Borger Max, born 2. 8. 1901, residing in Mor. Ostrava is submitting the following report on the ghetto in Theresienstadt

At the beginning of September 1942, a report arrived at the Council of Elders in Mor. Ostrava from the division of Jewish resettlement in Prague, stating that about 4,000 Jews in the district of Mor. Ostrava, must move to the Theresienstadt Ghetto on September 20th in four transports containing roughly one thousand people that would depart every three days. During the first days of September, the so-called Circus, a group of Jews led by Robert Mandlera arrived in Mor. Ostrava from Prague. This group was charged by the headquarters in Prague to prepare the resettlement of all Jews from the small towns and villages of the Protectorate. We were told that we were allowed to take up to 50 kg with us and that this limit was not to be exceeded. This information didn’t correspond to reality, but it forced us to leave many valuable items behind, especially food, with our Czech friends. Large pieces of luggage, one per person, were taken by the transport section of the so-called Circus with the help of Jewish youths to a school building that was used for housing. From there, they were taken to the train. Each of us had to take our hand luggage, such as backpacks, bread boxes, or bags, by ourselves on the day of departure to barracks about 2 km away from the center of town. The dispatcher of the transports, SS Hauptscharführer Fiedler, forbade anyone from helping us. Nevertheless, in the evening before our departure we took the hand luggage to the apartment of a friend who lived about 100 m from the barracks. Several days earlier, the mattresses from Jewish apartments were taken to the barracks and used for sleeping. Food was prepared for people who were to be transported in the barracks as well.

On September 27th, I had to move to the barracks with members of my family, and from there we were to be taken to Theresienstadt. We had to hand over all of our valuable items, as well as our money and the key to our apartment, and sign a declaration that we were giving up our property and giving it to the resettlement fund. After taking care of these formalities, our citizenship identification cards were stamped with the word Ghettoisiert. Then, several times a day, we had to stand at roll call in the courtyard of the barracks, during which we had to hand over any eventual hidden valuable items, money, tobacco products, lighters under threat of very harsh punishments. These roll calls were led by the head of the circus, Robert Mandler, who treated us as if he were an SS man. The Jewish blood of this man was the only impediment to his becoming a member of the SS. He and his gang didn’t let that stop them from beating up Jews. When he arrived in Theresienstadt, Mandler was so warmly received by the Czechoslovak Jews that he had to be taken to the hospital with several broken ribs and other injuries. When he returned to his apartment, the ghetto leadership had to order the ghetto guards to stand guard in front of his apartment. Unfortunately, several months later, the gestapo appointed this scoundrel chief of the criminal police. On September 29th, we were loaded onto train cars under the supervision of the Schupo, all while the Schupo struck the men, women, and children. We traveled in train cars for people. Right after we set off, somebody died. We traveled with the corpse all the way to Theresienstadt.

On September 30, all of us from Ostrava arrived on the third transport to Theresienstadt. At the train station in Bohušovice we were awaited by SS members and protectorate policemen. The first thing we saw when we arrived at the train station was 2,000 elderly people, who were being loaded into cattle cars and deported to the east. A devastating sight. The SS shouted at them and mercilessly beat the old people. The assistant to the elder of the ghetto, ing. Zucker Otta and the head of the central secretariat Dr. Janowitz were present at the train station. We had to board in rows of four. Some of the old and sick people were loaded into

trucks and taken to Theresienstadt, but there weren’t enough vehicles for all of the old people and so many had to walk the 4 km long road from Bohušovice to Theresienstadt. The luggage remained at the train station and was taken during the day by the transportation section. Each of us had to carry their own hand luggage. At the train station, there were some so-called transport assistance girls there to help people carry their bags, but only a few of us used their help because we had been warned and told that not all the members of the transport team were reliable and honest. Unfortunately. We soon found out that this was true. We needed almost three hours to walk the 4 km, because some people would collapse again and again and we needed to wait for them for a long time. During the march to the ghetto, not only SS members were present, but also protectorate policemen, who made sure we walked slowly and were respectful to those who were tired. They allowed us to take frequent breaks. We finally arrived in Theresienstadt. The street that we walked down was completely devoid of people; it was deathly quiet. We later learned that people weren’t allowed to be out on the streets that the transports were walking on, or indeed even on the side streets, when the transports arrived and departed.

They led us to the courtyard of the Magdeburger Kaserne. We stood there and the so-called began, meaning that the policemen searched our luggage and pockets for contraband. They confiscated money, medicine, tobacco, lighters, matches, liquor, thermoses, pocket flashlights, and other items. When they took all of these things away from us, we were taken to the attic of the barracks. This room was requisitioned to house us. The attic, in which hundreds of people were already living, hadn’t been cleaned for years and so each movement no matter how slight released clouds of dust. There were no beds for sleeping and so we had no other option than to spread our blankets over the brick floor.

