KREMATORIUM A ZIDOVSKY HRBITOV V TEREZINE - 'The Jewish crematorium in Terezin' - a rare photo album in memory of the Jews who perished in the Terezin camp. Published by the Council of Religious Communities of Prague, c. 1945. Czech.
Album with chain photographs of harsh views from the Terezin camp. Each photograph is described: The camp's morgue, a mass grave near the crematorium, the crematorium building, the hall where the bodies were gathered - used as a prayer room after the war with the inscription in Hebrew above the entrance gate: "G-d gave and the G-d took away, may G-d bless, their loss We will not forget', two of the four crematoria, the back of the crematoria ovens, the front of the crematoria, the experiment room, the river into which the ashes of the perished were thrown before the Red Cross visited the camp, the monument that the Nazis built in 1944 to deceive the Red Cross Committee (see below about the great deception of the Nazis in Terezin).
On the back of the album it is written briefly that the camp operated between 1941 and 1945 and that over 152,000 prisoners of Jewish origin passed through the gates of Terezin. Of these, 8,000 are buried in a mass grave near the camp, 35,000 were killed as prisoners in forced labor, more than 26,000 perished in the camp's crematorium, 88,700 Jews who were transported from Terezin to the east perished in other camps.
About 500 of the Danish Jews who did not manage to escape before the occupation to Sweden, were sent to Terezin in 1943. This Transport was of great importance, as the Danish government insisted on the arrival of the Red Cross at the camp. It was an unusual step, since most of the governments of European countries occupied by the Nazis did not insist on adequate treatment of their Jewish citizens. The Nazis allowed the visit to the camp, in order to Dispel the rumors about the extermination camps that were beginning to spread at the time. In order to minimize the impression of severe overcrowding in Terezin, the Nazis sent many Jews to be exterminated in Auschwitz, and set up mock shops and cafes, to create the impression of normal life in a Jewish ghetto. On June 23, 1944, In an act directed by the Nazis, a delegation of the International Red Cross visited the ghetto. Before the visit, the streets and rooms were repainted, and the rooms were redecorated so that there would be no more than three people in each room. Thus the delegation visited the aesthetic and spacious-looking ghetto, watched a football league game and even watched the children's opera "Brundibar". The scam was so successful that the Nazi propaganda operators decided to shoot a propaganda film in Terezin. The filming of the film "Theresienstadt - Jewish Settlement", which was mistakenly called "The Fuhrer Gives a Village to the Jews", began in August 1944 and lasted about four weeks. The director was the Jewish camp prisoner Kurt Groen, a famous director and actor. The purpose of the film was to show how Jews live under the Third Reich in peace and tranquility. After the end of filming, most of the team and even the director himself were sent to death in Auschwitz. Groen and his wife were murdered in the gas chambers on October 28, 1944. The film was completed by a Czech camera and news crew, including music and sound recorded in the ghetto. The film was never shown in its entirety after the war, as it did not survive. However, the film was screened 4 times within the walls of the ghetto during the Red Cross visits in March - April 1945. Excerpts from the film were found starting in 1969 in the Czech Republic, in the basements of the Yad Vashem archive and an archive in Poland. There are currently 21 minutes from it. Three minutes from the Nazi propaganda film see here.
Album: 9x7 cm. Photos open to a 70 cm long chain. Very good condition.
