Hitler’s Gift—The Story of Theresienstadt

As the shadow of Nazism spread over Europe, a small town oinCzechoslovakia suddenly became the continent’s outstanding outpost of learning and culture. Here, inside an area nine blocks long and five wide, one could enjoy the finest, and free-est, music, hear the best lectures and receive some of the best medical care in Hitler’s Europe. For here, living virtually side by side, were many of Europe’s more distinguished composers and conductors, statesmen and soldiers and scientists and scholars, along with numerous celebrities from sate, screen, concert hall and other walks of life.
These prominent personages shared one characteristic: all wee Jews who had fialed to flee the Nazi menace in time.
Because of their stature and connections—within their own countries, and often internationally as wee—these Jews were not earmarked for execution, at least not right away. Their total disappearance might occasion disturbing inquiries abroad as well as within the Reich itself. Instead, they, along with certain other groups of Jews, would supposedly be given an “entire city” in which to establish the first all-Jewish community of modern times. The city was Theresienstadt (Terezin in Czech), and the Nazis described it as the Fuehrer’s gift to the Jews.
The problem was that Terezin had virtually two gates connected by a one-way street: those entering exited as dead!