The next day, after a strict search, our larger luggage was returned to us. From many of the suitcases they confiscated not only contraband, but also a lot of food and clothing. These things were stolen, or as they said, geschleusst, by the Jewish members of the transportation section. We were lucky that we got back not only our hand luggage, but also our larger suitcases, even though they were made lighter because many transports, especially those from Austria and from the Reich had their baggage confiscated by SS members when they arrived. The people on those transports had only what they wore when they arrived and it took several months before they got wholly unsuitable replacements of what had been taken from them from the Jewish Council. As soon as we received permission to leave our dwelling place, the first thing I did was to search for my mother, who was transported four days before me with other residents of the Jewish old people's home from Mor. Ostrava. In Mor. Ostrava, we were told that the residents of the old people's home would also be housed in the old people's home in Theresienstadt, which would apparently be set up as best as possible. I asked a member of the ghetto guard, where I could find the old people's home. The guard stared at me in surprise and told me that there was nothing of the sort in Theresienstadt. In the central register, I finally found out my mother’s address. She lived in the dark and dirty attic of a private building together with several hundred other old people, without any of her luggage, without blankets, without pillows. On Hauptscharführer Fiedler’s order, everything was taken away still in Mor. Ostrava. Most of the old people lay on the dirty stone floor without straw mattresses. I asked the elder of the house if they could place my mother in a room, but he told me that there isn’t any free room anywhere in the entire house. When I gave him several cigarettes, not only was a space found, but a straw mattress as well. I then took a look around the house. In the rooms, closets, kitchens, and in the shop rooms, people lay on the floor on straw mattresses, most without them. In this house, which had around 28 rooms, there were

X00 1Note 1: number unclear people. Similar conditions could be found in the other houses as well. I gradually found this out as I was looking for shelter for my family. I wandered from house to house, from one elder of the house to another, seeing the same thing everywhere: a house stuffed from the ground floor to the roof with people. Bed upon bed on the floors, the healthy lying close to the sick, the able to walk squeezed next to those who no longer could. There wasn’t any free space, any gaps, people had to crawl over one another when they needed to get from place to place. After a long search, when I’d almost given up all hope, I finally found by chance a small place for my people. A 12 sq. m. walk-through room without a window for 8 people. It was entered straight from the courtyard balcony, a room without a stove, without straw mattresses. About 50 people from the next room constantly walked through the room. Nevertheless, I was happy that I had found this room. Several days later, I managed to scrounge up two straw mattresses for my parents, a priceless jewel in those days. The barracks where the men and women conscripted to forced labor were placed was full as well. In the Sudetenkaserne barracks, for example, 400 men slept in each room on pallets with three bunks. Of the 11 Theresienstadt barracks, six were used as housing. Three, the Dresden, Hamburg, and Podmokly housed the women, and the Hannover, Sudetenkaserne, and riding barracks housed the men. In all of the barracks, the beds had three bunks. This is how about 50,000 Jews lived at the beginning of 1942 with the exception of children, who were better taken care of.

We had high officials in two groups: A and B. The gestapo selected the high officials for group A, and the Jewish elder decided who would be the high officials for group B. The high officials of group A were mostly baptized Jews and people with high and significant positions, such as generals, high officers of the corps, university professors, theater actors, and people who did good deeds for Germany. This group of high officials contained primarily Jews from the Third Reich and Austria and only a few from other countries. It is with great satisfaction that I can say that nobody from Czechoslovakia was among them. The high officials in group B were people who contributed to the Jewish cause. High officials in group A and B were placed in special houses and each had their own room together with their wives. Of course the Jewish elder, his deputies, and council members had superior housing in the Magdeburger Kaserne as well as in the so-called houses for high officials. These people lived two per room. Many other inhabitants of the ghetto received better places for themselves and their families for various reasons.

Apartments were allocated by the division that was called Raumwirtschaft. It was led by Dr. Karel Löwinger, a lesser lawyer from Karlovy Vary whose motto was he who greases, gets it. As a careful lawyer, he got a third person to collect for him.

For children and youths, special shelters were converted, which were organised by the Youth welfare department. This age group was indeed well taken care of. Children lived in large, bright, and airy rooms. They had their own kitchens, which cooked rather well and plentifully considering the circumstances. They also received the contents of care packages that could not be delivered to the addressee, and fruit, chocolate, condensed milk, etc.

Living conditions improved during the year 1943 primarily because of the transports but also because of the high number of deaths in the last months of 1942 and the beginning of 1943. The number of Jews decreased from around 60,000 to about 40,000. Also, in most homes, beds with three bunks just like those in the barracks were built. Nevertheless, there were 14 to 20 people per room depending on its size. It was 2 sq. m. per person. Until July 7th, 1942, Jews were housed only in the barracks, the men separately from the women. They could only leave the barracks when they went to work. Visits weren’t allowed. For months, couples lived in the same place without the opportunity of seeing one another.

