Theresienstadt

• Preface – After that, the blows come hard and fast: the brutalities of the Gestapo house searches, the step-by-step removal of elderly Jews to the Theresienstadt concentration camp, the suicides of those who prefer to snatch at least death from the Nazis. All this was accompanied by the steady shortening of rations for Jews, the lack of privacy and overcrowding in the Jews’ Houses, and the continuing military success of the Axis powers. **pVüI
• Preface – The Jews left in Dresden are uncertain of the fate of those deported to the East or even to nearby Theresienstadt. The arrest and murder of individuals, however, are a token of the deportees’ likely fate. Yet even uncertainty can still give rise to hope of something better. **pVü
• Preface –  Finally, on February 12, 1945, the waiting appears to be over. Most of the remaining Jews, whether in mixed marriages or “privileged,” are to be ordered to report for labor duty on February 15. In all likelihood, they would have been deported to Theresienstadt; among those summoned for forced labor were children under the age of ten. **pXI
• Notes –   Theresienstadt (Terezin) concentration camp, in Bohemia but less than forty miles from Dresden, was set up in a former Austrian garrison town. Being sent there was supposed to be a privilege, and by comparison with the extermination camps in Poland, the chances of survival were certainly higher. But (a) by any other standards it was a death camp, and (b) it was used as a transit camp for Auschwitz.  **pXIV
• 1942 June 16, Tuesday afternoon – Three Berlin transports in a desperate condition have already passed through the city and been given coffee. They go to the Theresienstadt assembly camp, from where dispersal to Poland follows. Principally the widows and children of the men recently shot in Berlin or sent to concentration camps. **p79
• 1942 June 29, Monday morning – On Wednesday [the people from] the old people’s home will be sent to Theresienstadt in an automobile. Dr. Katz will accompany the transport. We were told his characteristic remark: “I hope I’ll come back.” **p89
• 1942 July 1, Wednesday morning – Yesterday morning, as I was going to the letter box, Frau Ida Kreidl told me: “Now I have lost everything. My children in Prague are also being evacuated.” She has a married daughter there, her grandson is ten years old. The family is being sent to Theresienstadt, from there into the unknown. Her son Paul has been gone since January. **p89
• 1942 July 2, Thursday forenoon – The removal of the old people’s home to Theresienstadt brutal. Truck with benches, crowded together, only the tiniest bundle could be taken, cuffs and blows. P90
• 1942 July 3, Friday morning – Trude Scherk writes that Grete is in the Jewish Hospital after a “light stroke.” She herself is expecting evacuation to Theresienstadt. Since she is almost seventy, they will probably leave her in Theresienstadt (here, too, they say that old people remain there permanently, only the younger ones are sent on elsewhere), and things are supposed to be not so bad at all. **p90
• 1942 July 6, Monday evening – Katchen reports: The Henriettenstift home, about fifty old women, is being evacuated. So her mother, the indestructible eighty-year-old, must go to Theresienstadt, too; Katchen’s brother has been arrested and is thus a dead man.  **p95
• 1942 July 9, Thursday morning Sultriness and sudden thunder – When did I first hear the name Theresienstadt? (The existence of the place, which is supposed to be near Leitmeritz, formerly a small fortress, tiny little town, was completely unknown to me.) It must have been last winter, that the Kreidls talked about evacuations from Prague and Vienna to Theresienstadt. It must be less than two months ago that there was also talk of German transports to the place.**p96
• 19422 July 10, Friday morning  – The Marckwalds state as true and certainly not exaggerated that since the beginning of the deportations 2,000 (two thousand) Jews in Berlin had taken their own lives. — Yesterday, in addition to the transport of old people for Theresienstadt, a new evacuation of those capable of working was announced: seventeen people in their forties and fifties, including Lampen, the nurse, who came to look after Frau Pick, and whose father was recently sent to Theresienstadt, will be transported to Poland on Monday night.**p97
• 1942  July 17, Friday morning – Yesterday evening invited to Ida Kreidl’s for a belated birthday party for Eva. We were properly entertained, as on that still almost peaceful Saturday before the Gestapo broke in: tea and homemade poppy seed crescents. But all conversation revolves around the wretchedness of the situation. Ida Kreidl and Frau Pick are certainly reckoning on Theresienstadt, the Marckwalds also. Marckwald says it would be a death sentence for him. He receives a state pension as I do, he believes it will not be paid to him in Theresienstadt. **p102
