The Terezin Concentration Camp and How Libraries Impact History

Louise S. Johnson Simmons College

Prague 2010 Summer Course

Sponsored by the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

Professor Barbara Wildemuth

June 16, 2011

Introduction

In the summer of 2010 I traveled to the Czech Republic with a group of librarians and graduate students to study a variety of library institutions. We attended lectures at the public and the university libraries in Prague, we visited small towns and toured the libraries there, we viewed many large and small archives, and had access to castle libraries and private libraries in monasteries. We spent time with a number of the leading librarians in the country and were privileged to speak with the staff of many different kinds of institutions that served to preserve present and past materials and to provide organized access to Czech citizens and their visitors who want to study about a specific subject or time.

During this trip a small group of us went to the Terezin Concentration Camp (Theresienstadt in

German) and listened in on a tour group from the United States (Boston area) that included some survivors of the camp. What could have been a somber, but somewhat mysterious tour of an empty concentration camp came alive as these survivors told of their day-to-day lives during this period. It became clear to me that not only is the physical and written history that libraries, museums and archives provide important in learning about our past, but the narratives and one- to-one conversations need to also be a part of our library experience.

Upon my return I sought out the group Facing History and Ourselves that was started 35 years ago in my hometown of Brookline, Massachusetts as a project to educate youth about the holocaust. Their mission, which has evolved, is to link the past and the present together,

2 specifically around moral issues facing human beings when confronting such events as the

holocaust, the Rwandan genocide or the civil rights movement in the United States. They do this

by study and dialogue with those who lived through these times and those who are growing up

and will possibly face similar events and decisions in their lifetimes. The choices that we make

as an individual do have an impact with what happens to the lives of others. Facing History and

Ourselves has created, over the last 35 years, an international organization and series of libraries to keep this aspect of our human history alive so that we may strive to be citizens of the world that work to eradicate genocide and injustice from our lives.

History of Terezin

The Terezin Concentration Camp began its history as a fortress built in the 1780s. Constructed

on the orders of Emperor Joseph II of Austria; it was to be part of a defense system for the

empire that was never fully realized (Chladkova, 1995). The small fortress (Kleine Festung) was the prison and the main fortress was a walled garrison town, and was named for the Emperor’s mother, Theresa (Theresienstadt in German or Terezin in Czech). In the 1800s, up until World

War II, the small prison was used to house a select number of prisoners; mostly those convicted of military or political crimes. The larger fortress became a sort of military base consisting of large brick office style buildings surrounding a town square and a warren of smaller streets tightly packed with worker’s cottages.

With the Nazi invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1939 there was a need on the part of the conquerors to house many political prisoners. The small fortress was taken over by the Nazis and used for the duration of the war as a prison/ torture chamber known for horrendous conditions and as a place were almost no one emerged alive once seen going through its gates. The larger fortress/

3 town (Grosse Festung) became a bizarre Nazi propaganda fantasy world whose legacy lives on to

this day.

Towards the end of November 1941 the town of Terezin was taken by the Nazis to be used as a

processing center and work camp. By early 1942 the non-Jewish inhabitants of Terezin had been

removed and the “town” was now exclusively Jewish with Nazi overseers. The vast majority of

Jews from Czechoslovakia (approximately 80,000) were forcibly removed to Terezin along with others who came from other parts of occupied Europe (Karny, 1996 and Volavkova, 1993).

The work done by Jews interned at Terezin involved reprocessing clothes (in particular,

underwear) that had been confiscated from other Jews as they were sent to the death camps. This

clothing was sorted and packaged into bundles that were then sent to Germans in need of

clothing due to the shortages resulting from the war. Other work performed at Terezin was the

splitting of locally-mined mica to be used in the war effort, building coffins, boxes and spraying

military uniforms white, for camouflage purposes, so that they might be used during the winter

fighting at the Russian front (Chladkova, 1995).

