Newsgroups: alt.revisionism Subject: Holocaust Almanac: Theresienstadt Summary: Reply-To: kmcvay@nizkornospam.org Followup-To: alt.revisionism Organization: The Nizkor Project http://www.nizkor.org Keywords: theresienstadt Archive/File: camps/theresienstadt/theresien.03 Last-Modified: 1994/09/20 "Karl Hermann Frank, also present at the conversation, suggested the names of various cities that might server their purpose, and finally the name Thersienstadt (Terezin) was mentioned: a military fortress dating from the eighteenth century, less than forty miles from Prague. Eichmann was not familiar with the site, and he went to take a look at it. He found it unsuitable, he said, because it was too small (the fortress walls permitted the construction of an inner city of only 500 to 700 meters square). However, Terezin did have other advantages: the barracks were suitable for mass residences, the city walls and fortress easily insured isolation from the outside world, and no great guard force would be necessary. Department G of the Jewish community now started work at full speed (without being told anything about Terezin), and its first conclusion was that it was impossible to settle all the Jews of the Protectorate in a single city. Should the order be given nonetheless, the problem could be solved by erecting either one large camp of shacks or several smaller ones. For this purpose, 1,300 shacks would be required, and their construction, together with vital sanitary facilities, would cost 195 million crowns and necessitate a considerable quantity of building materials. From the wording of the report, dated October 9, it was clear that Department G did not view the idea of a shack camp with equanimity: a relatively large number of Jews had been placed in jobs geared to the German economy, especially recently, and would now have to be taken out of the production line. In addition, non-Jewish labor would have to be used for work for which there was not enough skilled Jewish labor available. Furthermore, hastily erected shack camps tended to fall short of even the most primitive housing sites within existing settlements, and increased the danger of epidemics." (Bondy, 228-9) "Edelstein send Franta Friedmann (who, because he was married to a non-Jew, enjoyed greater freedom of movement) to take a look at Theresienstadt, or Terezin as it was called by the Czechs. The inital report has hardly encouraging: the city was located near the point where the Eger poured into the Elbe, and the level of undergound water beneath the fortress was relatively high. Beneath the outside walls, behind stone walls several yards thick, were subterranean cellars with only small apertures for light, and apparently very damp. The army had not used them for living quarters in over twenty years. Northeast of the town, where the river overflowed, was the small fortress whose dungeons had in days gone by served as a prison, and were considered a health hazard even under the monarchy. What the report did not say was that with the onset of the German occupation, the small fortress had reverted to its former purpose: it was the Gestapo's central prison, a substitute for concentration camps, and those who entered it were rarely seen alive again. As might be expected, the reservations the Jews had about the place made no impression on the Germans: as far as they were concerned, it had all been decided. At the end of October, Siegfried Seidl, a thirty-year-old Austrian national and a member of the National Socialist Party for ten years, who had proved his ability during the transportation of Jews from Warte-Gau to Poland in 1939, was appointed commandant of the future ghetto. According to the instructions about his appointment (received from Eichmann and signed by Heydrich), Seidl reported to Gu"nther in Prague and the next day left for Terezin to discuss the Wehrmacht's evacuation of the barracks with the commander of the garrison army (the small fortress was to remain under the exclusive jurisdiction of the security police and used as its prison). After Seidl saw the place, he voiced his opposition to the Zentralstelle's proposal that eighty thousand Jews be concentrated in the ghetto. Maximum capacity, he felt, could not exceed thirty thousand. 'The ghetto is a sealed-off Jewish sttlement established by order of the Center for Jewish Emigation in Prague, and run by the Jewish administration under the supervision of the German authorities' local command. At the head of the ghetto is a Council of Elders and an advisory board consisting of between fifty and one hundred people, representatives of the various productive and consumer branches, a fairly representative cross section of the ghetto population. The appointment and deposition of the ghetto administrator and his deputy are in the hands of the Zentralstelle.' So ran the guidelines for ghetto regulations, drawn up by Department G at the beginning of November. The Germans had the leaders of the Prague community submit two tentative lists of the composition of the Council of Elders in the ghetto, one consisting of Czech Jews, the other of Zionists. Weidmann and Edelstein agreed between them to include unaffilated experts in both lists, so that all the Jews would have some representation on the future council. The Germans chose Edelstein's list, and so, at the age of thirty-eight, Jakob Edelstein led the Jews of Bohemia and Moravia on their road to the unknown." (Ibid, 238-40) Work Cited Bondy, Ruth. Elder of the Jews. New York: Grove Press, 1989. (Translated from "Edelshtain neged had-zeman". Zmora, Bitan, Modan, publishers, 1981
Home ·
Site Map ·
What's New? ·
Search
Nizkor
© The Nizkor Project, 1991-2012
This site is intended for educational purposes to teach about the Holocaust and
to combat hatred.
Any statements or excerpts found on this site are for educational purposes only.
As part of these educational purposes, Nizkor may
include on this website materials, such as excerpts from the writings of racists and antisemites. Far from approving these writings, Nizkor condemns them and
provides them so that its readers can learn the nature and extent of hate and antisemitic discourse. Nizkor urges the readers of these pages to condemn racist
and hate speech in all of its forms and manifestations.