• 1942 July 19, Sunday evening – In the afternoon to the Kronheims, who now live in Altenzeller Strasse, and whom we recently, after a long time, saw at Friedheim’s burial. They wrote on Eva’s sixtieth birthday and urged us to visit them. The woman has shrunk away to nothing after serious ill-treatment and, threatened with Theresienstadt, is now contemplating suicide (I said. Veronal should now be called “Jewish drops”). **p103
• 1942 July 24, Friday morning –  Trude herself believes she will be sent to Theresienstadt in the course of the next week. She has already been inoculated against typhus and cholera, she has declared herself available for work, “in order to be able to buy medicines with the money she earns.” The general mood among Jews is that they do not fear evacuation quite as much as before and now even regard Theresienstadt as a relatively humane place. **p105
• 1942 July 27, Monday morning – Seliksohn’s conversation revolves around the two focal points: “If only I would be evacuated!” and “If only I had Veronal!” He repeats a hundred times over, that we shall all be murdered. And I think he is right. He: already in a concentration camp once, former employee of the Social Democrats (“Vorwarts” bookshop). And I: After doing away with me they will save a pension. I am too young for Theresienstadt (under 65), probably too old for work in Poland. **p110
• 1942 July 31, Friday, toward evening – Aufrichtig, the old farmer, and his little farmer’s wife—I wrote about them when I was shoveling snow—there was no return visit following our visit (even then it was for the sake of potatoes!) and we lost touch with them. Just recently they were named as being part of the latest Theresienstadt transport. This morning the Joachimsthal widow (great friends with Katchen) brought the news that the couple had gassed themselves, the wife saved, the husband dead. **p113
• 1942 August 2, Sunday evening – The Neumanns came at half past four—he has become a skeleton, compared to him I am fat and rosy, and even Eva does not look as thin. Both Neumanns in low spirits. They are reckoning on Theresienstadt. **p114
• 1942 August 4, Tuesday afternoon – Trude Scherk writes: On August 10 she will be evacuated to Theresienstadt. […]
  We shall not be able to see Trude when she passes through, it will also be impossible for Eva. We have written to her, that in Theresienstadt she should stick to people from Dresden. She would find out about our fate from them. Perhaps then there will also be a possibility of communication; at least Steinitz maintains there’s a connection Theresienstadt-Prague-Dresden.  **p114
• 1942 August 6, Thursday morning – Habituation: A couple of weeks have passed since the murder of Joachimsthal, a couple of months since the house searches here. And already I am living in a state of dull-witted placidity. Habituation: On Tuesday another transport leaves Dresden for Theresienstadt; and already it appears to me, appears to Jewry here as a matter of course. **p115
• 1942 August 8, Saturday midday – I went to see Aufrichtig: […] I spoke words of comfort to him, in a few weeks he would be restored to health, Theresienstadt was a privilege, etc.
  His wife is in bed because of a light stroke, the result of a severe Gestapo beating. “She was 74 yesterday. She’s recovering. And when we get to Theresienstadt—I hope with the next transport!—she will be healthy again. She’ll meet relatives there, she will be nursed, and I, I know the man in charge there (Where from? There are only rumors about Theresienstadt, nothing is certain!); **p117
• 1942 August 10, Monday morning – This morning a few lines of thanks from Frau Kronheim, whom I had not found at home recently. The woman, the most delicate, composed of the thinnest little bones, most anemic corpse among all the walking cadavers here, and really only a fleeting acquaintance of ours, writes in the exalted tone of someone about to die and taking leave of her closest relatives. She reckons on Theresienstadt (rightly) every day, trembles at separation from her daughter. “Do not forget us … I entrust my Grete to you, should fate soon overtake me …,” she appears to hint at an intention to commit suicide, sends “most sincere” greetings “in loyal friendship.” This letter, too, is a j’accuse. **p119
• 1942 August 14, Friday morning – He, Bernstein, considered it quite certain, that in Theresienstadt the sick, who are incapable of working, are disposed of by injections, there was a lack of morphine, insulin, etc. — I asked, why not here? — Because there it takes place more secretly, Theresienstadt is completely isolated **p121
• 1942 August 18, Tuesday morning – As had been arranged, a Frau Schlesinger, who had been in the next room to Trude Scherk in Berlin, has sent me a postcard from a friend of Trude’s in Stockholm: He had made inquiries of the Red Cross, there was hope that “in the foreseeable future” the Geneva Red Cross would be able to make contact with the people in Theresienstadt. (I don’t believe it, there will be too much to hide there.) I shall try to get the news to Trude by word of mouth. **p124
