Its policy was to maintain strict neutrality and avoid interfering with Nazi racial persecution, which was viewed as a German internal matter. In Theresienstadt, Kien continued his artwork, sketching many of his fellow inmates, and also immersed himself in musical and theatrical activities. Kurt Gerron, an inmate who had been a well-known actor and director, was put in charge of the filming of The Fhrer Gives a City to the Jews, but he was not allowed to edit the film or even view the developed footage. On 10 October 1941 Heydrich identified Theresienstadt as the desired Jewish settlement for German, Austrian and Czech Jews over the age of 65, First World War [38], Rossel's report has been described as "emblematic of the failure of the ICRC" to advocate for Jews during the Holocaust. On 24 November 1941, the first Jewish prisoners arrived in Theresienstadt. This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google, Our headquarters are located in Boston, Massachusetts, Spanish Translations from Holocaust and Human Behavior, The Weimar Republic: The Fragility of Democracy, Conformity and Consent in the National Community, The Difference between Knowing and Believing, Facades for the International Commission by Bedich Fritta. He died in the ghetto just three months later on 8 January 1943, at the age of 64. The ICRC had access to independent information describing murders in the camps. Courtesy of The Wiener Holocaust Library Collections. [6], Theresienstadt was a hybrid concentration camp and ghetto established by the SS in November 1941 in the fortress town Terezn, located in the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia (German-occupied Czech lands). Despite the facade, Terezn was no paradise. Krn and Israeli historian Otto Dov Kulka draw a direct connection between the report and the liquidation of the family camp in July, in which 6,500 people were murdered. Give my regards to my children if fate should decide against us. [56][f] Following the visit, Lehner and Dunant dined at Czernin Palace in Prague with Eichmann; Karl Hermann Frank, Higher SS and Police Leader for the Protectorate; and Erwin Weinmann[de; fr; ru; sv], head of the SD in Prague. faade Of the 140,000 prisoners who were imprisoned there during its existence, 33,000 perished at the ghetto due to Terezin concentration camp The Wiener Holocaust Library. Theresienstadt was a ghetto and concentration camp 30 miles north of Prague. It was used to explain the deportation of elderly Jews from Germany, since it was implausible to suggest that they were being deported to complete forced labour due to their frail state and age. It was used as a temporary holding place for Jews on their way to camps further east. Whatimpact did Terezn have on those who saw and heard about it. [25], In February 1944,[26] the SS embarked on a "beautification" (German: Verschnerung) campaign in order to prepare the ghetto for the Red Cross visit. Carl Jacob Burckhardt, an ICRC official who made most of the key decisions regarding Nazi Germany, stated in a September 1935 meeting that it was "dangerous to occupy oneself" with the concentration camps; he was certain that such visits would be exploited by the Nazis for propaganda purposes. Partly for this reason, Terezn had an unusual number of cultural activities for adults and children; some artwork and music created there survived the war. As well as poets and writers, there were also a number of artists imprisoned in Theresienstadt, such as Peter Kien. He documented his experience in great detail in several notebooks, as well as organising a regular lecture series of over 500 talks. Two weeks after the movie was completed, he and other participants were sent to Auschwitz. As the Allied forces closed in, the Nazis began to empty ghettos and camps in Eastern Europe and send prisoners on Actors also performed several plays, such as Faust by Goethe. Whydid the Nazis want to create a model ghetto-camp? On a visit to Denmark in November 1943, Eichmann promised that Danish representatives that they would be allowed to visit in the spring of 1944. Nobody thought of new transports. They seemed to form a positive impression of the camp, so the ruse was successful. On 23 June 1944 the International Red Cross sent a delegation to inspect the Theresienstadt concentration camp (often referred to as Terezin). [27][28] As part of the preparations, 7,503 people were sent to the Theresienstadt family camp at Auschwitz in May 1944; the transports targeted sick, elderly, and disabled people who had no place in the ideal Jewish settlement. , or well-known cultural or political figures. [15] In order to avoid the parcels being siphoned off by the SS, the ICRC was only allowed to send them to named recipients. Here and there one looks up and lets a longing glance slide along the rows of houses, eyes so