Theresienstadt Ghetto

Scope and content

The collection contains among others:

Correspondence of the Red Cross among others concerning the delivery of medicine to Theresienstadt Ghetto, layout of the small fortress and the ghetto, statistics on arrivals and deceased, prisoners lists, transport lists, deportation lists (according to different nationalities), lists of liberated persons, lists of persons who died after the liberation; deaths lists, deaths book, death certificates, file cards of Theresienstadt Ghetto, file cards deported persons from Czechoslovakia 1941 – 1945, saving card of the bank of the Jewish self-administration Theresienstadt, Theresienstadt Memorial Book

History of the Theresienstadt Ghetto 1941-1945:

After the destruction of Czechoslovakia in March 1939 118,000 Jews were living on the territory of the new „Reich Protectorate Bohemia and Moravia“. During the first two years of the occupation some 27,000 of them were able to emigrate or flee. In 1941 the German authorities began deporting. The main destination of the transports was, in addition to the ghettos Minsk and Lódz the north Bohemian fortified town Theresienstadt, enabling a total isolation of the Jewish population. The some 7,000 Christian residents had to leave the city prior to this. As of July 1942 Theresienstadt also became a „ model ghetto“ , an „elders’ ghetto“, as an object of NS propaganda and in the summer of 1944 the stage for a visit of a delegation of the International Red Cross as well as for the propaganda film „Der Führer schenkt den Juden eine Stadt“ (The Führer presents the Jews with a city” – an in-authentic title). Besides prominent figures, artists and scholars, decorated front-line solders of World War I and older Jews from the German Reich were brought to Theresienstadt. Thus they were, at least initially, excluded from the ongoing transports to the extermination camps, which had been taking place since 1942. There were tactical reasons for this, as officially Jews living in the Reich were being sent to the East for „labor duty“; the act of including older people would have been implausible. Jews from other occupied countries were also deported to Theresienstadt. NS propaganda managed to portray Theresienstadt as a decent Jewish city to the end. In truth, the people living there were mercilessly exploited, the horrendous living conditions led to an elevated mortality rate among the ghetto dwellers. In early 1942 the transports to the German occupied territories in the east had begun; there the people were either assigned to other ghettos, were shot, or sent directly to the extermination camps. All in all some 140,000 people passed through the ghetto, from which at the end of the war a mere 19,000 people were liberated. Around 33,500 people died in Theresienstadt; approx. 88,000 others were deported to the extermination camps in the east. Next to it, in the so-called „small fortress“ the Gestapo ran a prison. A total of some 32,000 people, primarily political prisoners from the Protectorate, were incarcerated here under extremely arduous conditions. On 8 May 1945 Theresienstadt was liberated by the Red Army.

Source: Benz, Wolfgang: Theresienstadt, in: Lexikon des Holocaust, ed. by Wolfgang Benz, München 2002, p. 231-232 and http://www.memorialmuseums.org/denkmaeler/view/374/Gedenkstätte-Theresienstadt [Latest access: 2012-08-15].