If there was men’s work to be done in the women’s barracks, the men rushed to volunteer in order to see their wives at least for a few minutes or to have a brief conversation. Often, however, they were watched so strictly that one couldn’t take two steps away from one’s place of work, and they had to return to the barracks after many hours of hard work without seeing their wives. In May and June, the civilian population of Theresienstadt was evacuated and the emptied houses were given over to the Jews to live in. Theresienstadt was divided into 4 districts, each led by an elder who reported to the internal administration. Each district elder was given a civil servant to sort out housing. Each house was subordinate to the elder of the house, who was responsible for all of the work related to filling the occupancy of the house and had to take care of all the work on the house as well as the happiness of the house’s inhabitants.

When the houses were emptied, the ban on leaving the barracks was lifted and Jews could now move freely around the ghetto. Only two streets remained closed off to Jews, the so-called Aryan street, which the inhabitants of the surrounding area used when they walked through Theresienstadt and a street that led from the administrative building, i.e. from the center to the SS housing. Both streets were fenced off on both ends.

Since it relates to the housing conditions, I will say a few things about the food. Food for the inhabitants of the ghetto was cooked in five large kitchens. The bread was baked in two bakeries, and a portion was brought in from the outside. At first, the meals consisted of bread, soups made from kohlrabi, and bad potatoes. Later, the food improved. It was more varied, but the portions remained small and inadequate. Lunch was either potatoes, about 30 to 36 dkg with a tenth of a liter of beef stew or goulash, or roughly 24 dkg of noodles or bread crumbs, sometimes about 3 dkg of meat, or a little bit of millet mash or pearl barley. For dinner, about three times a week we received a thin soup, sometimes 30 dkg of potatoes for peeling, and other times black coffee. Daily bread rations were 35 dkg, those who worked long and hard received 50 dkg. We also received 60 dkg of margarine a week and 7 dkg of sugar, the workers an additional 2 dkg of margarine and 3 dkg of sugar depending on the group they were part of. Work productivity was not the only deciding factor. Once a week, we received one quarter of a liter of milk. Once in a very long while, we got a bit of marmalade or 3-4 dkg of smoked meat, sometimes a piece of triangular cheese or liver pate from a can. But this happened only rarely.

It’s easy to understand that this food left us very hungry. If you couldn’t procure any food, you went hungry. This was the case for the elderly and those who couldn’t work. Hunger, typhus, intestinal diseases, poor hygiene, housing conditions, and a lack of medicine claimed many victims among the old. During the last months of 1942 and first months of 1943, about 200 people died per day. Day and night on the streets of the ghetto, one could see hand-drawn carts carrying dead bodies to the death rooms. Despite their selfless work, the people who carted off the dead were not able to overcome the problems with moving the bodies and it often happened that corpses remained in crowded rooms for a day or two, or remained on stairways and front rooms. The dead were buried without a casket (in mass graves). Later, after the crematorium was built, they were burned and the ashes were buried. In 1943, the death rate went down because a health service was established. There were hospitals and rooms for the sick. In the last weeks, about 20 people died per day. The lower death rate can partly be explained by the fact that most of the elderly were either transported east or had already died.

A sad effect of our confinement was lice infestation, which shortly reached such a degree that it can safely be said that 70 to 80% of all ghetto inhabitants had lice. This was because, on the one hand, the housing spaces were terribly overcrowded, and on the other because there was a lack of washrooms.

The old and sick lay by the thousand on lice-infested beds, partly concentrated in special rooms inside houses, but there was such a small number of rooms in which there were people who were free of lice. For a long time, nothing seemed to help alleviate our suffering. Experts, chemists, and doctors met and debated what method of delousing was the best, but it took a long time before they decided. Each person thought their opinion was the best and most fair. Finally, something was done. In the Jägerkaserne barracks, people who couldn’t walk were disinfected, in the Hohenelber Kaserne those who could walk on their own were also disinfected. The way people were disinfected in the Jägerkaserne barracks was catastrophic. Older, weakened people, poorly dressed, had to be carried to the baths and back insufficiently covered. They came down with colds, got pneumonia, and died by the hundreds. People frequently returned still with lice to their rooms after they were deloused. Finally, there was a radical intervention. Homes were gradually emptied, filled with gas, during this time the inhabitants were washed, their clothes were disinfected, and only then did they return, deloused, to their clean apartments. Now everything depended on the elders of the houses to constantly check on the inhabitants of their houses, maintain the cleanliness of the bodies, clothes, and underwear, as well as beds, to prevent a new lice infestation. Another sad chapter of our time there was how the very elderly and sick people were treated, and there was a large number of them. These unfortunates had the worst housing. They lived in the worst rooms in the houses, and they were in the so-called old people's home in the riding barracks in large rooms on the ground floor whose small barred windows let practically no air or daylight into the rooms. They lay by the hundreds in these rooms, at the mercy of a retrained or wholly untrained staff. Care of the poorest was extremely humble. The medical staff took a cut of their already small food ration. Unfortunately, the ghetto leadership had no sympathy for the poorest, nor did it want to have any. It’s lamentable that many doctors and caretakers shared this sentiment.

