KALVARIE CESKEHO NARODA Mala pevnost TEREZIN- ‘The Small Fortress’ of Terezin by F.K. Dubensky – 5/12/1946 Czech. A rare and early publication revealing the horrors of the ‘Theresienstadt Ghetto’ – the Czech fortress which was used as a concentration camp for the Jews of Bohemia and Moravia and the Jews of Central and Western Europe during the Nazi occupation during World War II. Published exactly one year after the liberation of the camp. A chilling description which was collected from dozens of survivors and people who knew the camp and what was done there, accompanied by photographs of harsh scenes from the camp, and from the days it was liberated. The design of the cover, which shows a prisoner coming back to life against a background of flames, and the name of the Nazi death camps was done by M. Mirkowitz. Rare.
The writer points out that no one knows how to estimate the exact number of those who perished in the camp since in 1940 the gates of the camp were finally closed. There were residential buildings in the town of Terezin, but when it became a camp, Jewish families were not allowed to live in them. The passers-by from the outside could only notice the barbed wire fence, the guard posts, and hear the shots, and the written material detailing the extermination plan was burned by the Nazis. The living conditions in Theresienstadt were extremely difficult. (Today it is known that the place, which used to be a town where only 7,000 Czechs lived, inhabited over 50,000 Jews. The peak was in September 1942, with about 58,000 prisoners, horribly hungry. In 1942 only, close to 16,000 people died of starvation ). The author describes in detail the mass executions carried out by the Nazis towards the end of the war in September 1945, when the Nazis realized that their defeat was imminent, only a month before the liberation of the camp.
Among the rare photographs that appear (Some of them were photographed by K. Sanda at the time of release): the death cell in the fourth courtyard of the small fortress in Terezin, starving prisoners lying on a train that evacuated it from the camp next to live prisoners, corpses, a huge pit in which 601 bodies were thrown by the Germans, Crates filled with the ashes of those who perished were thrown into the Avra River near the camp. The site of the execution in Terezin as of May 6, 1945, shocked visitors who came to the camp after its liberation, parents looking for their children after the war in the camp, people looking for their family members if they survived in the fourth courtyard of the small fort, a mass grave where 572 victims were found after the war, The heads of the Czech government visit the camp after its liberation, a rare photograph of the camp commander Heinrich Jöckel after the war – before his execution. The author describes him as the most cruel man in Terezin that tens of thousands have executed by order and writes that: “This animal is awaiting trial for its cruel deeds” (In the last stages of World War II, Yukel fled from Theresienstadt to Offenbach, where he hid in his sister’s house. He was captured and arrested by American soldiers in January 1946 and transferred to the Czechoslovak authorities, who prosecuted him for war crimes and crimes against humanity. Including for assaulting and murdering prisoners. He was executed by hanging on October 26, 1946). The book also provides a detailed description of the memorial ceremonies that took place in the camp at the end of the war when the dead were buried.
The proceeds of the book were all dedicated to the benefit of the orphaned sons of the prisoners who perished in Terezin.
[40] p. 21 cm. Good condition.
