Lomography

Theresienstadt
written by xantom on April 27th, 2008 , one comment (0 votes)

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On November 24, 1941, the Germans established a Jewish ghetto in the fortress town of Terezin (near Prague), Czech Republic. Known by its German name, Theresienstadt, until its liberation on May 8, 1945, it functioned as a ghetto and transit camp on the route to Auschwitz. Most of those imprisoned in Theresienstadt were German, Czech, Dutch, and Danish Jews; elderly and prominent Jews and Jewish veterans of World War I were also sent there.

Beginning in 1942, SS authorities deported Jews from Theresienstadt to other ghettos, concentration camps, and extermination camps in Nazi-occupied Eastern Europe. German authorities either murdered the Jews upon their arrival in the ghettos of Riga, Warsaw, Lodz, Minsk, and Bialystok, or deported them further to extermination camps. Transports also left Theresienstadt directly for the extermination camps of Auschwitz, Majdanek, and Treblinka.

In the ghetto itself, tens of thousands of people died, mostly from disease or starvation. In 1942, the death rate within the ghetto was so high that the Germans built-to the south of the ghetto-a crematorium capable of handling almost 200 bodies a day. Of the approximately 140,000 Jews transferred to Theresienstadt, nearly 90,000 were deported to points further east and almost certain death. Roughly 33,000 died in Theresienstadt itself.

Today Theresienstadt works as a museum where you can see (and feel) how the Jewish people lived during the World War II. Theresienstadt is about an hour and a half drive north of Prague (Czech Republic) and lies in the small town of Terezin. You a get there by train, bus or car.

http://www.ghetto-theresienstadt.info/
http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/Holocaust/terezintoc.html