My Years in Theresienstadt

My Years in Theresienstadt PDF Author: Gerty Spies
Publisher: Prometheus Books
ISBN: 1616140542
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 224

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Book Description
She has learned to forgive, but she can never forget. And neither can we.Gerty Spies was born in 1897 at Trier into a Jewish family whose ancestors had lived in Germany for centuries. Separated from her family by the Nazis, she was sent to the Czech camp known as Theresienstadt. It was a peculiar place: publicized as a retirement city, a Nazi propaganda showplace where Jews could sit out the war. But it was actually a way station for those destined for the Auschwitz death camp. Isolated from the outside world, surrounded by death, Spies retreated to her inner self to concentrate on human, cultural, and other values. Her powerful talent for writing, discovered at the camp, enabled her to transcend and triumph over mental and physical degradations; to keep her own integrity; to not let evil destroy her loving nature; and, finally, to not lose faith in humanity. By the end of the war, 33,000 people died in Theresienstadt from disease and malnutrition. Spies''s work exhibits a tension between the expression of camp reality and an imagination of an idealized past. Sensitive and humorous, but never bitter, her stories of the struggle for survival are expressions of her own individual moral poise.

My Years in Theresienstadt

My Years in Theresienstadt PDF Author: Gerty Spies
Publisher: Prometheus Books
ISBN: 1616140542
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 224

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Book Description
She has learned to forgive, but she can never forget. And neither can we.Gerty Spies was born in 1897 at Trier into a Jewish family whose ancestors had lived in Germany for centuries. Separated from her family by the Nazis, she was sent to the Czech camp known as Theresienstadt. It was a peculiar place: publicized as a retirement city, a Nazi propaganda showplace where Jews could sit out the war. But it was actually a way station for those destined for the Auschwitz death camp. Isolated from the outside world, surrounded by death, Spies retreated to her inner self to concentrate on human, cultural, and other values. Her powerful talent for writing, discovered at the camp, enabled her to transcend and triumph over mental and physical degradations; to keep her own integrity; to not let evil destroy her loving nature; and, finally, to not lose faith in humanity. By the end of the war, 33,000 people died in Theresienstadt from disease and malnutrition. Spies''s work exhibits a tension between the expression of camp reality and an imagination of an idealized past. Sensitive and humorous, but never bitter, her stories of the struggle for survival are expressions of her own individual moral poise.

As If It Were Life

As If It Were Life PDF Author: Philipp Manes
Publisher: St. Martin's Press
ISBN: 0230103936
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 312

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Book Description
In 1942 German merchant Philipp Manes and his wife were ordered by the Nazis to leave their middle class neighborhood and go live in Theresienstadt, the only so-called "showpiece" ghetto of the Third Reich. This model ghetto was set up by the Nazis as a front to show the world that the Jews were being treated humanely. The ghetto was run by a council of Jewish elders, and organized like an idyllic socialist utopia with theatre groups and debating societies. All the while, this was just a holding post for Jews being shipped to forced labor and certain death at Auschwitz. Philipp Manes' intimate diary is filled with fascinating details of everyday life in the ghetto. Manes' voice brings us a step closer to understanding a little-known aspect of one of the most painful periods in the history of mankind.

The Last Ghetto

The Last Ghetto PDF Author: Anna Hájková
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0190051787
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 304

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Book Description
Terezín, as it was known in Czech, or Theresienstadt as it was known in German, was operated by the Nazis between November 1941 and May 1945 as a transit ghetto for Central and Western European Jews before their deportation for murder in the East. Terezín was the last ghetto to be liberated, one day after the end of World War II. The Last Ghetto is the first in-depth analytical history of a prison society during the Holocaust. Rather than depict the prison society which existed within the ghetto as an exceptional one, unique in kind and not understandable by normal analytical methods, Anna Hájková argues that such prison societies that developed during the Holocaust are best understood as simply other instances of the societies human beings create under normal circumstances. Challenging conventional claims of Holocaust exceptionalism, Hájková insists instead that we ought to view the Holocaust with the same analytical tools as other historical events. The prison society of Terezín produced its own social hierarchies under which seemingly small differences among prisoners (of age, ethnicity, or previous occupation) could determine whether one ultimately lived or died. During the three and a half years of the camp's existence, prisoners created their own culture and habits, bonded, fell in love, and forged new families. Based on extensive archival research in nine languages and on empathetic reading of victim testimonies, The Last Ghetto is a transnational, cultural, social, gender, and organizational history of Terezín, revealing how human society works in extremis and highlighting the key issues of responsibility, agency and its boundaries, and belonging.

