TEREZIN CONCENTRATION CAMP

A town of rich and painful history

Terezin is a small town about 70 kilometres (40 miles) north-west of Prague. Since WWII, Terezin has been associated with the notorious Theresienstadt - Jewish ghetto and concentration camp established by the Nazi SS. In the course of the war around 155,000 people were held there in desperate conditions awaiting transport to the death camps further east, many of them, including children died in Terezin itself.

Terezin was once a fortress town, comprising a Main and Small fortress on either side of the river. Built at the end of the 18th century by Emperor Joseph II, ruler of the Habsburg lands of which Bohemia was then part, the settlement was designed as a defensive measure against a potential military incursion by the Prussians from the north. But as a fortress, Terezin – named after Habsburg ruler Maria Theresa – was soon obsolete. After that, Terezin became a garrison town, and then a prison during the First World War. After the Nazi occupation, the Main fortress was turned into a “special” Jewish ghetto, while the less known Small Fortress was a cruel prison of the Reich’s secret police - the Gestapo. Unlike Auschwitz, Terezin was not an extermination camp, but rather a transit camp from where Jews could be deported to death camps further to the east. Many horrors were endured by those imprisoned here.

If you are interested in the history of World War II, Holocaust and daily life in the ghetto, come and visit the most significant sites in Terezin like the Gestapo prison, the museum located in the Big Fortress, the Crematorium, the newly opened exhibition at Magdeburg Barracks and other premises to get a clear idea of how life there.