CZECHOSLOVAKIA THERESEIENSTADT COMPLETE SET 7 NOTES 1943 JEWISH CAMP AND GHETTO

Description

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Theresienstadt
(
Czech
:
Terezín
Czech:
[ˈtɛrɛziːn]
(
listen
)
) was a hybrid
concentration camp
and
ghetto
established by the
SS
during
World War II
in the fortress town of
Terezín
, located in the
Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia
(a
German-occupied
region of
Czechoslovakia
). Theresienstadt served two main purposes: it was simultaneously a waystation to the
extermination camps
, and a "retirement settlement" for elderly and prominent Jews to mislead their communities about the
Final Solution
. 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.
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 Jewish Council's (Judenrat) role in choosing those to be deported has attracted significant controversy. Including 4,000 of the deportees who survived, the total number of survivors was around 23,000.
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.