In the early 1940s many Jews saw Terezin as the lesser of two evils. When faced with

deportation, many Jews agreed to sign their assets over to the Third Reich in exchange for the

whole family being allowed to stay together and be sent together to Terezin. There was a

perception that within this walled city the Jewish population might have a chance of surviving

the war. Jewish Elders administered the town under the direction of the Nazis. A system of

bargaining by the Council of Jewish Elders with the Nazis was established to supply labor and

4 produce goods in exchange for the lives of the Jewish inhabitants of Terezin (Chladkova, 1995).

However, the terms of this Faustian bargain were constantly altered as the Nazis’ real motive for the camp was to have a temporary holding facility until all the inhabitants could be sent to the gas chambers of Auschwitz or die of “natural causes.” “Vernichtung durch Aussiedlung”

(annihilation through evacuation) was a term coined by the Nazis that expressed well what

“natural causes” really meant. The trials and indignities endured by the Jews before they even

got to the relocation camps hastened the deaths of many thousands of people (Karny, 1996).

By the mid 1930s many of the racial segregation laws had been implemented in Germany and as

the Nazi influence expanded over Europe these same policies were quickly implemented in the

captured countries, including in the Czech Republic. Jews were not allowed to practice law,

medicine and many other professional careers. They were banned from socializing with non-

Jews. There was a curfew, which could result in imprisonment by the Gestapo and/or death if one was found on the streets after dark. Jews were not allowed to own businesses and had to sell them at “bargain prices” to Germans (Aryans) that wanted buy. The Nazis limited how and where Jewish people could live, most were forced to leave their homes to live in designated areas or to sign over their homes to their non-Jewish employees. Certain foods were not to be sold to

Jews and other items were off limits as well (Karny, 1996). Many of these policies were designed to demoralize, isolate, and create a sense of second-class status for Jews as the Nazis tightened the noose towards the coming genocide. Those non-Jews that expressed anger at the policies or solidarity with their Jewish friends or family found themselves in the same boat or worse as the Nazi made sure that the annihilation would be all encompassing.

5 The genocide would take time to accomplish, as it involved a total transformation of German

society and the conquered countries. There was also labor that was needed to supply the war

effort. Terezin was to serve both of these evil policies and the Nazis created a management

structure that allowed this strategy to flourish. There were privileges for some of the Jews, with

regards to work and living arrangements, such as better food rations, less crowded living quarters

and a choice of who was allowed to stay versus who would be deported farther east to the death

camps that were given in exchange for their cooperation with the Nazis (Massachusetts College

of Art, 1991).

There was a perception that to be sent to Terezin was far better than to be on the transports to the

east, the figures are grim and speak for themselves. After three years and a total of 87,000

people sent east on the transports leaving from Terezin, only 3,000 of those people were to

survive the war (Chladkova, 1995). Terezin bought people a small amount of time before they were eventually murdered.

The Nazis fostered the notion that Terezin was; either a sort of “old age home” or a “family style community” as it helped them to get people to sign over (to the Third Reich) their worldly possessions relatively quietly, many being unaware of the deception until they walked through the gates of Camp Terezin (Chladkova, 1995). As those Jews with influence and assets bought their way into the camp, the Germans began to realize that they were accumulating a wealth of intellectual and artistic talent in one small town. Heinrich Himmler, in particular, would use this accidental grouping to further his own twisted agenda in the years to come.

6 On the part of the Jewish inhabitants of Terezin two main philosophies began to unfold: First

was to save and educate the children at all costs. The children’s barracks were staffed by Jewish

teachers, artists and musicians who gave their knowledge and encouraged the children to learn.

Plays were written and operas were produced. Diaries and newspapers were surreptitiously produced in the camp and distributed amongst the inhabitants. The best food was saved for the children. All of these activities were done at great personal risk, as to be caught stealing paper or writing an article was almost certainly a one-way trip to the Kleine Festung (small fortress.) and a painful death (Massachusetts College of Art, 1991).

The second mission of the Jewish Council was to create the best possible intellectual atmosphere for the adults that lived at Terezin (Chladkova, 1995). Many artists, musicians, scientists and

professors had been gathered in one small place, at first unintentionally and later by design, on

the part of the Nazis. The town originally designed to house about 5,000 people, was at times

during the war, home to upwards of 55,000. Over 33,000 people died within Terezin as a result

of the horrendous living conditions and punishments meted out by the Nazis (Chladkova, 1995).