sad, desperate. veterans Red Cross This illustration by Bedich Fritta, a prisoner at Terezn, depicts the beautification of the ghetto-camp undertaken by the SS before the Red Cross visit in 1944. More than 150,000 Jews were detained there during this time. In order to ensure the Red Cross reported positively on Theresienstadt, the Nazis attempted to mask the true conditions there by presenting it as a model ghetto. Dunant was allowed to speak to Benjamin Murmelstein,[51] who had become Jewish elder after Eppstein was shot by the SS at the nearby Theresienstadt Small Fortress in September 1944. This poem, entitled Transport to Theresienstadt, was written by dancer and poet Grete Salus following her incarceration in Theresienstadt between 1942 and 1944. [61] More generally, Rothkirchen writes that the fate suffered by the prisoners of the ghetto "can be considered the touchstone of the negative role of the ICRC during World War II". The Nazis also deported 7,500 young men and women to Auschwitz to make the camp less crowded and to substantiate their claim that it was a ghetto for old people. Kurt Gerron was a Jewish film director from Germany. "[50] Rabbi Leo Baeck, a spiritual leader at Theresienstadt, stated that "The effect [of the Red Cross visit] on our morale was devastating. In 1944, in response to pressure from Denmark after the deportation of Danish Jews to Terezn, the Nazis invited the Danish Red Cross, the Danish foreign minister, and the International Red Cross to inspect the camp. This film was entitled Theresienstadt: A Documentary Film from the Jewish Settlement Area but became unofficially referred to asThe Fhrer Gives a City to the Jews. Learning from genocide for a better future. [17] Hartmann leaked his impressions to ICRC official Andr de Pilar, who in turn reported them to the ICRC in Geneva and to Gerhart Riegner, secretary of the World Jewish Congress in Geneva, directly in July 1943. [12] The DRK claimed that there was sufficient food and supplies at Theresienstadt, and Red Cross parcels were therefore unnecessary. The Nazified German Red Cross visited the ghetto in 1943 and filed the only accurate report on the ghetto, describing overcrowding and undernourishment. Another prisoner who contributed to Manes Theresienstadt diaries was Hedwig Brahn. This post-war report of Theresienstadt compiles figures from the ghetto. As part of the Theresienstadt Ghetto had served as a prison previously, the Gestapo quickly re-established their own prison in the small fortress on 10 June 1940. Dunant was more cautious in his report, stating that, "The idea of the Reich government in establishing Theresienstadt was to create a Jewish community to be run by its self-government, which would serve as a practical experiment on a small scale, for the future Jewish state to which a certain strip of land should be allotted after the war. The prisoners who had met the Red Cross were deported in attempts to remove any evidence of the lie. This pay was credited to a fake bank account and no money was received. This savings book, issued by the self-administered Jewish bank of Theresienstadt, belonged to Max Hirschfeld. [42] Lehner viewed the Nazi propaganda film Theresienstadt,[51] which had been filmed at the ghetto before the deportations in fall 1944. Pleased with their success, the Nazis decided to create a documentary-style film about Terezn in summer 1944. [7] On several occasions, the DRK hindered the efforts by the ICRC to help the victims of Nazi persecution. This event received international media coverage, and the released prisoners stated that the previous ICRC visit had been staged. [16], Burckhardt pressured the DRK into visiting Theresienstadt in order to elucidate whether the ghetto was a final destination for Jewish prisoners or a transit point to locations further east. During World War II, the Theresienstadt concentration camp was used by the Nazi SS (German: Schutzstaffel) as a "model ghetto"[1] for fooling Red Cross representatives about the ongoing Holocaust and the Nazi plan to murder all Jews. Whilst incarcerated, Manes was key to the cultural life in Theresienstadt. From the time the Nazis assumed power in Germany, they used propaganda, persecution, and legislation to deny human and civil rights to German Jews. [2] The ICRC considered its primary focus to be prisoners of war whose countries had signed the 1929 Geneva Convention,[3] which did not cover civilians. [37], The commission that visited on June 23, 1944, included Maurice Rossel, a representative of the ICRC; E. Juel-Henningsen, the head physician at the Danish Ministry of Health; and Franz Hvass, the top civil servant at the Danish Foreign Ministry. We felt forgotten and forsaken. There exists a kind of elite communism, which is strongly reflected in the overall structure. Theresienstadt was intended to serve as