On the one hand there were shortages, suffering, and hunger and on the other there was an entire group of ghetto inhabitants, and not a small one, that not only wasn’t poor, but actually had more of everything, including, food, delicacies, wine, liquor, tobacco, anything they wanted. They were employed in the various divisions of the economic administration, i.e. in the food warehouses, in the butcheries, bakeries, the kitchens, the package issuing office, etc. They stole at an unprecedented scale. In order to prevent theft, the Jewish administration established a special guard, such as the criminal police and supervisors in the kitchens. The result of this was that thefts actually increased, because the supervisors needed to be paid. Another group was the transport division, which received the contents of the luggage of the newly incoming transports. And then there were members of the deliveries division, who traded smuggled cigarettes and food. These people maintain close ties with Aryans and fraudulently smuggled out letters, which they didn’t do for free, of course. And then there was another group of intermediaries and those who bought up gold and other valuables. One can form an impression of the profits reaped by these tradesmen when one considers that a cigarette cost 30 to 35 crowns, and during the time when these fraudulent tradesmen were arrested and their money and cigarettes confiscated, the price of a cigarette rose to 80 crowns. These people not only could afford any food and drink, but their limitless funds allowed them to acquire the best apartments as well.

During our first night in Theresienstadt, we were woken by civil servants of the Jewish council, who called out names that they read off of paper rolls. I asked what was the meaning of this and was told that those whose names were called out were to be placed on the next transport east. Of the 1,000 Jews from Mor. Ostrava who arrived with me in Theresienstadt, more than half were placed on the transport and left three days later.

In October 1942, every third to fourth day, a transport containing thousands of younger and older left for the east. In the middle of October 1942, a gestapo order arrived from Berlin to take down the names of all people older than 65 years of age. The list was created in the administrative rooms of the Magdeburger Kaserne day and night. Old people were constantly being led to the Magdeburger Kaserne, where they had to stand for hours waiting for all formalities of the list to be dealt with. Then a new list was created in the SS rooms, where people had to stand for hours yet again, this time outside. After this list, the letter O (for Osten, or east) or T (for Theresienstadt) was written in the individual’s personal file. The letter T was noted down only for those who had influential friends among NSDAP members. When, however, the transport lists were put together, people with both Os and Ts were on them. When their registration was underway, an order came down that transports totalling 2,000 protectorate inhabitants aged 65 had to be put together, and that the first transport was to leave in three days, and the others every five to six days at the end of October. This report had the same effect as if a bomb had exploded. The mood in the ghetto is impossible to describe. It was a black day. It was rumored that these transports were being sent to Ostrov to an internment camp for officers from the 1914-1918 war, which would be turned into a ghetto for old people. I later learned that all of these transports, like the previous and subsequent transports, had gone to Auschwitz. The departing transports were once again searched (we called it geschleusst, and the rest of the prisoners’ remaining property was taken away.

On the day of departure, we saw old people who were still able to walk drag themselves through the ghetto to the barracks where the search (Schleusse) took place. Most were too sick and ill and had to be wheeled there on carts pushed and pulled by Jews. The dying were carted off to the barracks. Handled as if they were cheap sacks, the members of the administrative division dragged them from the carts. Jelínková of Vizovice and the Theresienstadt executioner Karel Fischer 2Note 2: Adolf Fischer of Prague excelled at this job. The same thing was repeated when these unfortunate souls were transported to the train station. There, the poor people were loaded into cattle cars and cruelly tortured by the SS on duty. SS members weren’t the only ones to act this way. Some protectorate policemen imitated the behavior of the SS. The chief of police, captain Janeček, whose sadistic behavior was far worse than even that of the SS members, stood out in particular. Sometimes, the seriously ill died en route. Their corpses were loaded into the cars, because the gestapo’s number had to be adhered to at all costs. The luggage of the people on the transports was, if they couldn’t carry them themselves, hauled to the train station on carts by the transport division and loaded into the train cars. It would often happen that the camp commander or his deputy Hauptsturmführer Bergl would suddenly forbid the further loading of luggage, and so a large portion of the luggage simply stayed in Theresienstadt and a significant number of people on the transports left with only some or none of the luggage. This sad theater was repeated several times in the coming weeks, because, besides the tens of thousands of inhabitants from the protectorate, 10,000 elderly people from the Reich and Austria met the same fate.

Terror and fear of the transports to the east continued to plague us, because after short breaks new transports kept departing to the east. In the days before each wave of transports, people in the ghetto were fearful and angry. Whenever Hauptsturmführer Möse would arrive in Theresienstadt from Berlin, you knew that new transports were around the corner. Before the leadership officially announced them, people in the ghetto started to talk about the danger of the transports. Everywhere you looked were groups of scared, angry people. Unfortunately, that which we were scared of always transpired. New transports were always put together again. The transport councilors of the Jewish council met day and night and consulted the current prisoner files to decide who would be placed on them. The various divisions had the right to claim that some people were indispensable and therefore save them from the transports.