• 1942 August 19, Wednesday morning – Les faits nouveaux: Ida Kreidl, Frau Pick, Frau Kronheim are included in the new transport to Theresienstadt. — We have to leave the apartment by September 1 after all, the postponement to October 1 has been overturned. **p125
• 1942 August 20, Thursday midday – Frau Pick attempted suicide a second time, and this time successfully. Veronal. Fear of ill-treatment by the Gestapo during the transport, perhaps also fear of unknown Theresienstadt. In recent days she was extremely lively, in the evenings allowed hardly anyone else to get a word in…, **p126
• 1942 August 21, Friday morning – German morality: During the brutal roll-call scene at the Community House, I mean the reading of the list of names for the transport to Theresienstadt, a couple of Hitler Youths were present, evidently young blood getting their training as Spitter and Boxer successors. **p129
• 1942 August 22, Saturday morning – First I was with the Kronheims at 41 Altenzeller Strasse for a few minutes. This time they were both at home, packing. The mother, who must go to Theresienstadt on Tuesday, even more pinched, paler, tinier, hunched than the last time, a bent little matchstick skeleton, the daughter even more hysterical, tearful, despairing than the last time. **p129
• 1942 August 24, Monday afternoon – At home in the evening we were once again caught up in the evacuation. But Ida Kreidl was very calm, almost cheerfully excited: In Theresienstadt she will meet a sister from Prague, she is traveling with a sister-in-law. Her good mood (of course, accompanied by great agitation) also held up this morning. She repeatedly came upstairs to us from the early morning on. We “inherited” many more things: potatoes, flour, tools, etc. **p132
• 1942 August 29, Saturday morning – The owner of the house—she is over eighty—spends the whole afternoon by the window, waiting “in case ‘they’ come.” However, this old lady will probably be deported to Theresienstadt with the next transport, and it is impossible to foresee into whose hands the house will fall and how soon we shall have to get out again. **p134
• 1942 August 30, Sunday toward evening – At the Marckwalds’ we found him very composed, her reasonably so—but that may be playacting. Again I held forth to her not to anticipate anything—one can never know what the next day will bring, one cannot know what possibilities Theresienstadt offers. But I held forth without any great confidence. **p135
• 1942 September 2, half past eleven on Wednesday evening. On a cleared desk – The chaos of the move. Ninety-nine percent of the work load was on Eva’s shoulders, I had to share the disruption. [.. . ] Toward evening at the Marckwalds’ for a while, who really are among the next fifty. They appear composed. He hopes to find his sister in Theresienstadt, but trembles for his morphine. **p136
• 1942 September 6, Sunday midday – The widespread and greater misery plays its part in our own misery. Tomorrow the next transport to Theresienstadt. This morning a band of young people wearing the star invaded the house. During the week they work in the factory, on Sunday they have to help out at the Community. **p138
• 1942 September 8, Tuesday morning – On the board of the Community there is a lawyer. Dr. Winskowitz, whom I once fleetingly met at Simon’s. The same age as myself, kept from Poland because he holds the Iron Cross, First Class. He was informed yesterday that he will go to Theresienstadt with the next (and last) transport of the elderly, “as a privilege,” like the war wounded, because of the Iron Cross, First Class. — What will happen to us? **p142
• 1942 September 9, Wednesday early morning – I am gradually getting to know the geography of our new accommodation; I am now, after twenty-two years, gradually getting to know Dresden), to the bank and to the Neumanns, who are now living with Neumark, the lawyer, and will probably have to go to Theresienstadt in two weeks. I could not console them as usual, was more depressed than they.  **p142
• 1942 September 13, Sunday afternoon – The Kreidl family was related by marriage to a family called Arndt (jewelry shop). I got to know the old man, who is about seventy, in the winter when shoveling snow; I saw and spoke to the son (in his thirties—his wife is in England, he himself was surprised here by the war) a couple of times at Ida and Elsa KreidTs. The father was a reserve for the last transport to Theresienstadt and is therefore a certain candidate for the next and final one. The son has been arrested during the past few days. **p145
• 1942 September 16, Wednesday toward evening – The John Neumanns are on the list of the last twenty-five “old people” to go to Theresienstadt. Further the Pinkowitzes; he is the teacher and undertaker. Only my age, but “privileged” because war disabled. The others are destined for forced labor in Poland. My fate also? **p146
