Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
»
Terezín Information Centre
(Městské infocentrum;
416 782 616;
www.terezin.cz
;
náměstí Československé armády 179;
8am-5pm Mon-Thu, 8am-1.30pm
Fri, 9am-3pm Sun, closed Sat)
TEREZÍN'S HISTORY
A massive bulwark of stone and earth, the fortress of Terezín (Theresienstadt in
German) was built in 1780 by Emperor Joseph II with a single purpose: to keep
the enemy out. Ironically, it is more notorious for keeping people in - it served as
a political prison in the later days of the Habsburg empire.
Gavrilo Princip
, the
assassin who killed Archduke Franz Ferdinand in 1914, was incarcerated here
during WWI, and when the Germans took control during WWII the fortress be-
came a grim holding pen for Jews bound for extermination camps. In contrast to
the colourful, baroque face of many Czech towns, Terezín is a stark but pro-
foundly evocative monument to a darker aspect of Europe's past.
The bleakest phase of Terezín's history began in 1940 when the Gestapo es-
tablished a prison in the Lesser Fortress. Evicting the inhabitants from the Main
Fortress the following year, the Nazis transformed the town into a transit camp
through which some 150,000 people eventually passed en route to the death
camps. For most, conditions were appalling. Between April and September 1942
the ghetto's population increased from 12,968 to 58,491, leaving each prisoner
with only 1.65 sq m of space and causing disease and starvation on a terrifying
scale. In the same period, there was a 15-fold increase in the number of deaths
within the prison walls.
Terezín later became the centrepiece of one of the Nazis' more extraordinary
public relations coups. Official visitors to the fortress, including representatives
of the Red Cross, saw a town that was billed as a kind of Jewish 'refuge', with a
Jewish administration, banks, shops, cafes, schools and a thriving cultural life -
it even had a jazz band - in a charade that twice completely fooled international
observers. In reality Terezín was home to a relentlessly increasing population of
prisoners, regular trains departing for the gas chambers of Auschwitz, and the
death by starvation, disease or suicide of some 35,000 people.