It’s hard to say whether it was always well deserving and indispensable public servants who got saved. It was entirely up to the council to decide who would be placed on the transport. Unfortunately, the reasons that influenced the council members weren’t always objective. In the so-called Schleusse it was the members of the transport leadership who moved people off the list for money and a good word. When the council met, crowds of terrified people tried to push their way into the courtyard of the Magdeburger Kaserne.

Everyone tried to find out something about their own fate, tried to deflect the danger coming their way based on relationships formed or other means. After negotiations that lasted for days and nights, the lists were finally put together and at night — only at night — slips with their names and the message that they would be transported were given to the people who were to be on the transports. On those nights, it was impossible to sleep. Everyone waiting to be summoned. In the barracks, they were delivered by the elders of the barracks, and in the apartments by the elders of the houses. The rolls with the list of the transported were delivered one by one, everyone waited anxiously whether the elders would come to their room and who would be next. To ratchet up the tension, the transport slips weren’t delivered all at once, but in stages. Until the transports departed, one could never be sure whether one wouldn’t be summoned, because someone was sick or knew how to pull some strings, some people were taken off of the transport lists and the council was in constant session up until the departure of the transports in order to select any eventual replacements. And so fear and anger took hold until the last minute and dissipated only once the train departed.

It’s difficult to describe the feelings of the elders of the houses, whose task it was to deliver the sad news to someone that they would be leaving. When I stepped into a room with a roll and turned the light on, people gazed at me wide-eyed and I read the question in their eyes: am I on them? And then the hardest part: preparing someone who was to be transported. Despair, wails, and tears broke out, especially when, as it often happened, families were torn apart, parents from children or siblings. There was nothing to be done but to make peace with your fate. Everyone got up and helped the person pack. Many summoned people tried a last ditch intervention at the Magdeburger Kaserne to reverse their fate or ran to the doctor to get a confirmation that he or she was unable to be transported. Few were successful. And then there was nothing to be done but to make your way to the search, to the train station, and then to the east.

For many days after the transports departed the mood remained uneasy. When nerves were somewhat calmed, the danger of new transports loomed once more. The number of transports finally went down in mid 1943, but the September and December 1943 and May 1944 transports carried five thousand people each from the ghetto.

In September 1944, the evacuation of the Theresienstadt ghetto began and by the end of October 1944 about 16,000 people were deported. When these transports were put together, Dr. Murmelstein, who, after the elder Dr. Epstein was arrested, took over the leadership of the ghetto, and his secretary Brochnik 3Note 3: Prochnik distinguished themselves. Many head civil servants, who for whatever reason fell into disfavor with these men would soon find out exactly what that meant.

Camp commander Hauptsturmführer Rahm then publicly announced that a new work camp would be established close to Dresden. We were also told that only reliable people were allowed to be placed on this new transport. Those who had already been punished were not allowed on it. 5,000 men were supposed to leave to go to the new camp. The head of the central secretariat, Ing. Otto Zucker, was to lead the new camp. The head of the economic division, Schliesser, was assigned to him and his task was to deal with the economic matters connected with the establishment of a ghetto. The gestapo promised the wives and closest relatives of those who were supposed to leave that they would be protected and not be placed on the transports. In the meantime, the first transport carrying 1,500 men left, and with it Ing. Zucker and Schliesser. Three days later, Dr. Murmelstein issued a proclamation stating that the camp commander was allowing 500 women to go

to their husbands on the third transport together with the men. It was said that this was a singular opportunity that was offered to the women by the gestapo, and that they should volunteer by 6 pm. After this deadline, they would no longer be accepted. Meanwhile, the second transport departed with 1,500 men. The women were to leave on the third transport. However, since only 500 women volunteered, the transport council topped up the number and placed the women as it saw fit.

The third transport was put together. I was also placed on it together with my wife. We traveled on passenger cars accompanied by the SS and the Schupo. It was rumored that we were going to the Reich to a new camp close to Dresden. We totalled 1,000 men and 500 women. We arrived in Dresden, but continued on, and when we got to Görlitz, we realized that everything that the gestapo told us were lies as usual. We weren’t going to a new labor camp, but to Auschwitz. We arrived there after a 36 hour ride. We had to leave all of our luggage on the train. Right after we disembarked we were separated from the women, and never heard from them again. Then Obersturmbannführer Mengele, a doctor, conducted the selection. Out of 1,000 men, only 462 arrived in the camp, the others, as we later learned, went to the gas chambers. From October 30th until the day we were taken to Buchenwald, about 16,000 Jews from Theresienstadt arrived in Auschwitz, 70% of whom were immediately taken to the gas chambers. I don’t know whether more transports left from Theresienstadt after that and I also don’t know whether all of the Jews were evacuated from Theresienstadt.

