Newsgroups: alt.revisionism Subject: Holocaust Almanac: Theresienstadt - Disillusionment Summary: Careful plans for a Jewish city of refuge shattered as Germans dissolve family units and enforce sexual segregation Reply-To: kmcvay@nospamnizkor.org Followup-To: alt.revisionism Organization: The Nizkor Project http://www.nizkor.org Keywords: theresienstadt Archive/File: camps/theresienstadt/theresien.04 Last-Modified: 1994/09/28 "The dissolution of the family unit destroyed all the fine planning on paper and brought home the reality of the Jews' position. Theresienstadt was to be run as a labor camp, not a city. The detailed programs for the various departments and subdivisions seemed like a dream from another world. No vestige remained of the proposed liaison office, which was meant to maintain contact with the outside world and represnet the Jewish city in dealings with the Zentralstelle, the Prague community office, and in buying from and selling to non-Jewish economic institutions. There was only one type of liaison - and it led straight to German headquarters. The older children were separated from the adults almost immediately. They were housed in separate rooms, first in the Sudeten barracks and then in all of them, and instructors from the Zionist youth movements were placed in charge of them. ... Once a week, in procession, the children were allowed to visit their fathers and mothers in the other barracks, but otherwise they were the sole responsibility of the instructors, who worked almost nonstop. During his first days in the ghetto, Yekef visited the children's quarters and complained about the filth. Gonda tried to explain how difficult it was to keep the place clean when there were no brooms, pails, or other cleaning materials, but Yekef also had other complaints about how the children were being cared for and was generally dissatisfied with what had been done thus far. Gonda spoke of the difficulties involved in caring for hundreds of children without normal facilities, but in the middle of the conversation Yekef suddenly said, 'I'm very tired, I must get some sleep.' Gonda realized that he had not heard a word he had said. Fredy, who had a mania for order, organized a cleanliness competition in the children's rooms and even managed to obtain edible prizes from the economic division, though he was not pleased when it was Gonda who presented the children with their prizes." (Bondy, 254-5) 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.