both a holding site for Jews on their way to The existence of this currency also added to the faade presented to the Red Cross during their visit to the camp in 1943, to make life in the camp resemble normalcy. , Theresienstadt was distinctly so. Before the visitors arrived, prisoners were ordered to pave streets, repair housing, build a playground, and even plant 1,200 rosebushes. After directing the film, Gerron, and many of the prisoners featured in it, were deported to Auschwitz and murdered. In preparation for the inspection, the Nazis deported 7,503 Jewish people to Auschwitz between 16 18 May 1944, to make the ghetto appear less overcrowded. Learn about the people of Denmarks collective effort to hide and rescue Jews from deportation during the Holocaust(Spanish available). The ghetto was overcrowded, with between 40,000-50,000 people crammed into the living quarters. 2022 Holocaust Memorial Day Trust. The visit was scheduled for the 23 June 1944. According to one of the surviving children in this photo, Paul Rabinowitsch (19302009) from Denmark, third from left, the date the photo was taken was the only day he was allowed to eat his fill while imprisoned at Theresienstadt. The former elder of the Jews, Dr. Eppstein, was transferred to the East six months ago. [b] Leo Janowitz, a member of the Theresienstadt self-administration, had been on the first transport to the family camp in September 1943. Whilst incarcerated, Manes kept a detailed account of life in the ghetto in several diaries. Conditions for prisoners held inside Theresienstadt were very poor. Rothkirchen points out that most Jews were murdered upon their arrival at Auschwitz, and the camp had already been liberated. The delegation visited on 23 June; ICRC delegate Maurice Rossel wrote a favorable report on the ghetto and claimed that no one was deported from Theresienstadt.

As the Red Cross arrived and toured the ghetto, they followed a specific route, which had been pre-planned to portray the camp in the best light possible. Many people incarcerated in Theresienstadt used poetry as a war of recording their experiences and expressing themselves. On 14 July 1933, the Sterilisation Law was passed. This fifty kronen bank note was issued in the Theresienstadt Ghetto in 1943. Following the deportation of 476 Danish Jews to Theresienstadt in October 1943, the Danish Red Cross, the International 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. [4], After Adolf Hitler seized power in 1933, the German Red Cross (DRK) elected to conform to the Nazi regime (German: Gleichschaltung) rather than disband. [51], Nazi coverup of the Holocaust that fooled the Red Cross, Red Cross involvement with Theresienstadt, "Beautification" (February 1944June 1944), Negotiated release (February and April 1945), Information about Jews deported to Auschwitz from Theresienstadt was published in the. Philipp Manes was deported to Theresienstadt Ghetto, where he kept a meticulous record of daily life. Administration inside the ghetto was the responsibility of the elected Theresienstadt Jewish Council, led by chairman Jacob Edelstein. Why did they want outsiders to see it? The Nazis were keen to allow such a visit in order to reports which had leaked the true conditions and functions of the camps and ghettos being established across Europe. [55] Czechoslovak Red Cross personnel arrived on 4 May, but they focused their efforts on political prisoners at the Small Fortress and, when they did help prisoners in the Jewish ghetto, were dismissive of foreign (non-Czechoslovak) Jews. to camps and ghettos closer to the Germany. [49] The Danish representatives reported that whether Theresienstadt was a transit camp was an "open question", and expressed sympathy for the prisoners. The Nazis removed 7503 Jews from Theresienstadt between 16 and 18 May 1944 to reduce overcrowding at the ghetto, holding them in a special camp at Auschwitz in case the Red Cross requested to visit them there. This increase almost doubled the camps population at that time to approximately 30,000 people. To do so, they decided to convert Terezn, a former prison north of Prague, Czechoslovakia, into a transit ghetto-camp. Food packages (which were a lifeline) could be received in the post from those outside of Theresienstadt, but as the war continued, and many of the prisoners family and friends disappeared, these often dwindled. There was also a hospital within Theresienstadt. It appears before me, a ghostly procession. This letter was the last letter written by Otto Bendix to his wife, Gertrude Gurschke, shortly before his deportation. This list of names forms part of a deportation order of Jews living in mixed-race marriages and stateless Jews to Theresienstadt. After the war, a collection of art and poetry, written by children, was found hidden in the camp. all rights reserved.

