred" were German and Austrian Jewish World War I veterans who met at least one of two criteria: severely disabled due to war wounds and/or veterans awarded the Iron Cross 1st Class and above. ... After Heydrich's death, a third category of Jews was added to the eligibility list for Theresienstadt: prominent Jews, especially artists, musicians, and other cultural figures whose disappearance in a killing center might provoke inquiry from their communities or even from abroad. source
Some Jews, believing the Nazi propaganda, traded all of their wealth to get themselves into this special camp. But Himmler's and Heydrich's ''town inhabited by Jews and governed by them'' was a chimera - only half of the residents survived 1942 and Theresienstadt became a way station to death in Auschwitz. Nonetheless the myth of the model camp remained. source
Among the labor details at which Theresienstadt "residents" worked were various workshops within the camp-ghetto, including carpentry, leather goods, tailoring, and machine shops. The council assigned women to work in the kitchen, clean the barracks and common rooms, work in the camp-ghetto's vegetable gardens, and serve as nurses or orderlies in the so-called sick rooms. The most unlucky "residents" worked outside the camp on construction projects and in the nearby Kladno mines, mostly under direct SS and police supervision. source
Despite the terrible living conditions and the constant threat of deportation, Theresienstadt had a highly developed cultural life. The distinctiveness of the camp-ghetto's cultural life lies first in the activities of thousands of professional and amateur artists, their concerts, theatrical performances, artworks, poetry readings, and above all the composition of musical works: an outpouring of culture under unimaginably difficult conditions, unparalleled in the Nazi camp system. source
Succumbing to pressure following the deportation of Danish Jews to Theresienstadt, the Germans permitted representatives from the Danish Red Cross and the International Red Cross to visit in June 1944. It was all an elaborate hoax. ... Elaborate measures were taken to disguise conditions in the ghetto and to portray an atmosphere of normalcy. The SS engaged the Council of Jewish Elders and the camp-ghetto "residents" in a "beautification" program. Prisoners planted gardens, painted housing complexes, renovated barracks, and developed and practiced cultural programs for the entertainment of the visiting dignitaries to convince them that the "Seniors' Settlement" was real. The SS authorities intensified deportations of Jews from the ghetto to alleviate overcrowding, and as part of the preparations in the camp-ghetto, 7,503 people were deported to Auschwitz between May 16 and May 18, 1944. source
For these visits, the money of Theresienstadt {PDF} was prominently displayed, to prove that the Jews were well paid for their labors. The bills, in denominations from 1 krona to 100 kronen, have a portrait of Moses, made ugly by S.S. decree. On the front, is a warning that the fraudulent use of the notes or counterfeiting would meet with the severest of punishments. On the reverse, is the signature of the head of the Jewish Council of Elders, Jakub Edelstein, who died with his family in Auschwitz in 1943. ... The notes were printed and designed by Jewish prisoners and are dated January 1, 1943. Holders could use them to repurchase their own confiscated goods at outrageously inflated prices. The notes could also be used to pay a parcel tax and a monthly 50-krona leisure tax. Adult workers were paid up to 205 kronen a month. Scientists, physicians and artists were paid 145 kronen. source
Above: Scans my dad made of Theresienstadt money my great-grandparents brought out of the camp with them. Absolutely incredible condition.
Hints that all was not well included a bruise under the eye of the "mayor" of the "town," a part played by Paul Eppstein, the Elders' Council member representing German Jews. Despite these hints, the International Red Cross inspectors were taken in. This was in part because they expected to see ghetto conditions like those in occupied Poland with people starving in the streets and armed policemen on the perimeter. ... In the wake of the inspection, SS officials in the Protectorate produced a film using ghetto residents as a demonstration of the benevolent treatment the Jewish “residents” of Theresienstadt supposedly enjoyed. In Nazi propaganda, Theresienstadt was cynically described as a "spa town" where elderly German Jews could "retire" in safety. When the film was completed, SS officials deported most of the "cast" to the Auschwitz-Birkenau killing center. Despite the effort involved in making the propaganda film, the German authorities ultimately decided not to screen it. source
On June 6, 1944, under the code name Operation "Overlord," US, British and Canadian troops landed on the beaches of Normandy, France, on the English Channel coast east of Cherbourg and west of Le Havre. ... On July 25, 1944, Allied troops broke out of the Normandy beachhead near the town of St. Lo and began to pour into northern France. By mid-August, Allied troops had encircled and destroyed much of the German army in Normandy in the Falaise pocket. Spearheaded by General George Patton's Third Army, the Allies then raced across France. On August 25, Free French forces liberated Paris; on September 16, US troops reached the border of Germany. ... Since the Normandy invasion, June 6, 1944 has been known in World War II history as "D-Day." source