The Girls of Room 28

The Girls of Room 28 PDF Author: Hannelore Brenner
Publisher: Schocken
ISBN: 0805242708
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 338

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Book Description
From 1942 to 1944, twelve thousand children passed through the Theresienstadt internment camp, near Prague, on their way to Auschwitz. Only a few hundred of them survived the war. In The Girls of Room 28, ten of these children—mothers and grandmothers today in their seventies—tell us how they did it. The Jews deported to Theresienstadt from countries all over Europe were aware of the fate that awaited them, and they decided that it was the young people who had the best chance to survive. Keeping these adolescents alive, keeping them whole in body, mind, and spirit, became the priority. They were housed separately, in dormitory-like barracks, where they had a greater chance of staying healthy and better access to food, and where counselors (young men and women who had been teachers and youth workers) created a disciplined environment despite the surrounding horrors. The counselors also made available to the young people the talents of an amazing array of world-class artists, musicians, and playwrights–European Jews who were also on their way to Auschwitz. Under their instruction, the children produced art, poetry, and music, and they performed in theatrical productions, most notably Brundibar, the legendary “children’s opera” that celebrates the triumph of good over evil. In the mid-1990s, German journalist Hannelore Brenner met ten of these child survivors—women in their late-seventies today, who reunite every year at a resort in the Czech Republic. Weaving her interviews with the women together with excerpts from diaries that were kept secretly during the war and samples of the art, music, and poetry created at Theresienstadt, Brenner gives us an unprecedented picture of daily life there, and of the extraordinary strength, sacrifice, and indomitable will that combined—in the girls and in their caretakers—to make survival possible.

We're Alive and Life Goes On

We're Alive and Life Goes On PDF Author: Eva Roubickova
Publisher: Henry Holt and Company (BYR)
ISBN: 1627798951
Category : Young Adult Nonfiction
Languages : en
Pages : 190

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Book Description
"It's a terrible feeling to see the fate of thousands of people dependent on a single person. . . . It seems like a mass judgment to me: life or death." On December 17, 1941, twenty-year-old Eva Mándlová arrived at the Nazi's "model" concentration camp, Theresienstadt. From that day until she was freed three and a half years later, she kept a diary. At times sweet and personal, at times agonized and profound, Eva is a human voice amidst inhuman evil. Through Eva's eyes, the camp sometimes "even resembles normal life," as she makes friends and talks with Benny, or Egon, or Otto. But at any moment, anyone may be "selected" for a transport to "Poland." No one ever returns from "Poland." Never before published, Eva's diary is a true-life Sophie's Choice in which each day brings impossible decisions. As a Gentile man inexplicably helps her, Eva must decide who should share her bounty. As close friends and loved ones are sent away, she has to decide, over and over again, whether to ask to join them on their final journey.

Czechs, Germans, Jews?

Czechs, Germans, Jews? PDF Author: Kateřina Čapková
Publisher: Berghahn Books
ISBN: 0857454749
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 298

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Book Description
The phenomenon of national identities, always a key issue in the modern history of Bohemian Jewry, was particularly complex because of the marginal differences that existed between the available choices. Considerable overlap was evident in the programs of the various national movements and it was possible to change one's national identity or even to opt for more than one such identity without necessarily experiencing any far-reaching consequences in everyday life. Based on many hitherto unknown archival sources from the Czech Republic, Israel and Austria, the author's research reveals the inner dynamic of each of the national movements and maps out the three most important constructions of national identity within Bohemian Jewry - the German-Jewish, the Czech-Jewish and the Zionist. This book provides a needed framework for understanding the rich history of German- and Czech-Jewish politics and culture in Bohemia and is a notable contribution to the historiography of Bohemian, Czechoslovak and central European Jewry.