The excerpt reads: Again, be strong and be happy, with or without me, that is my strong wish. 1109348. a limited company registered in england & wales, registration no. Everything you need to get started teaching your students about racism, antisemitism and prejudice. [38], Rossel's statement that Jews were not deported from Theresienstadt caused the ICRC to cancel a planned visit to the Theresienstadt family camp, to which Heinrich Himmler had already given his permission. 5415454, 23 June 1944: The Red Cross visits Terezin concentration camp, Guidelines for Light up the darkness participants, One Day competition guidelines and criteria, One Day competition: Terms and Conditions, International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda, International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia, Holocaust Memorial Day Trust is supported by. The elder of the Jews is currently Herr Murmelstein. He was murdered at Auschwitz in 1944. Originally designed and developed by the London Jewish Cultural Centre, A survivor reflects on life in the ghetto, Treatment of prisoners in the early camps. Both Manes and his wife were deported from Theresienstadt on the last transport to Auschwitz in October 1944, where they were murdered. After the war, some Germans claimed that all they knew about the concentration camps was what they had heard about Terezn.2. It was handed out three times a day and typically consisted of bread, soup made with lentils or potatoes, one slice of salami or meat (although this was rare), and coffee. , and Danish Government pressured the Nazis into allowing them a visit to inspect conditions at the ghetto. Grawitz was closely involved in Aktion T4 (the murder of disabled people) and Nazi human experimentation. , starvation, and disease. An excerpt from the poem reads: Suddenly I hear the steps of many people, but no human voices. The establishment and jurisdiction of the ghetto was assigned to the Gestapo, Adolf Eichmann and the Prague Office for Jewish Emigration. [29] Driven in a limousine by an SS officer posing as his driver,[44][24] Eppstein was forced to deliver an SS-written speech describing Theresienstadt as "a normal country town" of which he was "mayor",[29][45] and give the visitors fabricated statistical data on the ghetto. [63], More interesting than the actual living conditions and installations in the ghetto of Theresienstadt was the question whether it had indeed served merely as a transit camp for the Jews and how many deportations to the East had taken place. Construction began in 1780. Although the lack of medicine meant that chances of recovery from illness still remained low, care was significantly better than care in other ghettos and camps in Nazi occupied Europe.

in the east or for Jews of cultural or political fame until their eventual deportation or death. [13] In May 1943, the ICRC received confirmation signed by the Jewish elder at Theresienstadt that some food parcels had reached it. [9] Soon after, Roland Marti, the ICRC delegate in Berlin, requested permission for a trial visit to Theresienstadt, expecting that it would be easier to get permission than for other camps, but his request was denied. In this way, Terezn became a propaganda tool to hide what was really happening to the Jews. On 20 July 1933, the Vatican signed a Concordat with the Nazis. Four thousand Czech Jews who were taken from Theresienstadt to Birkenau in September 1943 were massacred in the gas chambers on March 7th. Until the Nazi occupation, the town had an average population of just under 4000 people. [20] Contrary to SS expectations, the visit actually increased DRK suspicions about the Nazi extermination program. The ghetto was run by the Council of Elders headed by the "Jewish elder", which was responsible for implementing Nazi orders. Whilst hard labour was often more demanding, it also provided an opportunity to leave the camp, and potentially to smuggle extra food to supplement their diets. This letter also belonged to Max Hirschfeld, and, following liberation from the ghetto, requested refunds for the savings accrued by all surviving Theresienstadt inmates to compensate them for their work and their experience from the British Military Governor, Bielefeld. The film was completed in March 1945, but due to its timing and the imminent end of the war, was never fully released or utilised for mass propaganda. Although Walther Georg Hartmann[de], the delegate to the ICRC, has often been praised as one of the only humanitarians in the Nazified DRK,[8][a] he had been a member of the Nazi Party since 1933. Love, as always since I have known you. Otto was deported to Theresienstadt from Berlin on 3 October 1942. This image shows part of Kiens original text written for the opera Kaiser von Atlantis oder der Tod dankt ab (The Emperor of Atlantis), with music by Viktor Ullmann, whilst imprisoned in the camp. On 19 July 1937, an exhibition in Munich opened on 