Poppo
In the Cooler
- Joined
- Mar 17, 2012
- Messages
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A place of death and despair disguised as a model citizen. This is the deception made by the Germans to cover one of the greatest atrocities in history.
A few months before the horrors of the Holocaust were revealed to the world, the Nazi regime was making enormous efforts to convince the public that concentration camps did not exist. And it was the Czech field of Theresienstadt, the place dedicated to the setting up of this script against the Red Cross, who was invited to inspect the camp, with the cruel Kapò who forced the internees to build fake houses and shops to deceive the delegation, making him believe that you are in a quiet Bohemian village.
Theresienstadt is a fortress built near Prague between 1780 and 1790, after the mother of the Austrian emperor Joseph II of Habsburg-Lorraine ordered its construction as part of a series of defense fortresses.
With the arrival of the twentieth century it became unused and began to be used as a prison for political and military prisoners. After the invasion of the Nazis it was occupied by the Gestapo in 1940 and transformed into a Jewish ghetto.
From 1942 onwards tens of thousands of Jews were imprisoned there; the camp served as a transit point before they were transferred to the extermination camps. To dispel the rumors that the fortress was used to exterminate the prisoners, the Nazis presented it as a 'model Jewish settlement'.
On June 23, 1943, a Danish delegation of the International Red Cross, which included doctors and volunteers, was hosted by a 'mayor' deputed by the SS who gave him a visit to the 'village'. In preparation for the visit, all the detainees were seized and screened and about 200 of the socially wealthy were transferred to double rooms to give the idea that they lived in relative comfort.
Many Jews had already been transferred to Aushwitz before their arrival while the remaining ones were ordered to "beautify" the whole area by building fake shops and cafes to show that the 'citizens' had access to all the goods for daily use.
The delegation was housed in newly redecorated rooms in the most affluent section of the camp - the one where the most affluent prisoners went - and were also welcomed by an opera written by a prisoner and performed by a children's choir.
After a pre-arranged tour of the camp, the German officers questioned some prisoners about their conditions of comfort in the camp, with the order not to answer any direct questions from the delegates.
Despite the masterly level of German censorship, the delegates left with a "positive impression" from Theresienstadt.
This gave the Nazis an embrace to produce a propaganda film called "The Fuhrer Donates a Jewish Village" ("Der Fuehrer Schenkt den Juden eine Stadt") directed by Jewish veteran actor Kurt Gerron, also a prisoner.
Filming lasted 11 days during September '44 but to ensure that the people involved remained silent, most were deported to Auschwitz and Gerron himself was executed in a gas chamber the following October. The film was supposed to have a wide distribution as a means of appeasing the charges to the concentration camps but after a couple of projections, the end of the war prevented its full release to the public.
Some parts of the movie have survived to date but most of the films were destroyed before the end of the conflict.
In reality, the prisoners were shot and left to die of hunger, while others had to succumb to the diseases due to the aberrant conditions of the camp, where about 60,000 people were crammed into barracks designed to accommodate 7,000 soldiers.
Before the camp was freed by the Soviets in May 1945, most of the prisoners had been deported to the death camps but this story has since inspired numerous performances, films and documentaries underlining how much propaganda can be done.
A few months before the horrors of the Holocaust were revealed to the world, the Nazi regime was making enormous efforts to convince the public that concentration camps did not exist. And it was the Czech field of Theresienstadt, the place dedicated to the setting up of this script against the Red Cross, who was invited to inspect the camp, with the cruel Kapò who forced the internees to build fake houses and shops to deceive the delegation, making him believe that you are in a quiet Bohemian village.
Theresienstadt is a fortress built near Prague between 1780 and 1790, after the mother of the Austrian emperor Joseph II of Habsburg-Lorraine ordered its construction as part of a series of defense fortresses.
With the arrival of the twentieth century it became unused and began to be used as a prison for political and military prisoners. After the invasion of the Nazis it was occupied by the Gestapo in 1940 and transformed into a Jewish ghetto.
From 1942 onwards tens of thousands of Jews were imprisoned there; the camp served as a transit point before they were transferred to the extermination camps. To dispel the rumors that the fortress was used to exterminate the prisoners, the Nazis presented it as a 'model Jewish settlement'.
On June 23, 1943, a Danish delegation of the International Red Cross, which included doctors and volunteers, was hosted by a 'mayor' deputed by the SS who gave him a visit to the 'village'. In preparation for the visit, all the detainees were seized and screened and about 200 of the socially wealthy were transferred to double rooms to give the idea that they lived in relative comfort.
Many Jews had already been transferred to Aushwitz before their arrival while the remaining ones were ordered to "beautify" the whole area by building fake shops and cafes to show that the 'citizens' had access to all the goods for daily use.
The delegation was housed in newly redecorated rooms in the most affluent section of the camp - the one where the most affluent prisoners went - and were also welcomed by an opera written by a prisoner and performed by a children's choir.
After a pre-arranged tour of the camp, the German officers questioned some prisoners about their conditions of comfort in the camp, with the order not to answer any direct questions from the delegates.
Despite the masterly level of German censorship, the delegates left with a "positive impression" from Theresienstadt.
This gave the Nazis an embrace to produce a propaganda film called "The Fuhrer Donates a Jewish Village" ("Der Fuehrer Schenkt den Juden eine Stadt") directed by Jewish veteran actor Kurt Gerron, also a prisoner.
Filming lasted 11 days during September '44 but to ensure that the people involved remained silent, most were deported to Auschwitz and Gerron himself was executed in a gas chamber the following October. The film was supposed to have a wide distribution as a means of appeasing the charges to the concentration camps but after a couple of projections, the end of the war prevented its full release to the public.
Some parts of the movie have survived to date but most of the films were destroyed before the end of the conflict.
In reality, the prisoners were shot and left to die of hunger, while others had to succumb to the diseases due to the aberrant conditions of the camp, where about 60,000 people were crammed into barracks designed to accommodate 7,000 soldiers.
Before the camp was freed by the Soviets in May 1945, most of the prisoners had been deported to the death camps but this story has since inspired numerous performances, films and documentaries underlining how much propaganda can be done.