• 1942 October 27, Tuesday morning – At the Community I met the nurse (Bernstein), whom I had got to know at Marckwald’s. He said he had heard from a reliable source that many deaths had already occurred in Theresienstadt. He also believes Marckwald is dead. (But where does he get the information from?) **p158
• 1942 November 2, Monday midday – The Arndt family. I got to know the old boy when shoveling snow, then saw him again a couple of weeks ago on the day before his evacuation to Theresienstadt. His son had just been arrested; I met the son at Elsa Kreidl’s. Old Arndt, jeweler, is brother-in-law to Ida Kreidl, young Arndt married at about the same time as his cousin Paul Kreidl; the young women got out to England; the young husbands were surprised by the war. Paul Kreidl is—perhaps still alive—in Poland. **p161
• 1943 February 27, Saturday afternoon – All the time I kept thinking: Perhaps he is exaggerating, but if it isn’t the camp or Theresienstadt, it will be “labor duty” and with it the end of any possibility of studying. — I talked to Richter about the threatened new sanctions. He: He believed the mixed marriages were still safe. **p204
• 1943 May 14, Friday morning – Eight of them had been working at one table at Enterlein. He, Eisenmann, was the only one left. Kahane was the sixth to be arrested, the seventh man was Imbach, the remnants of whose family we got to know as our fellow lodgers—the mother was sent to Theresienstadt, one daughter lived here alone, until she was deported to Poland, another daughter died in Auschwitz during our time; we occasionally met the married brother; he lived on Emser Allee—so this seventh man, in a mixed marriage, was summoned to the Gestapo for yesterday, he did not go and has disappeared. Perhaps suicide, perhaps in a hiding place **p229
• 1943 June 12, Saturday afternoon – Frau Hirschel has been left in the apartment with the children. These last Jews not in a mixed marriage will be deported to Theresienstadt immediately after Whitsun. Theresienstadt is considered a privilege and probably is one, compared to Poland; nevertheless this deportation, too, means slavery and complete loss of property. What the truth is about Theresienstadt, whether people starve and die there, or whether they exist in a halfway human state, no one really knows. **p238
• 1943 June 22, Tuesday morning – The Hirschels and the Kahlenbergs were taken to Theresienstadt yesterday. The Kahlenbergs, mother and son, and Herr Hirschel were probably in prison here for two weeks. **p240
• 1943 December 11, Saturday morning – Did I make a note of the Gammann case? His Aryan wife collapsed in the street and died in the hospital. He had difficulty getting permission to enter the cemetery for the burial. He has now been deported to Theresienstadt. Jacobi related in strictest confidence that a large Jewish transport to Theresienstadt passed through Dresden in the last few days. An eighty- six-year-old woman died on the way. The corpse was turned over to Jacobi. **p277
• 1944 January 23, Sunday morning toward eleven o’clock – The son (like Erich Meyerhof’s sons a soldier at first) went to police headquarters, [said] he was a Gestapo officer, wanted to speak to the prisoner and take her somewhere. He actually reached the entrance of the headquarters with her; once outside he would have got her to safety. (There are said to be many Jews in hiding, particularly in Berlin […].) There he ran into a Gestapo man who knew him. The mother is now in Theresienstadt, the son hanged himself in his cell. *p292
• 1944 February 28, Monday morning before six o’clock and after breakfast – In this house there lives a huge, good-humored man by the name of Heim, with whom I occasionally exchanged a few words in the air-raid cellar. An innkeeper. I have never seen his wife; she was already ill when we moved in. The man himself has a serious heart condition. His Aryan wife died yesterday afternoon (cancer). The man must now “pack his case” immediately: He will certainly be deported very soon, at the very least to Theresienstadt **p299
• 1944 March 12, Sunday morning – Heim, the publican, whose wife died a couple of weeks ago, has already been “fetched” in the last few days. Theresienstadt. The night before last, the ailing Frau Cohn had an attack of asphyxia. The first thought: If she dies—though in the meantime she is on her feet again, a doctor was not to be had, Fetscher advised Cohn by telephone—if she dies, he has to go, and as he is not quite sixty, not just to Theresienstadt. I call it National Socialist burning of widowers **p302
• 1944 April 12, Wednesday morning – Have you heard anything from Arndt, the jeweler, in Theresienstadt?” We got talking. “The swine!… But it can’t last much longer!” A Party member! At the end I said: “But don’t say anything to anyone; otherwise you don’t need to bother making the spectacles for me, because it will cost me my head.” **p308