In 1945, hoping to use the surviving prisoners at Theresienstadt as a bargaining chip for opening negotiations with the western powers, Reichsführer SS Heinrich Himmler, Security Police Chief Ernst Kaltenbrunner, and other SS leaders agreed, as a token of good faith, to the release of 1,200 Theresienstadt prisoners in exchange for five million Swiss francs put up by Jewish organizations in an escrowed account in Switzerland. The 1,200 Jews ... reached Switzerland on February 5, 1945. On the night of April 14-15, 1945, the SS permitted Swedish Red Cross personnel to take the surviving 423 Danish Jews out of Theresienstadt on trucks bound for Denmark. source
After again visiting the camp on April 6 and April 21, 1945, the International Red Cross took over its administration on May 2, 1945. SS Commandant Rahm and the rest of the SS fled on May 5 and 6. Scattered German military and SS units continued to fight Soviet forces in the vicinity of the camp-ghetto, which became part of the battlefront on May 8. Soviet troops entered the camp on May 9 and assumed responsibility for its prisoners the next day. By the end of August 1945, most of the former prisoners had left the camp, to be replaced by ethnic Germans arrested by the Czech and Soviet authorities. source
Between November 24, 1941 and April 20, 1945, 141,184 persons lived in the camp-ghetto at one time or another. Of the approximately 88,323 whom the Germans deported, perhaps 3,500 survived the war. 33, 521”residents” of Theresienstadt died in the ghetto of disease, starvation, exposure, or in the course of performing forced labor without adequate clothing, nourishment or equipment. To the death toll must be added a further 430 persons who died after the International Red Cross took responsibility for providing food for the prisoners in early May 1945, and 1,137 more, who died in the month after liberation. source
The total number of deaths at Theresienstadt was 35,088. Despite the fact that the number of elderly persons passing through Theresienstadt raised the percentage of prisoners vulnerable to the conditions imposed by the SS, this number of deaths, particularly in consideration of the survival rate from the deportations, reflects a reality of daily life that exposed the SS-created fiction as the brutal and cynical falsehood that it was. source
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.
---
In 1941 the Nazis established a ghetto in Theresienstadt (Terezin), a garrison town in Northwestern Czechoslovakia, where they interned the Jews of Bohemia and Moravia, elderly Jews and persons of “special merit” in the Reich, and several thousand Jews from the Netherlands and Denmark. Although in practice the ghetto, run by the SS, served as a transit camp for Jews en route to extermination camps, it was also presented as a “model Jewish settlement” for propaganda purposes. source
RSHA chief Heydrich announced Theresienstadt's function as a “settlement” for certain categories of Jews to SS, State, and Nazi Party functionaries gathered at the Wannsee villa on January 20, 1942 ... He stated that Jews residing in Germany and Austria who were 65 years old and above would not be “evacuated” to the east for “labor,” but would be “transferred to a ghetto for the elderly” at Theresienstadt. Also to be "transferred" were German and Austrian Jewish World War I veterans who met at least one of two criteria: severely disabled due to war wounds and/or veterans awarded the Iron Cross 1st Class and above. ... After Heydrich's death, a third category of Jews was added to the eligibility list for Theresienstadt: prominent Jews, especially artists, musicians, and other cultural figures whose disappearance in a killing center might provoke inquiry from their communities or even from abroad. source
Some Jews, believing the Nazi propaganda, traded all of their wealth to get themselves into this special camp. But Himmler's and Heydrich's ''town inhabited by Jews and governed by them'' was a chimera - only half of the residents survived 1942 and Theresienstadt became a way station to death in Auschwitz. Nonetheless the myth of the model camp remained. source
Among the labor details at which Theresienstadt "residents" worked were various workshops within the camp-ghetto, including carpentry, leather goods, tailoring, and machine shops. The council assigned women to work in the kitchen, clean the barracks and common rooms, work in the camp-ghetto's vegetable gardens, and serve as nurses or orderlies in the so-called sick rooms. The most unlucky "residents" worked outside the camp on construction projects and in the nearby Kladno mines, mostly under direct SS and police supervision. source
Despite the terrible living conditions and the constant threat of deportation, Theresienstadt had a highly developed cultural life. The distinctiveness of the camp-ghetto's cultural life lies first in the activities of thousands of professional and amateur artists, their concerts, theatrical performances, artworks, poetry readings, and above all the composition of musical works: an outpouring of culture under unimaginably difficult conditions, unparalleled in the Nazi camp system. source
Succumbing to pressure following the deportation of Danish Jews to Theresienstadt, the Germans permitted representatives from the Danish Red Cross and the International Red Cross to visit in June 1944. It was all an elaborate hoax. ... Elaborate measures were taken to disguise conditions in the ghetto and to portray an atmosphere of normalcy. The SS engaged the Council of Jewish Elders and the camp-ghetto "residents" in a "beautification" program. Prisoners planted gardens, painted housing complexes, renovated barracks, and developed and practiced cultural programs for the entertainment of the visiting dignitaries to convince them that the "Seniors' Settlement" was real. The SS authorities intensified deportations of Jews from the ghetto to alleviate overcrowding, and as part of the preparations in the camp-ghetto, 7,503 people were deported to Auschwitz between May 16 and May 18, 1944. source