Severe overcrowding, unsanitary conditions and food shortages caused much disease and death.

In an effort to keep their spirits from sinking into despair, the Jewish residents created a system

of lectures, discussions, performances and all manners of intellectual activity. The creative and

intellectual talent of the many people who wound up at Terezin was the basis for a community

that set about to try and survive what was happening to them. They bargained with the Nazis

over who was to be deported to the “east” in the almost daily transports and fought against the

hopelessness of their situation with the little that they had left: their minds and their culture

(Chladkova, 1995).

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On the part of the Nazis, complete genocide and profit were initially the main factors in their decisions regarding Terezin. With extreme meticulousness they calculated how to employ

“Vernichtung durch Arbeit” (liquidation through work). The meager food rations and overcrowding along with arduous work weeded out all but the strongest. As streams of Jews were uprooted from their homes and sent to Terezin, transports to the “east” (Auschwitz,

Ravensbruck, Baden-Baden etc.) had to be increased to stem such overcrowding that the diseases within the camp were spread to the neighboring villages. Though the Nazis never wavered in their mission of genocide, by 1942 Himmler was in the process of trying to make international contacts and create a split among the allies to strengthen the Nazi effort at world domination

(Karny, 1996). The Jewish genocide was leaking out to the international community and was becoming an obstacle to Himmler’s secret talks. In addition, 456 Danish Jews were sent to

Terezin in 1943 and the Danish government raised a tremendous row, demanding to have the

Red Cross visit the camp and verify that their people were not being mistreated (Karny, 1996).

Unable to completely ignore the growing international outcry, Himmler decided to use Terezin

to create a “model Jewish community.” He used the people of the ghetto, building on the rich

cultural life and protection of the children that had been created by the prisoners, to show the

world that the Third Reich was taking good care of the Jews by setting up a model community

just for them. From the end of 1943 through 1944, an elaborate hoax was created by the Nazis to

show the International Red Cross, the US War Refugee Board and a number of other

humanitarian organizations that there was no mass extermination of the Jews in Europe and in

8 fact they were being well taken care of by their Nazi benefactors (Karny, 1996 and

Massachusetts College of Art, 1991 and Chladkova, 1995).

Terezin became the showpiece for this scheme and sections of the place were transformed to

portray this fantasy. The barbed wire that ringed the town square was removed, benches were

installed and a park atmosphere was recreated. Buildings were cleaned; the barracks that were

filled with bunk beds consisting of wooden slats were converted to beds. Small apartments were

created for couples and families. People were allowed to cultivate small garden plots to grow

food for themselves. Cafes were created and items like coffee and pastries were made available temporarily. People were selected and given larger food rations that they might gain weight and

not look like they are being starved to death (which was the reality). The Nazis, who could use

these activities for their own benefit, now encouraged the concerts and lectures that had been

surreptitiously created by the Jewish inhabitants (Karny, 1996). Throughout this beautification

process the Nazis maintained strict control and those unwilling or unable to look and play the

part of happy and healthy Jewish settlers in this new town were removed and gassed at the

concentration camps. Ironically, the overcrowding and continuous influx of new refugees to

Terezin, throughout this hoax meant that the Nazis had to increase their transports to Auschwitz

to keep the population at an acceptable level for the town to look presentable.

Along the same line of thought, Himmler realized that a propaganda film could add an enormous

benefit to his efforts to portray the Nazis as saviors of the Jews and quell the rising tide of horror

at the tales of what was happening to the Jewish community inside the Third Reich. It was

decided that a large-scale production showing the improvements to the town of Terezin would be

9 documented and the people would be filmed enjoying their new lives (Karny, 1996). People

were selected who “looked Jewish,” appeared healthy and played along at being happy and content in fake scenes of living a wonderful life under Nazi rule. Scenes such as young children

watching a soccer game and the elderly attending a concert were filmed for this production,

Terezin: A Documentary Film of the Jewish Resettlement. Filming began in February of 1944

and after its completion in October, almost all of the cast, including the director, Kurt Gerron,

were sent to Auschwitz and into the gas chambers (Massachusetts College of Art, 1991). A few

sections of the film survived the war however, it was never released to be viewed by either the

international audience or the German people partly because the war was coming to an end by this

time and things were in disarray, and partly because the film revealed some ironic contradictions

that got it mired down in the Nazi bureaucracy. When viewing the snippets of film that survived,

one sees many scenes of thoughtful, intellectual, healthy, beautiful and vibrant Jewish people, no

small problem when the Nazis had spent the previous two decades telling the Germans that the

Jews were evil, sub-human beings that must be exterminated.