But let’s return now to Theresienstadt:

The leadership of the ghetto belonged to the service post of the SS that was in Theresienstadt. The commander was SS Hauptsturmführer Dr. Seidl, his deputy was camp inspector SS Hauptsturmführer Bergl. Guarding it was given over to the protectorate police division led by first lieutenant of the police Janeček. The elder of the ghetto and the council of elders were responsible for carrying out the orders of the gestapo. The elder of the camp during my time there was Jakob Edelstein, his deputy ing. Zucker. In reality, the council of elders was a mere decoy because it wasn’t able to make decisions about anything. During their sessions, members were only told which orders for the ghetto elder were from the post of the SS (Dienstelle) and what to do to fulfil these orders. They didn’t vote, all the council of elders had to do was to take the relevant orders into consideration. Without permission, neither the ghetto elder nor any member of the council of elders were allowed to go to the so-called Dienststelle in regard to any matter. The only exception was Dr. Löwenstein. This baptized Jew, a former German active officer, arrived from Minsk in 1943 where he was the head of the local Jewish ghetto police, and was placed in the Small Fortress of Theresienstadt (concentration camp). After a short stint in jail he was assigned to the ghetto as the commander of the guards based on the orders of the Berlin gestapo. In his first days he was presented to the SS commander of the ghetto by the elder, but in a short while he was able to get there by himself without the elder. It was learned that Dr. L. was acting as an informer. He would show up without an invitation and without being asked, even to wholly private meetings in order to spy. A struggle over him broke out immediately, but it was exceedingly difficult to do anything about it. Only if he went against the explicit wishes of the SS leader and did something to benefit the elders would it be possible to accuse him of dishonesty while carrying out his duties, charge him, and remove him from his post. Until then, he was constantly monitored by the Jewish criminal police.

In 1943, the Berlin elder of the Jews arrived in Theresienstadt, and former Rabbi Dr. Murmelstein from Vienna, and on the orders of the Reich’s commissioner for carrying out the final solution to the Jewish question the leadership was changed. The elder became Dr. Epstein, the 1. deputy Edelstein, the 2. deputy Dr. Murmelstein. Unlike Edelstein, who, if it were possible under the circumstances, acted on his own initiative and at each opportunity attempted to get the SS leadership to agree to reliefs for the Jews of Theresienstadt and who sometimes didn’t carry out orders that were unfavorable to Jews, Dr. Epstein announced ahead of time that he would 100% fulfil any order that the SS would give him. This wasn’t very pleasant for us.

We hadn’t heard anything good about Dr. Murmelstain. In Vienna, he was a toady for the gestapo, blindly followed all of the orders he was given and even more to get into the gestapo’s good graces. He was also brutal and even, as eyewitnesses report, beat the workers of the religious community in Vienna.

Life in the ghetto was controlled by regulations and the order that was issued by the gestapo. Besides this order, a whole series of prohibitions were in place. For example, it was forbidden to have money, gold, valuables, tea, coffee, tobacco, and smoking was also banned. It was forbidden to have contacts with Aryans and be in any kind of written touch with people outside of the ghetto. Writing in general was strictly forbidden and breaking this order was punished by death. For this offence, on the orders of the camp commander Dr. Seidl, 9 Jews, most of them young, were executed on January 10th, and 7 on February 26th. The entire population had to watch the execution on the orders of the ghetto commander. Karel Fischer, by trade a butcher from Prague, carried out theexecutions. He was also a servant of the dissecting room of the German medical faculty of the university in Prague. All sixteen who were sentenced to death died as heroes. When they were led to the scaffold they swore at the SS and spat on them. Only one of them cried and called out before the execution I didn’t do anything wrong, I only wrote to my mother. Other offenses were punished by jail terms and being shipped out on the next transport, or being transferred to the small fortress (concentration camp) Theresienstadt. I find it pointless to report on the SS’s methods of interrogation, because these methods are known all around the world. All methods were used, from beatings to burnings with hot iron, from suffering to all kinds of cruelty that could only have emerged from the brains of the SS. Hauptsturmführer Bergl, who was almost always present during interrogations, excelled in particular. This doesn’t mean that other camp commanders would not have actively participated in the interrogations. During three and a half years, I came to know three of them:

These were Dr. Seidl, Burger, and Rahm. For example, during an interrogation, Hauptsturmführer Rahm broke three chairs over the head of one offender. Let us also remember Scharführer Heinl, who was extremely unpleasant during interrogations and otherwise and didn’t lag behind the others in his brutality.

