Terezin Concentration Camp

By Erin Naillon

The Origins of Terezín

Terezín (Theresienstadt, in German) was built as a military fortress on the orders of Emperor Josef II in 1780 – 1790; the name came from his mother, Empress Maria Theresa. Later, it was used as a prison. One well-known prisoner who was incarcerated in Terezín was a teenager named Gavrilo Princip, the rebel who assassinated Archduke Franz Ferdinand and his wife Sophie in 1914, the double murder that led to World War I. Princip spent his last years at Terezín and died there of tuberculosis in 1918, several months before the war he started finally dragged to a halt.

World War II

In 1940, the far-worse World War II had begun, and the Gestapo took over Terezín. The Main Fortress of the compound became a ghetto for the deported Jews of Czechoslovakia. Many of them never left the camp alive; they were crammed by the tens of thousands into an area meant for a maximum of 7,000. Some of the inhabitants were taken to Terezín as a temporary measure, until they could be taken further, to the death machines of Auschwitz, Bergen-Belsen, Ravensbruck, and others.

Red Cross visit and the beautification of Terezin

One of the incredible facts about Terezín is that it was presented to the world as a “model” camp. The Red Cross came to tour the camp, where they saw the inmates as clean and well-dressed, with shops overflowing with all sorts of merchandise. A film was even shot to further the idea that the Jews weren’t suffering under Nazi rule; the fact that they had been forced from their homes and taken to a former prison was not addressed. The rottenness behind the façade was that overcrowding had led to disease, and that the Jews were being used as free labor, when they weren’t being crammed into cattle cars and sent to Poland to feed the gas chambers and crematoria of Auschwitz. After the film was completed, the director and most of the crew members were also sent north to annihilation. Among the tasks assigned to the inmates were coffin-making and sorting through clothing confiscated from Jewish families; the clothing was then sent to civilians who had been left without sufficient clothes after bombing raids.

Culture in Terezín

The camp was international, with the Czech Jews sharing quarters with Jews from Germany, Denmark, Hungary, Luxembourg, the Netherlands and Austria. Surprisingly, Terezín had a lively arts scene, with not just one, but four concert orchestras. The inmates often gave stage performances, even the children. Composer Rafael Schächter was interned in Terezín, and he gave several performances of Verdi’s Requiem before he, too, was sent off to Auschwitz. Another prisoner, Julius Stwertka, who had been a member of the Boston Symphony Orchestra, died in the camp on December 17, 1942. Many of the prisoners composed music during their time in Terezín; these compositions were released on a CD in 1991, under the title Terezín: The Music 1941-1944.

The Children

Approximately 15,000 children were held in Terezín. Friedl Dicker-Brandeis, a Viennese artist, gave drawing classes to them, which resulted in four thousand works by her young pupils. Dicker-Brandeis asked to be sent to Auschwitz to join her husband; she died in Birkenau in 1944. The drawings were put into two suitcases and given to a friend before she left Terezín, and they survived. The works are now on display at the Terezín museum.

Terezín after the War

On May 8, 1945, the Red Army liberated Terezín. In a fascinating twist of fate, the German captors were now the inmates at Terezín, awaiting trial for war crimes. Siegfried Seidl, the first commandant of the camp, had many Jews sent to Auschwitz-Birkenau for “special treatment”, a code term for immediate gassing. Seidl was hanged in Vienna in 1946.
Approximately 140,000 Jews were sent to Terezín during its grim period as a concentration camp. Of these, around 88,000 were sent to Auschwitz. Roughly 33,000 died in Terezín itself, of disease and/or hunger. By the time the war had finally ended, there were 17,247 survivors. Only 93 were children. The rest were gone.

Terezín Today

In 1947, the Terezín Memorial was established to commemorate the victims of Nazism. The camp remains much as it was left after the war. The area where prisoners were once lined up and shot now displays urns containing cremains from various death camps. The sign reading “Arbeit Macht Frei” (“Work Makes You Free”, the same slogan posted over the gates of Auschwitz) still stands. The barracks where prisoners slept on hard wooden bunks are intact. The shower room really is a shower room; a gas chamber was built in the camp but never used. The gallows are still there. Last but far from least, there is the Terezín crematorium, once kept busy with the bodies of those who died in the camp.

Outside the prison/concentration camp, an enormous Star of David stands behind thousands of markers commemorating the victims of Terezín. The dead beneath the markers are unknown, and rather than names, the stones bear numbers. A former school in the town was turned into the Ghetto Museum in 1991, showing many artworks created by the children of Terezín. Several survivors of the camp helped to create the museum. The museum and both fortresses are open to the public; be warned that some of the photographs in the former prison are very graphic.