A visit by the International Red Cross did take place in June 1944 and was a successful coup on the part of the Nazis. The opera “Brundibar” (Bumble Bee) had been written by Jewish composer Hans Krasa and performed by the children of the camp for the Nazis and Red Cross during this occasion. Through a rigid tour of the camp to specific sites that had been prepared in advance and a willingness on the part of the Red Cross to take the information at face value without further research, Terezin was declared by the Danish and Swiss members to be completely acceptable in their treatment of Jews interned at the camp (Massachusetts College of

Art).

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It was in April 1945 that the Nazi guards fled the area as the allies advanced. Those survivors of

Terezin became witnesses to returning survivors of Auschwitz and the other concentration camps as many were sent or came back to the area trying to find relatives at the place they were last seen alive. In the months after liberation thousands died in Terezin became as it became overwhelmed with desperately sick and shell-shocked people. Though the people flooded in,

Terezin had essentially no medical facilities or resources to cope with such devastation.

Terezin Today

When visiting Terezin today it is difficult to imagine the terror that once reigned throughout the

area. The gates to the Kleine Festung (small fortress) bear that famous Nazi inscription “Arbeit

Macht Frei” (work is freedom) and loom overhead as one enters the complex. The grounds are

manicured and the various rooms are devoid of everything but a few wooden bunk bed structures

and a falling apart latrine area. It was here that political prisoners were kept before the Nazi

occupation, the most famous being the assassin of Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria and his

wife, Gavrilo Princip. The prisoner’s area is a series of one story buildings in long rows that

house 8 by 10 feet cells with heavy wooden doors and small barred windows. In the adjacent area there are the guard’s barracks, large two story buildings surrounded by tree lined streets

giving the area a gracious almost “well-to-do sanatorium” appearance. A group of small buildings nearby were the commissary and dining commons area during the time it was a fort.

When the Germans took control in June of 1940, the prison area was filled to the bursting point with Jewish prisoners and other “undesirables.” The barracks that the Czech guards had occupied were converted to housing for the officers of the Third Reich and their families. A remnant of a swimming pool can be seen today that was built by prisoners for the use of the Nazi

11 occupiers. Though the sense of a prison exists today, merely visiting the grounds cannot convey

the extreme conditions and the political turmoil of what this prison became during World War II.

It is through the guided tours that the events of World War II are retold and made to come alive.

The words of the tour guides and also, of the survivors who revisit the camp with groups of

people, help to keep the memory of this time alive. The small barracks that was crammed full of

so many people it was impossible for one to lie down to sleep, the showers that operated in the

winter essentially outdoors and where the prisoners could wash themselves and their clothes but

had to put them back on wet, the row of gleaming white porcelain sinks that were installed for

the Red Cross inspection but never hooked up, the grounds just outside the walls of the fortress

that were used to execute prisoners on a daily basis, are all part of the collective memory of those

who lived it and survived. It is in the memories of this group of people who speak of the horrors they witnessed, that we are able to grasp what was done.

A similar story can be told of the town that became the concentration camp. To visit the site today is to see a large green town square after walking down the road from the fortress for about

2 miles. This was also the same road, which the newly arrived had to walk with their belongings in hand, as the train dropped them at the station next to the prison (Volavkova, 1993).

Ringing the town square are buildings much like one would see in any Czech mid-sized town.

