Traces of Everyday Life in the Ghetto

How did prisoners live in the ghetto? What did their living spaces look like? How were their rooms furnished? Numerous traces and vestiges still found in Terezin provide answers. Often, only after a closer look do the historical traces become obvious: the demeaning living conditions, the struggle for daily survival and dying in the ghetto. The ghetto served primarily as a ghetto and transit camp for Jews; a temporary stop on their way to Auschwitz-Birkenau and other death camps in the East. This knowledge is crucial for understanding these silent witnesses and traces. They represent fragments of the backdrop against which a chapter of the “Final Solution” played out.

Forbidden: Discovery in an attic. “Entrance strictly FORBIDDEN to UNAUTHORIZED PERSONS!” is written on the door in a German writing style of the 1940s. Where did this door lead? To whom did this restriction apply and for whom did it not? These questions have yet to be answered.

Orientation in the Ghetto: A special administrative structure was established when the town was turned into a ghetto. Streets were renamed and “block designations” were introduced. For example, “Q 219 C VI “ was the administrative designation of one house. “Q 2” stood for the street, the Second Crossroad, “19” was the actual house number and “C VI” was the term for the block (a whole block of houses).

Overcrowding: In 1942 the houses and barracks in Theresienstadt were already so overcrowded that people also had to be housed in the attics. This photo shows a typical example of temporary attic conversions, which were planned and constructed by the Jewish self-administration due to the lack of accommodations. The small living spaces (that can be detected from the remains of three door frames) shows vast differences in size and building methods among the “kumbals.”

Electricity. Porcelain insulators are silent witnesses that can still be found in almost all attics. They were used to secure the temporary and exposed wiring required for the lighting of the dark attics.

Due to overcrowding, privacy in the ghetto did not exist and intimacy was nearly impossible. This situation resulted in prisoners’ initiative and ingenuity in constructing small attic rooms called “kumbál” or “kumbálek.” Having one was a privilege. The materials, a few boards or pieces of furniture, were usually “organized.” In the ghetto slang, this meant acquired by any means, even stolen.

Mass Death: The picture shows two furnaces in the Theresienstadt crematorium which were operated between 1943 and 1945. Only a few months after the ghetto was established, the mortality rate was incredibly high. More than 33,000 people died in Theresienstadt, one fourth of all prisoners who passed through the ghetto. Fear of epidemics drove the SS to solve the high mortality problem by building a crematorium. Today this building is part of the Terezín Memorial and is open to the public.

Death and Dying in the Theresienstadt Ghetto: There are also inconspicuous signs like this metal plaque with the year “1944” in Hebrew. It is attached to the metal grill of the entrance gate near Ravelin XIX. The ashes of those who died in 1944 were kept in the casemates until summer 1944. At the time the SS covered up their crimes by throwing the ashes of prisoners who died in 1944 into the Eger River.

Cultural Activities: The yellow Star of David (Mogen David) on a red background is a theatre decoration that still adorns the attic entrance today. In Theresienstadt many theatre performances held in Czech and German took place, at first still in secret. There are hardly any traces left like this one.

Faith: These candles adorned a Jewish prayer room only recently discovered in the 1990s. The room is completely decorated with wall murals. Religious practice was officially prohibited in the ghetto, but it was ignored if conducted in the houses. The prayer room belongs to the Terezin Memorial complex and is open to the public.

Mourning: We see a mortar heart in which two names, five crosses and the numbers 44, 47 and 48 have been immortalized. The heart is on a chimney in an attic of a residential building.

Torture: These are no ordinary cellar doors. These are the doors to the cells number 6 and 7 of the infamous “bunker”, a cellar located under the former SS headquarters. In these cellars prisoners were tortured, some of them murdered by SS-men for alleged offenses. Today these cellars serve the tenants of this residential building.

There are more tracks to look:

Ordinary Life – Traces of Everyday Life in the Ghetto

Attic Modifications – Necessity is the Mother of Invention

Messages From the Past – Poterne III

An Attic Full of Stories – L 237

WE ARE LOOKING FOR (EYE)WITNESSES!

Were you imprisoned in Theresienstadt or do you know people who were imprisoned in the city (1941-45)?
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