'Degenerate Art', presenting modern art as corrupt and un-German. [18] In his report, Hartmann described the ghetto's conditions as "dreadful" and "frightfully overcrowded"; the prisoners were severely undernourished and medical care was completely inadequate. [24] The RSHA saw the visit as an opportunity to cast doubt on reports of extermination reaching Western countries, but wanted to prepare the ghetto sufficiently so that the ICRC delegation would get a good impression. [11], In 1942, the ICRC confirmed the existence of a Jewish ghetto at Theresienstadt and discovered that it was possible to send medicines, emboldening them to try that strategy with other concentration camps. The ICRC took small scale action to help civilians from the beginning of the war in 1939,[5] although the ICRC's leverage against the German government was limited by these detainees' lack of protection under international law. [48] Although all of the visitors had promised to keep their reports secret, some information from Rossel's report was leaked to the World Jewish Congress, prompting them to protest the inaccuracy of the report and request another ICRC visit to the ghetto. [21] The ICRC had come under increasing pressure from Jewish organizations and the Czechoslovak government-in-exile to intervene in favor of Jews,[22][23] although Israeli historian Livia Rothkirchen considers the pressure on the ICRC from Danish institutions to be decisive in prodding the ICRC to renew its request to visit Theresienstadt also in November. Following the Red Cross inspection, the Nazis made a propaganda film at Theresienstadt, with the aim of showing Jewish people being treated well under the protection of the Third Reich. An annotation at the bottom of the letter states Maxs request cannot be allowed. The inmates included a number of famous poets, painters, musicians, composers, and scholars. As a result of this, the overcrowded living barracks and the small amount of facilities, hygiene and sanitation were extremely poor. However, overcrowding soon meant that some were also forced to sleep in the attics, cellars, and hallways. Theresienstadt was a ghetto, but also had features of a transit camp.

It was issued by the Gestapo in Bielefeld, a city in north-east Germany, on 8 February 1945 just three months prior to the ghettos liberation. About 33,000 died there from malnutrition, disease, and overwork. On 24,[13] 27, or 28 June 1943,[17] DRK representative Walther Georg Hartmann and his deputy, Heinrich Nieuhaus, were allowed to visit the ghetto,[18] guided by German Foreign Ministry official Eberhard von Thadden[de]. Instead, the Nazis claimed, these elderly Jews were sent for retirement in the spa town of Theresienstadt. One week later, on 9 May 1945, Soviet forces liberated the ghetto. [51] In the meantime, 18,400 people were deported to Auschwitz in September and October 1944. Prominent Jews who were famous for their professions nationally or internationally made up one of the main prisoner groups at Theresienstadt. [60] According to Steinacher, the report "certainly discredited the organization" for its navet or "complicit[y] in a cruel fiction", especially because Rossel continued to defend his conclusions after the war. [47], Rossel's report stated that conditions in the ghetto were favorableeven superior than for civilians in the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moraviaand that no one was deported from Theresienstadt. [41], On 23 June 1944, the visitors were led on a tour through the "Potemkin village". Approximately 15,000 such prisoners arrived in Theresienstadt in the last weeks of April 1945. Culture also provided a means of temporary escape, as the over 2,300 lectures which took place there show. Film, Media and Digital Cultures of Central and Eastern Europe, "The ICRC and the detainees in Nazi concentration camps (19421945)", "Zprva Maurice Rossela o prohldce Terezna", "Review of Karny, Miroslav, ed., Terezinska pametni kniha", "Embellishment and the visit of the International Committee of the Red Cross to Terezn", https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Theresienstadt_Ghetto_and_the_Red_Cross&oldid=1062722151, International Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement, Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License 3.0, This page was last edited on 30 December 2021, at 03:48. Fake shops, schools and cafes were built, and cultural performances were put on for the delegation. [40] However, Swiss historian Jean-Claude Favez argues that the SS were eager to show Theresienstadt to Burckhardt or another high-ranking ICRC representative, while the ICRC worried that such attention would legitimize Nazi propaganda. [10] Of the approximately 155,000 people sent to Theresienstadt before the end of the war, 35,000 died at the ghetto from hunger and disease and 83,000 perished after deportation to various ghettos, extermination camps, and other killing sites.