For these visits, the money of Theresienstadt {PDF} was prominently displayed, to prove that the Jews were well paid for their labors. The bills, in denominations from 1 krona to 100 kronen, have a portrait of Moses, made ugly by S.S. decree. On the front, is a warning that the fraudulent use of the notes or counterfeiting would meet with the severest of punishments. On the reverse, is the signature of the head of the Jewish Council of Elders, Jakub Edelstein, who died with his family in Auschwitz in 1943. ... The notes were printed and designed by Jewish prisoners and are dated January 1, 1943. Holders could use them to repurchase their own confiscated goods at outrageously inflated prices. The notes could also be used to pay a parcel tax and a monthly 50-krona leisure tax. Adult workers were paid up to 205 kronen a month. Scientists, physicians and artists were paid 145 kronen. source
Hints that all was not well included a bruise under the eye of the "mayor" of the "town," a part played by Paul Eppstein, the Elders' Council member representing German Jews. Despite these hints, the International Red Cross inspectors were taken in. This was in part because they expected to see ghetto conditions like those in occupied Poland with people starving in the streets and armed policemen on the perimeter. ... In the wake of the inspection, SS officials in the Protectorate produced a film using ghetto residents as a demonstration of the benevolent treatment the Jewish “residents” of Theresienstadt supposedly enjoyed. In Nazi propaganda, Theresienstadt was cynically described as a "spa town" where elderly German Jews could "retire" in safety. When the film was completed, SS officials deported most of the "cast" to the Auschwitz-Birkenau killing center. Despite the effort involved in making the propaganda film, the German authorities ultimately decided not to screen it. source
On June 6, 1944, under the code name Operation "Overlord," US, British and Canadian troops landed on the beaches of Normandy, France, on the English Channel coast east of Cherbourg and west of Le Havre. ... On July 25, 1944, Allied troops broke out of the Normandy beachhead near the town of St. Lo and began to pour into northern France. By mid-August, Allied troops had encircled and destroyed much of the German army in Normandy in the Falaise pocket. Spearheaded by General George Patton's Third Army, the Allies then raced across France. On August 25, Free French forces liberated Paris; on September 16, US troops reached the border of Germany. ... Since the Normandy invasion, June 6, 1944 has been known in World War II history as "D-Day." source
In 1945, hoping to use the surviving prisoners at Theresienstadt as a bargaining chip for opening negotiations with the western powers, Reichsführer SS Heinrich Himmler, Security Police Chief Ernst Kaltenbrunner, and other SS leaders agreed, as a token of good faith, to the release of 1,200 Theresienstadt prisoners in exchange for five million Swiss francs put up by Jewish organizations in an escrowed account in Switzerland. The 1,200 Jews ... reached Switzerland on February 5, 1945. On the night of April 14-15, 1945, the SS permitted Swedish Red Cross personnel to take the surviving 423 Danish Jews out of Theresienstadt on trucks bound for Denmark. source
After again visiting the camp on April 6 and April 21, 1945, the International Red Cross took over its administration on May 2, 1945. SS Commandant Rahm and the rest of the SS fled on May 5 and 6. Scattered German military and SS units continued to fight Soviet forces in the vicinity of the camp-ghetto, which became part of the battlefront on May 8. Soviet troops entered the camp on May 9 and assumed responsibility for its prisoners the next day. By the end of August 1945, most of the former prisoners had left the camp, to be replaced by ethnic Germans arrested by the Czech and Soviet authorities. source
Between November 24, 1941 and April 20, 1945, 141,184 persons lived in the camp-ghetto at one time or another. Of the approximately 88,323 whom the Germans deported, perhaps 3,500 survived the war. 33, 521”residents” of Theresienstadt died in the ghetto of disease, starvation, exposure, or in the course of performing forced labor without adequate clothing, nourishment or equipment. To the death toll must be added a further 430 persons who died after the International Red Cross took responsibility for providing food for the prisoners in early May 1945, and 1,137 more, who died in the month after liberation. source
The total number of deaths at Theresienstadt was 35,088. Despite the fact that the number of elderly persons passing through Theresienstadt raised the percentage of prisoners vulnerable to the conditions imposed by the SS, this number of deaths, particularly in consideration of the survival rate from the deportations, reflects a reality of daily life that exposed the SS-created fiction as the brutal and cynical falsehood that it was. source
To the Dead
A grave among graves, who can tell it apart,
time has long swept away the dead faces.
Testimonies, so evil and terrible to the heart,
we took with us to these dark rotting places.
Only the night and the howl of the wind
will sit on the graves' corners,
only a patch of grass, a bitter weed
before May bears some flowers...
~ Jaroslav Seifert
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