Despite all of the restrictions and strict punishments, Jews maintained active relations with the Aryans. Most of the Czech policemen in Theresienstadt brought food and cigarettes to the ghetto, and snuck letters out. I must note that most of the policemen treated us very well. Contacts with Jews and fraudulent transport, when they became known, had very unpleasant consequences for the policeman for he was arrested immediately. Nevertheless, most of them didn’t let it stop them and they supported us. But there were also some very unpleasant men among the police, who rivalled the SS in their treatment of the Jews, such as the previously mentioned first lieutenant Janeček, the constable Ulmann, lieutenant Hasenkop 4Note 4: Hasenkopf, and Hašek. If the first lieutenant Janeček caught a policeman in conversation with a Jew, then all Jews were beaten and denounced to the SS just like the policeman. Almost all Aryans who were sent to work in the ghetto, like the railway workers who rode to Bohušovice and the civilians who came into contact with Jews due to work, brought us food and cigarettes. The Aryan coach drivers who removed garbage from the ghetto smuggled in food for us. Sudden unannounced searches in the barracks were often helped by the policemen and ghetto guards. Searches were conducted by SS members. Sometimes they happened during the day, sometimes at night. Some forbidden items were always found. We knew that almost all of these searches were conducted based on denouncements by Jews, we knew that informers could be found among the members of the former Jewish police of Vienna who previously collaborated with the Scharführer Heinl, but we almost never safely found out who the perpetrators were.

The arrests and the interrogations, during which the investigated were reluctant to divulge the names of the Aryans they were in contact with, were accompanied with the toughest torture. Some collapsed during these terrible interrogations and named their suppliers who were usually Jews as well as Aryans. This was followed by new arrests, new interrogations, and yet more arrests. Every day brought newer and ever more unpleasant surprises. One day was never like another. For example, in November 1942, a punishment was meted out upon the entire ghetto for spitting and throwing paper out on the street: no walks for four weeks, no street lighting. On the orders of Dr. Seidl. In September 1943, several hundred children from Bialostok whose parents were murdered by the Nazis arrived in Theresienstadt. They were housed in the barracks outside of the ghetto and the ghetto inhabitants were forbidden to have any kind of contact with them under pain of punishment. Jewish doctors and nurses had been sent to the house a day earlier, they were strictly forbidden from meeting anyone in the ghetto. And they truly never met anyone. The children were led by the large SS guard to the delousing bath in the ghetto. The sight was heart wrenching. A line of scared, shy children, dirty, downtrodden, and terribly starved. Terrible scenes took place in front of the bath. Children were unwilling to enter the bath and constantly shouted Nicht, nicht, gas. (No, no, gas.). Only once I got to Auschwitz myself did I understand why the children had been so scared. The Jewish doctors and caretakers had a hard time calming the children down and getting them to the baths. Then the children were clothed in new clothes and an order arrived that they were to be specially and plentifully fed. It was said that these children were to be exchanged and would be transported through Turkey to Palestine. Several weeks later, these children were indeed sent with the doctors and caretakers without allowing any of them the possibility of saying goodbye to any of their people. I later learned that all of the children together with their entire staff were sent to Auschwitz and gassed. In November 1942, the camp leadership ordered a census of the entire population. It was held on November 10th in the Bohušovická hollow. Except for the seriously ill, who were then concentrated into two barracks together with newborns and their mothers and counted there, everyone had to come out with their children and strollers and march at six in the morning to the Bohušovická hollow. They stood outside all day and were counted over and over again. A whole flock of gestapo came to Prague for this very purpose. It was winter, raining, and snowing, and we froze considerably. It was getting dark and we were getting ready to stand outside all night. Just then an order came to return to the ghetto. It was completely dark when we began marching back.

In May 1944, we were crushed by the news that Jakob Edelstein and many leading civil servants of the ghetto were arrested. It was said that they were arrested for mistakes they made when they put together the transports in November 1942. Some changes had been made to them at that time, but it happened with almost every transport that people who could either bribe or use their contacts were taken off the transports at the last minute. But Edelstein didn’t coordinate these changes. He was simply made responsible for all of the mistakes that the civil servants made. After several days in jail, he was taken to Auschwitz with all of the other arrested people and there, as I later learned, imprisoned for a time in the bunker and then shot. I was told that his wife and small child shared his fate.

Another phenomenon that was a daily occurrence must be mentioned. It was the so-called ladybirds. These were women from the National Socialist People's Welfare organization from Litoměřice, who, accompanied by policemen, ghetto guards, and the women’s criminal police would enter the women’s barracks and into block in order to requisition. The people living in the rooms in which the ladybirds were conducting their activity had to leave the rooms and their business began. Everything in the rooms was turned over, turned upside down, and they collected whatever they liked and whatever they found. When they left the rooms and the inhabitants returned again, it took several hours before everything was back together again.

To my report on everyday affairs, I’d like to say something about the employment of the inhabitants of the ghetto: every woman and every man were put to work immediately after their arrival to the ghetto. Everyone had to, before being issued a permanent job either in the administration or work doing manual labor for a time in a group of one hundred. Those who were organized into a group of one hundred were issued work everyday. Women generally cleaned, and men did jobs of all types. Each had the option to sign up for the job they thought they were best suited for. They could submit their curriculum vitae to the relevant division and if the head of the division thought that the applicant could be employed, he requested the central labor office to grant the applicant the job at the relevant division. As soon as the labor office released the applicant from this current employment, the request was sent to the personnel division, which had to approve the position. Only this approval was the final and valid one.