[4] However, as Huber emphasized in a press conference with German reporters in 1940, the ICRC's bylaws did not restrict the organization's mission to detainees covered by the Geneva Conventions. [36] On 16 June 1944, the BBC European Service reported: These Jews [scheduled to be murdered in June] were transported to Birkenau from the concentration camp of Theresienstadt on the Elbe, last December. As a result of this, and the Nazi desire to use the ghetto as a propaganda tool, culture within the ghetto flourished. [29] Swiss historians Sbastien Farr and Yan Schubert view the choice of the young and inexperienced Rossel as indicative of the ICRC's indifference to Jewish suffering. Simultaneously with the first liberations of concentration camps by Western Allied forces,[54] ICRC delegates Otto Lehner and Paul Dunant arrived at Theresienstadt, accompanied by Swiss diplomat Buchmller, on 6 April 1945 and toured the ghetto, escorted by Eichmann. The book was used to record and receive pay for labour carried out in the ghetto. While all ghettos were [29][46] A soccer game and performance of the children's opera Brundibr were also staged for the guests. Fewer than 17,000 survived the war. Philipp Manes, a German Jew and a prolific writer, and his wife Gertrud were sent to Theresienstadt in 1942. This document is one of the original draft overviews of the film, suggesting potential scenes. This made sterilisation of the disabled compulsory. She died at age ten. Written by two Auschwitz escapees, Rudolf Vrba and Alfred Wetzler, the latter report accurately described the fate of Jews deported from Theresienstadt to Auschwitzmost were murdered. Terezn, or Theresienstadt, as the Germans called it, was unique in that it did not fit the definition of a concentration camp or a ghetto; it was used both as a way-station for those being sent to other camps farther east and as a place to house specific populations of Jews, including decorated veterans of World War I, the elderly, and prominent individuals whose disappearance might be widely reported or who would be unfit for forced labor. Kien was a Jewish artist from Czechoslovakia, who was deported to Theresienstadt in December 1941.

[13], The Danish government, Danish Red Cross, Danish king Christian X, and Danish clergy also pressured the DRK to allow a visit, because of the 450 Danish Jews who had been deported there in October 1943. Many "Prominent" prisoners and Danish Jews were re-housed in private, superior quarters. Initially, the first Jews to arrive at Theresienstadt were housed in the converted barracks, sleeping in triple decker wooden bunk beds, with several people sharing each bunk. The White Buses, organised by the Danish government in cooperation with the Swedish Red Cross, repatriated the 423 surviving Danish Jews.[52][53]. The conference was called to discuss the growing refugee problem in Europe. Following this, an average of 35,000 people were incarcerated at any given time between 1941 and 1945. By 1943, word had spread about the Nazis treatment and mass murder of Jews. Burckhardt did eventually visit Dachau concentration camp; his main complaint was that political prisoners and criminals were not kept separate. They met prisoners who had been warned in how to act and what to say. Of all Red Cross reports on Theresienstadt, Hartmann's was the only one to be broadly accurate. Georg Ferdinand Duckwitz', a German diplomat stationed in the capital of Copenhagen, alerted both the Jewish community and the Danish underground of the coming roundup. More prisoners soon arrived. According to Steinacher, the appointment of Grawitz signified that the DRK "had for all practical purposes [] turned into a National Socialist medical service unit" supporting the German war effort. From Westerbork, he was sent to Theresienstadt in February 1944.