Theresienstadt Clippings Collection
Scope and Content Note
This is a constructed collection that contains clippings and other non-original materials about Theresienstadt created after 1945. Materials include clippings, posters, newsletters and annual reports of the Theresienstadt Martyrs Remembrance Association and the Terezín Memorial, exhibition brochures, and programs of lectures, concerts, and performances memorializing Theresienstadt. The items in the collection do not share provenance; they were put together over a period of several decades into this constructed collection.
Dates
- 1959-2004
Language of Materials
The collection is in German and English with a few items in Czech.
Access Restrictions
This collection is open to researchers.
Access Information
Readers may access the collection by visiting the Lillian Goldman Reading Room at the Center for Jewish History.
Historical Note
Theresienstadt holds a unique position among the concentration camps and ghettos created by the German Nazi regime from 1933-1945. From the time the Nazis turned the then Czechoslovak city of Terezín (German: Theresienstadt) into a camp-ghetto in November 1941 to the liberation of prisoners in May 1945, different sections of the city and its surrounding areas functioned as a Gestapo prison, a Jewish ghetto, a forced labor camp, and a transit camp that eventually sent prisoners to death camps in Nazi-occupied Poland. The Gestapo prison was set up in the Small Fortress on the edge of the city and held mainly Czech and Slovak political prisoners. Once the local residents of the city of Theresienstadt were moved out, the city itself was used as a ghetto and labor camp for Jews from Czechoslovakia, Germany, Austria, Holland, Denmark, and Hungary.
Theresienstadt also played a role as propaganda for the Nazi regime. The widespread deportation of Jews from Germany, Austria, and Czechoslovakia began in 1941 under the pretense that these individuals were being sent to work in the East. Since it could hardly be believed that the old or frail being deported were being sent to work, the Nazis set up Theresienstadt as a supposed “spa town” for retirees. Theresienstadt was also the destination of Jews of sufficient renown that their deportation would cause some to inquire after them. While lectures, concerts, and other events were held in Theresienstadt and a library of some 60,000 volumes was maintained, prisoners suffered inhumane living conditions and often lived in constant fear.
Starting in the fall of 1942, many transports from Theresienstadt took prisoners directly to the death camp Auschwitz-Birkenau. Theresienstadt was liberated by Soviet troops in early May 1945.
References
Niewyk, Donald L. and Francis Nicosia. The Columbia Reference Guide to the Holocaust. New York: Columbia University Press, 2000.
Terezín Memorial. “The Police Prison in the Small Fortress.” Retrieved 13 March 2013 from http://www.pamatnik-Terezín.cz/en/history-collection-research/historical-overview/the-police-prison-in-the-small-fortress?lang=en
Terezín Memorial. “The Concentration Camp for Jews: The Terezín Ghetto.” Retrieved 13 March 2013 from http://www.pamatnik-Terezín.cz/en/history-collection-research/historical-overview/the-concentration-camp-for-jews-the-Terezín-ghetto?lang=en
United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. "Theresienstadt." Holocaust Encyclopedia. Retrieved 13 March 2013 from hhttp://www.ushmm.org/wlc/en/article.php?ModuleId=10005424.
Extent
4 Folders
Abstract
This is a constructed collection that contains clippings and other non-original materials about Theresienstadt created after 1945. Materials include clippings, posters, newsletters and annual reports of the Theresienstadt Martyrs Remembrance Association and the Terezín Memorial, exhibition brochures, and programs of lectures, concerts, and performances memorializing Theresienstadt.
Arrangement
Materials in the collection were separated by document type. Folders are arranged chronologically by the earliest date of the items they hold.
Separated Material
Materials created during the Nazi operation of Theresienstadt (1941-1945) and original, unpublished materials created after 1945 were separated into the Theresienstadt Collection, AR 2275, so that these materials could be digitized as a discrete collection.
A copy of Jewish Monthly from January 1984 featuring the cover story "Children’s Art from Terezín" was removed. This item can be accessed via the YIVO Library. The Terezín Memorial collection catalog was removed to the LBI Archives Manuscript Collection, MS 963. Two videocassettes ("Theresienstadt: Gateway to Auschwitz" directed by Charles Ticho and "Pictures from Theresienstadt/Terezín" by Stephan Dolezel) were removed to the LBI A/V Collection.
Processing Information
Materials were rehoused into archival folders. The oversized posters were placed in extra large oversize drawers to accomodate them without folding.
- Title
- Guide to the Theresienstadt Clippings Collection 1959-2004 AR 2275 C
- Status
- Completed
- Author
- Processed by Leanora Lange
- Date
- © 2013
- Language of description
- English
- Script of description
- Latin
- Language of description note
- Description is in English.
- Sponsor
- Described and encoded as part of the CJH Holocaust Resource Initiative, made possible by the Conference on Jewish Material Claims against Germany.
Repository Details
Part of the Leo Baeck Institute Repository