The individual divisions of the ghetto were:

The internal administration: Administration of houses and barracks

The guards of the ghetto

The criminal police

The post office

The central registry

The so-called Raumwirtschaft dealt with ghetto housing

Economic division: Procuring food, supervision over the kitchens, agriculture, bakeries.

Construction division: Maintaining and fixing residential housing

Installation division: Installing pipes and establishing water mains, equipping baths

Financial division

Transport division

Labor office

Healthcare

In Theresienstadt, all types of trades and all kinds of workshops dedicated to them could be found. Besides this, men worked as street sweepers, gutter cleaners, corpse bearers, and worked in shafts. Women mostly arranged rooms, worked as nurses, and in colonies of cleaning ladies for the barracks and houses. One of the most important divisions was the installation division. People from this division had to install an entire network of water mains in the town, which had up to now provided for the normal usage of water from wells for about 5,000 inhabitants. Engineers and workers worked without stopping and they actually managed to hook up almost every house to the water supply system in a short amount of time. In many houses flushing toilets were installed and washrooms and showers were equipped. In a short time, Jews also built the track from Bohušovice to Theresienstadt. Except for work in the ghetto, there was work to do for the SS and for the Germans. For the SS, it was mostly agricultural work,which employed about 1,200 people, mostly women. Then there was the work on the small fortress that was carried out by roughly twenty men. This commando was undoubtedly the worst because the SS who were in the small fortress would constantly beat these people. The divisions that was under the control of the Germans and under the direct supervision of the SS were the following: the manufacture of crates, the dressmaker’s, the uniform maker’s, cleaner’s, chambers (so-called Bekleidungskammer) i.e. a clothing warehouse, the applied arts division. In these divisions, 3,000-3,500 were employed, mostly women.

In the chambers in which mostly women were employed, the luggage was opened and confiscated from those who had arrived and their contents was sorted. Clothes, shoes, undergarments, everything was divided into three groups. Groups I and II were sent to the Reich, things in group III, i.e. things that were basically unusable were given over to the Jewish administration. Jews were clothed in things from these. Supervision was the purview of the SS and the police, as well as the women who worked for the gestapo, who carried out body searches on the women, when they left their workplaces. Sometimes the women needed to take all of their clothes off. They were also supervised by the overseer women of the Jewish criminal police. It must be said that these female overseers were often more pleasant than the German women. Mrs. Saša Braunová, an emigrant from Germany who lived for a long time in Prague and Mor. Ostrava distinguished herself as an informer.

The SS allowed the large number of artists in Theresienstadt to take over the agenda of entertaining during the population’s free time. There were active artists of all disciplines. Opera, opereta, oratoria, symphonies, solos, chamber music, cabarets. At the beginning, this entertainment took place in the large hall of the Magdeburger Kaserne. Later, a concert hall in the town hall as well as the cinema and school hall in the Sports grounds were also used. There were also various performances in the attics of the various houses that were especially adjusted for these purposes. With the simplest and primitive resources, some very wonderful results were achieved. These performances were a ray of light in the grey drabness of our existence in Theresienstadt. Sports of all kinds were practiced, especially football. Proper races were attended by thousands of viewers, and policemen and SS members came to watch them in secret. In 1945, a concert coffee house was established and organized by the trumpet band that played on the town square every day. The latter, as well as the grocery store and two clothing stores, whose only goods were displayed in their display windows, borrowed from warehouses, were established only because of the awaited committee from a neutral foreign country. After a few months, the beautification of Theresienstadt was carried out. On the Main Square, lawns and roses were planted. Houses were fixed, painted anew, curtains were hung on windows, but only those facing the street that the committee would be walking down on. The number of inhabitants of the houses was decreased and the third bunk was removed from the beds. Entire homes were emptied out, new furniture was moved in, curtains were hung in every window, in each room a family with at most three members were brought to live. For the Danes, special housing was quickly arranged and made ready since the families had to move into them in only several hours. In short, we built a Potěmkin Village. We tried to show the committee that Jews in Theresienstadt have beautiful housing and are extremely well taken care of. On the day that the committee was in Theresienstadt, we received the best food and twice as much of it as usual. The Third Reich shall not let the Jews starve. But not sooner had the committee left Theresienstadt than the Danes were ordered to vacate the once again made pretty apartments and move back to their former lodging. The only thing that remained there were the curtains in the windows. Before the visit of the committee, a propaganda film was made. For the movie, large signs were placed on the front of the stores, coffee house, and bank. Large events, such as sports races, an outside cabaret, and a concert on the main square were organized. Jews had to participate in great numbers. All business stopped just so the employees could participate, even factories working for the wartime production had to send their people. But it was the beginning of the end. Soon afterwards, the evacuation of the ghetto that I previously submitted a report about began in earnest.

Copied from the original.

Submitted to the Documentation campaign by Mr. Max Munk, Uherské Hradiště.

Accepted on behalf of the Documentation campaign by: Scheck

Accepted on behalf of the archive: Tressler