Theresienstadt Ghetto
Theresienstadt Ghetto was established by the SS during World War II in the fortress town of Terezín, in the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia (German-occupied Czechoslovakia). Theresienstadt served as a waystation to the extermination camps. Its conditions were deliberately engineered to hasten the death of its prisoners, and the ghetto also served a propaganda role. Unlike other ghettos, the exploitation of forced labor was not economically significant.
"Theresienstadt" redirects here. For other uses, see Theresienstadt (disambiguation).Theresienstadt Ghetto
Cultural life; exploitation in Nazi propaganda
24 November 1941 – 8 May 1945
Jews
144,000
33,000 at Theresienstadt
88,000 deported to extermination camps
The ghetto was established by the transportation of Czech Jews in November 1941. The first German and Austrian Jews arrived in June 1942; Dutch and Danish Jews came at the beginning in 1943, and prisoners of a wide variety of nationalities were sent to Theresienstadt in the last months of the war. About 33,000 people died at Theresienstadt, mostly from malnutrition and disease. More than 88,000 people were held there for months or years before being deported to extermination camps and other killing sites; the role of the Jewish Council (Judenrat) in choosing those to be deported has attracted significant controversy. The total number of survivors was around 23,000, including 4,000 deportees who survived.
Theresienstadt was known for its relatively rich cultural life, including concerts, lectures, and clandestine education for children. The fact that it was governed by a Jewish self-administration as well as the large number of "prominent" Jews imprisoned there facilitated the flourishing of cultural life. This spiritual legacy has attracted the attention of scholars and sparked interest in the ghetto. In the postwar period, a few of the SS perpetrators and Czech guards were put on trial, but the ghetto was generally forgotten by the Soviet authorities. The Terezín Ghetto Museum is visited by 250,000 people each year.
Command and control authority[edit]
Theresienstadt was a hybrid of ghetto and concentration camp, with features of both.[72] It was established by order of the RSHA in 1941 and, unlike other concentration camps, was not administered by the SS Main Economic and Administrative Office. Instead, the SS commandant reported to Hans Günther, the director of the Central Office for Jewish Emigration in Prague, whose superior was Adolf Eichmann. Theresienstadt also fell under the command of SS and Police Leader Karl Hermann Frank, the chief of police in the Protectorate, as it was classified as a SS-and-police-run camp. The SS commandant was in charge of some 28 SS men, 12 civilian employees, the Czech gendarmes who guarded the ghetto, and the Jewish self-administration. The first commandant was Siegfried Seidl, who was replaced by Anton Burger on 3 July 1943. Burger was reassigned and replaced by Karl Rahm in January 1944; Rahm governed the ghetto until the SS fled on 5 May 1945. All of the SS commandants were assigned to Theresienstadt with the rank SS-Obersturmführer.[73]
The ghetto was guarded by 150–170[73] Czech gendarmes at one time. The guards, who often smuggled letters and food in return for bribes,[74] were frequently rotated to avoid contacts developing between guards and prisoners.[73] Fourteen of the guards were imprisoned at the Small Fortress for helping or contacting Jews; two died as a result of their imprisonment.[75] The first gendarme commander,[73] Theodor Janeček, was a "rabid antisemite" whose behavior "sometimes surpass[ed] the SS in cruelty", according to Israeli historian Livia Rothkirchen.[76] Janeček was replaced by Miroslaus Hasenkopf on 1 September 1943.[73] The Ghetto Guard, a police force made up of Jewish prisoners, was formed on 6 December 1941 and reported to the Jewish self-administration. It was reconstituted several times and comprised 420 men at its peak in February 1943.[77]
Postwar trials[edit]
Czechoslovak authorities prosecuted several SS members who had served at Theresienstadt, including all three commandants. Seidl and Rahm were both tried, convicted, and executed for their crimes, Seidl in Austria and Rahm in Czechoslovakia. Convicted in absentia and sentenced to death, Burger managed to evade arrest and lived under a false name in West Germany until his death in 1991. The Czech gendarme commander, Theodor Janeček, died in prison in 1946 while awaiting trial. A Czech court in Litoměřice found a perimeter guard, Miroslaus Hasenkopf, guilty of treason and sentenced him to 15 years imprisonment; he died in prison in 1951.[62]