Two story yellow limestone- like-color buildings are long with oversized windows and give the area a peaceful yet austere look. On the front of the buildings are the numbers that were given to each of the barracks that housed the Jewish deportees. The children’s barracks was a large building right off to the side of the square. Radiating out of the square were smaller streets that

12 contained workshops, stores and more housing for a population that numbered upwards of 50,

000, during the war, in a space that had a town with a population of 7,000 before the war. Again

this is hard to envision when walking through Terezin, 65 years after the end of World War II.

It is through the guide’s eyewitness account that one can see the barbed wire surrounding the town green, forbidding access to everyone but those that the Nazis allowed. There were the sights of people dying in the streets, collapsing from hunger and disease as others swarmed around and past them. There were the transports that had to be filled and the selection process overseen by the black booted soldiers who dragged off hundreds of people at a time for shipment to “the east.” There were the lectures and performances attended by a population who was being systematically destroyed bit by bit as their Nazi tormentors engineered this macabre world.

Children were the most heart-wrenching victims of this drama. Most did not survive, as they were sent to Auschwitz along-side their parents. But the Jewish community labored mightily to give the children the best food and provide for their education, and hope that they might have a future in the midst of this Dante’s Inferno.

It is not surprising that the town never recovered from this twist of fate that made it a concentration camp village. After the war none of the 7,000 or so residents that had called

Terezin home before the war chose to resettle elsewhere and today the town stands as an empty monument to victims of the holocaust.

The history that one sees when confronted with the physical space of Terezin is eerie when standing on the grounds but it is the collection of information from eye witnesses and those who

13 study that era and the dissemination of that information to the generations that come later that

keeps the history alive and helps us to learn from the past.

Facing History and Ourselves

The Facing History and Ourselves project and library is an international organization that started

in 1976. According to Eva Radding, the staff librarian, a middle school teacher in the Brookline,

Massachusetts’ schools was dismayed that the history and lessons of the holocaust were not

being taught in the public schools. She started a small curriculum to train teachers and provide

materials. From that small beginning grew what is now an international organization with offices and libraries in Brookline, San Francisco, Chicago, Memphis, Toronto and London to name some of the cities. From this small space Facing History and Ourselves has grown into an organization that involves over 1.7 million students and a network of 29,000 educators on an annual basis (Facing History and Ourselves, http://www.facinghistory.org/ ). They provide

curriculum packages that speak to the holocaust but also cover issues around genocide and injustice in many countries from Darfur, the Armenian Genocide, South Africa and the American

South at the time of civil rights movement. The organization and library partner with schools, to provide training for teachers who then take the programs developed at Facing History and

Ourselves for use in their own classrooms. There are multiple copies of particular books available that teachers may borrow for the entire class when presenting a particular unit.

Curriculums have been developed that teachers may take for their classes and guest speakers attend these classes or present at forums to recount their experiences as holocaust survivors along with others who have lived through times of great social repression and upheaval.

14 The students are encouraged to explore the history of a particular event or historical period and

to immerse themselves and their fellow students in the hard question of what lies behind these atrocities. They are simultaneously looking at history and the response of nations and individuals at the time, while asking what kind of a role do we play in the events of today’s moral dilemmas and how will history judge us.

Once a teacher has participated in the training that is offered by the organization they have access to all the materials and technical support from the center. Community people will go to the schools, talk with students and create dialogue across groups to help keep the history of these events alive in people’s memories. Their mission is to understand and work to prevent future holocausts and to look at the individual response to an issue and how one person can make a difference.

The materials that the library has on Terezin consist of a number of eyewitness accounts and the never distributed Nazi Propaganda movie made in 1944. I was able to watch it at their library, as they had a full video set up. There are computer stations that are accessible to those using the facilities at the office for classroom projects and research. It is a small but well laid out office

space and library, while they do say that they are not formally an archive, they do have select and

relevant materials about historical and current events that are of concern to the humanitarian

community.

What is very striking when visiting the Brookline library facility, which is the headquarters of the organization, are the photos and text lining the walls of the conference space that lies within

15 the confines of a local Catholic Church and school complex. Students and adults are pictured engaged in dialogue from past seminars and classes on topics ranging from the holocaust to

Darfur to the Armenian Genocide. History is coming alive with the intergenerational aspect of these classes and the curriculum that is presented. In speaking with Eva Radding, librarian and

Kate Boylan, librarian assistant (both graduates from Simmons College, Graduate School of

Library and Information Science, GSLIS program) they view a large part of their work as providing access across class, cultural and age divisions and speaking of horror and tremendous suffering in a way that will cause individuals to question and work to prevent such things from happening in the future.