Terezin

Terezin PDF Author: Ruth Thomson
Publisher: Candlewick Press
ISBN: 0763664669
Category : Juvenile Nonfiction
Languages : en
Pages : 65

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Book Description
Through inmates' own voicesNfrom secret diary entries and artwork to excerpts from memoirs and recordings narrated after the warN"Terezin" explores the lives of Jewish people in one of the most infamous of the Nazi transit camps in Czechoslovakia. Illustrations.

In Memory's Kitchen

In Memory's Kitchen PDF Author: Michael Berenbaum
Publisher: Jason Aronson
ISBN: 1461665108
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 159

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Book Description
The sheets of paper are as brittle as fallen leaves; the faltering handwriting changes from page to page; the words, a faded brown, are almost indecipherable. The pages are filled with recipes. Each is a memory, a fantasy, a hope for the future. Written by undernourished and starving women in the Czechoslovakian ghetto/concentration camp of Terezín (also known as Theresienstadt), the recipes give instructions for making beloved dishes in the rich, robust Czech tradition. Sometimes steps or ingredients are missing, the gaps a painful illustration of the condition and situation in which the authors lived. Reprinting the contents of the original hand-sewn copybook, In Memory's Kitchen: A Legacy from the Women of Terezín is a beautiful memorial to the brave women who defied Hitler by preserving a part of their heritage and a part of themselves. Despite the harsh conditions in the Nazis' "model" ghetto - which in reality was a way station to Auschwitz and other death camps - cultural, intellectual, and artistic life did exist within the walls of the ghetto. Like the heart-breaking book I Never Saw Another Butterfly, which contains the poetry and drawings of the children of Terezín, the handwritten cookbook is proof that the Nazis could not break the spirit of the Jewish people.

Bound for Theresienstadt

Bound for Theresienstadt PDF Author: Vera Schiff
Publisher: McFarland
ISBN: 1476628025
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 224

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Book Description
Originally constructed in the 18th century as a military barracks by Austrian Emperor Joseph II, Theresienstadt (now Terezin) was used as a ghetto and concentration camp by the Nazis early in World War II in their ruse of peaceful resettlement of the Jews of Europe. Tens of thousands of inmates perished at the camp and many more were sent from there to die at Auschwitz and Treblinka. Presented in a two-fold format, this book features the poignant stories of individuals who were transported to Theresienstadt, as related by Holocaust survivor Vera Schiff, whose entire family was sent to the camp in 1942. Following each narrative, Schiff engages in a wide-ranging discussion with ethics professor Jeff McLaughlin regarding the events of the story, within the broader political, religious and cultural context of what is now the Czech Republic.

The Jews of Denmark in the Holocaust

The Jews of Denmark in the Holocaust PDF Author: Silvia Goldbaum Tarabini Fracapane
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 0429514867
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 434

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Book Description
Based on never previously explored personal accounts and archival documentation, this book examines life and death in the Theresienstadt ghetto, seen through the eyes of the Jewish victims from Denmark. "How was it in Theresienstadt?" Thus asked Johan Grün rhetorically when he, in July 1945, published a short text about his experiences. The successful flight of the majority of Danish Jewry in October 1943 is a well-known episode of the Holocaust, but the experience of the 470 men, women, and children that were deported to the ghetto has seldom been the object of scholarly interest. Providing an overview of the Judenaktion in Denmark and the subsequent deportations, the book sheds light on the fate of those who were arrested. Through a micro-historical analysis of everyday life, it describes various aspects of social and daily life in proximity to death. In doing so, the volume illuminates the diversity of individual situations and conveys the deportees’ perceptions and striving for survival and ‘normality’. Offering a multi-perspective and international approach that places the case of Denmark into the broader Jewish experience during the Holocaust, this book is invaluable for researchers of Jewish studies, Holocaust and genocide studies, and the history of modern Denmark.