• 1944 May 9, Tuesday toward evening – Neumark told us: 1) Jon Neumann † in Theresienstadt. Probably not murder—unexpected heart failure after a hernia operation—but very sad nevertheless. I would like to have seen him again. The number of the dead grows ever larger. **p313
• 1944 July 21, Friday After eight o’clock –  Katz told us: Neumark, who is very nervous, and several other Jews had already packed their suitcases last night. To that I said, and Katz agreed: Why pack suitcases? If they come for us now, we won’t go to Theresienstadt, but against the wall or to the gallows. Katz also said: Kowno was really supposed to be in Russian hands and German border areas to be under Russian artillery fire. **p337
• 1944 August 14, Monday evening – Packet has been the word used for years now for “sample of no commercial value.” Packets play an important part in communication with Theresienstadt. The Jews there are said to suffer much more from hunger than we do here, and whoever can do so sends them packets, mostly bread, zwieback. Now that is no longer possible. **p344
• 1944 August 20, Sunday afternoon – A little while ago many elderly Jews (Three hundred? Three thousand?) had been transported from Theresienstadt, and afterward an English broadcast had announced that this transport had been gassed. Truth? Forseche si, forseche no. — On the way home Werner Lang also told me: A soldier had addressed him on the platform of the tram: “You’re still here, why is that?” (Without any aggression in his voice) — “Because I am in a mixed marriage.” — “Well, that’s decent; but I’ve seen such awful things in Poland, such awful things! It will have to be paid for!” **p347
• 1944 August 26 , Saturday afternoon – A lean, dark man, fifty-one years of age, eastern Jew, an eastern accent to his speech—that is what a Galician craftsman must look like and talk like. Previously he did locksmithing; in peacetime he had done “everything,” as he says, film and traveling salesman. His mother is in Theresienstadt, one son (cobbler) is interned in Australia, one daughter, a trained nurse, is in England. He was sensitive and respectful toward me. **p349
• 1944 November 23, Thursday morning – Horribly grotesque death. … A couple of weeks ago he seemed to be dying. Katz came frequently and described to me most graphically how swollen by edema he was. (“One can no longer see his penis.”) The man recovered, and during the night of November 21-22 his wife died of a stroke. Now the helpless old man is quite alone and will presumably be sent to Theresienstadt, that is, if they don’t save themselves the detour and do away with him at police headquarters. [.. . ] **p377
• 1944 December 5, Tuesday toward evening – Yesterday the Gestapo fetched the eighty-eight-year-old Grünbaum, whose wife died recently. Will they still take him to Theresienstadt, or will they just do away with him here? **p380
• 1945 April 15, Sunday, 1:00 p.m., at Grubers’ Supplementary entries –  Cossmann, a very devout Catholic—he prayed for Hitler, because even Hitler had an immortal soul—was a full Jew and wore the star, was in prison for a year, died in Theresienstadt in his seventies. **p450
• 1945 April 21, Saturday – Both women talked about Cossmann, the “hundred percent” nationalist, who had died in Theresienstadt. We pretended that we knew nothing about Theresienstadt, and were almost shaken to hear the name in a village in the middle of Upper Bavaria. **p461
• Notes, June 8 — On May 18,1942, members of the Herbert Baum group (a Jewish Communist resistance group) caused a fire at the National Socialist propaganda exhibition. The Soviet Paradise, in Berlin. In a revenge operation carried out between May 27 and 29,154 Berlin Jews and 96 Jews imprisoned in Sachsenhausen concentration camp, near Berlin, were shot. Many of their relatives—the figures given vary—were deported to Theresienstadt, Auschwitz, and Sachsenhausen concentration camps. **p517
• Notes, September 7 —  On September 8, 1942, fifty Dresden Jews were sent to Theresienstadt on Transport V/6. Thirty-nine died in Theresienstadt, Fritz Marckwald as early as September 14. Those who did not die in Theresienstadt were transported to Auschwitz and died there. **p520
• Notes, June 12 — Kahlenberg and the Hirschels would be evacuated “tomorrow”: The Kahlenbergs and the Hirschel family are recorded as arriving in Theresienstadt on June 21, 1943. On November 28, the Hirschel family with their two sons, and Kahlenberg and his mother, were taken to Auschwitz on a so-called family transport and apparently gassed immediately. **p523

Source: 

• ** I Will Bear Witness, Volume 2: A Diary of the Nazi Years: 1942-1945, Victor Klemperer, Publisher ‏: ‎ Modern Library; Illustrated edition

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