Why is it so important to have a library and center that focuses on these painful events, recreating the horror through documentary materials as well as personal accounts? There is a wealth of information written and volumes of audio/visual materials that exist documenting the

United States Civil Rights Struggles, the events in Rwanda, the holocaust and numerous other atrocities. But without a framework to look at these events and without a community to process

“where do we go from here” our knowledge of the history becomes limited. This framework becomes our personal knowledge base from which we can wonder how these terrors can happen to ordinary citizens and how just such ordinary citizens can become terrorizers. We need the mission of a library such as this one that casts a wide net, bringing together a whole community in study and discussion so that we may come to understand the dynamics that can produce a holocaust.

16 This specialized library, that originally focused on the holocaust, is based a long distance from the actual site where these events took place. Though today the Internet has made the world seem much smaller than ever before, this was not reality back in 1976. However, there has always been a need to look at our own communities with a critical eye, to question whether we are choosing to create or continue an oppression or whether we shall stand up against it and how can that be done. When we visit the site of where an atrocity took place, such as Terezin, we can see some of the pieces of the history but it is through people who were there, that we are able to grasp the feelings and reasoning of our history. It becomes important to spread these lessons throughout the world, as almost everywhere there are people there has been a dynamic of good versus evil and oppressed versus oppressor, both on a global scale, such as the holocaust and on one to one, such as bullying. The visit to Terezin came alive for me as we met and walked with a group of survivors and visitors who were on a tour of the camp and talking about the camp as they remembered it. Coming back to Boston, visiting the library in Brookline, speaking with the librarians, using their materials and learning about the work that they are doing also brought the experience to life. These two experiences, almost 4,000 miles apart are linked together and each has an important role to play when delving into the past as we face the future.

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References

Berkley, G. (1993). Hitler’s gift: The story of theresienstadt . Boston, MA: Branden Publishing Company

Brenner, H. (2009). The girls of room 28: Friendship, hope, and survival in theresienstadt . New York, NY: Schocken Books

Chladkova, K. (1995). The terezin ghetto . Prague, Czech Republic: Nase vojsko Publishing House

Gruenbaum, T. (2004). Nesarim: Child survivors of terezin . London, England: Vallentine Mitchell

Karny, M. (1996). Terezin Memorial Book: A guide to the czech original with a glossary of czech terms used in the lists . Prague, Czech Republic: Melantrich Publishing House

Krinitz, E. and Steinhardt, B. (2005). Stories of survival . New York, NY: Hyperion Books for Children

Krizkwa, K. and Kotouc, K. and Ornest, Z. (1995). We are children just the same: Vedem, the secret magazine by the boys of terezin . Prague, Czech Republic: Aventunum Nakladatelstvi

Manes, P. (2009). As if it were life: A WW II diary from the theresienstadt ghetto . New York, NY: Palgrave Macmillan (English Translation)

Organized by the Massachusetts College of Art (1991). Seeing through “paradise”: Artists and the terezin concentration camp . Boston, MA: Massachusetts College of Art

Rubin, S. and Weissberger E. (2006). The cat with the yellow star: Coming of age in terezin . New York, NY: Holiday House

Schwertfeger, R. (1989). Women of theresienstadt . Oxford, UK: Berg Publishers Limited

Thomson, R. (2011). Terzin: Voices from the holocaust . Somerville, MA: Candlewick Press

Troller, N. (1991). Theresienstadt: Hitler’s gift to the jews . Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press

18 Volavkova, H. (1993) …I never saw another butterfly: Children’s drawings and poems from terezin concentration camp 1942-1944 . New York, NY: Schocken Books

From the website of the Terezin Music Foundation . Retrieved from http://www.terezinmusic.org/terezin/history/ (short history of Terezin)

From the website of Facing History and Ourselves. Retrieved from http://www.facinghistory.org/

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