UC Santa Barbara > History Department > Prof. Marcuse > Courses > Hist 133d Homepage > Hist 133b+d Book Essays Index page > Student essay
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"A 'Paradise' Among Camps: Book Essay on:
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Amber Benavides for Prof. Marcuse's lecture course |
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About Amber Benavides I am a junior religious studies major, history minor with interest in the Holocaust. I have been playing the flute for twelve years now and hope to one day become a kindergarten teacher. I chose to write about Theresienstadt because it is a camp unknown to many, including myself until just recently. I asked in my Holocaust comparative literature class if children had survived in any of the camps and the professor told me about Theresienstadt but only in name. Abstract (back to top) George E. Berkley describes the life inside a camp that was not a ghetto per se, but also not a concentration camp. Stuck in between, the camp's officials and its people were constantly unaware of what was going to happen; whether their self-governance would be shut down, who and when was getting transported, when the transports were, etc. Berkley also describes that although people were dying and suffering, the camp made the best of its surroundings by educating the children, holding auditions for plays and musicals and even building up their own string orchestra. Theresienstadt was more than just an in-between-concentration-camp-and-ghetto, it was a community. People came together and although there were truly times of stress and sorrow, people took care of their own and helped those who could not help themselves. |
Essay (back to top) Hitler’s Gift: The Story of Theresienstadt Emile Utitz, a survivor of the camp one wrote, “Theresienstadt was an experiment, the like of which there never was or never will be” (246). From 1942 to 1945, 154,000 passed through the city gates into Theresienstadt. The “paradise ghetto” that was set up by Jewish men of Czechoslovakia arose from the fear of being sent to the east. Jewish elders and groups had begun to realize in the beginning of 1942 that in order to survive not only did they have to make themselves seem useful to the Germans, but they would have to make a small town that originally only fit 6,000 people work for the tens of thousands who would later inhabit it. Jakob Edelstein, the camp’s first leader in the Council of Elders, was assigned the task of making Theresienstadt run. Not only was he to assign tasks and help organize the city but he also was to draw up lists of those who would be deported over the next few months. Over the next three years over five different ethnicities of Jews would live in Theresienstadt. Buildings would be created to emulate the outside world, including hospitals, a bank, a tailor shop, a Laundromat and a library, the latter being a crucial part of the S.S.’s plan “to maintain the artifacts and archives of what they intended to be an ‘extinct race’…” (27). What seemed like a “paradise ghetto” was in reality a disguise--the real horrors lay with not one saw but what one lived. The first year Theresienstadt ran was the worst in terms of experience. People lived with vermin, sleeping in attics, cellars and packed rooms where up to sixty people would be in at once. Women and men were separated as were the elderly and children at one point, and not for a moment did a person have privacy. The money and provisions that a person received in a camp differed on their position: laborers, light laborers, those who were exempt and the elderly. Children were in a category of their own since their survival was crucial to the Jewish people--they were their future. What people lacked in provisions they made up in their cultural world. If one could not eat, one rehearsed for a performance of Brundibar, one of the camp’s most famous musicals, or attended lectures given by various intellectuals throughout the camp. Adults, elderly and children alike delighted in the cultural world that sprang up in Theresienstadt,
As a new year arrived in 1943 life in Theresienstadt became tolerable. While people were being deported, sometimes in mass deportations as seen in the fall exodus in September of 1943, the camp’s inmates realized that in order to survive one just had to be lucky. Exemptions that had been made before for decorated war veterans, those of great family names or Jews that the Nazis had favored were stripped away and they were sent along in the deportations. As the Nazis began losing the war their last hope of victory remained in the defeat of the Jews. In Theresienstadt this was most evident in the deportations. People were unexpectedly added to lists and those that were crucial parts of the camp were also tricked and sent off to the gas chambers of Auschwitz. From 1944 to the beginning of 1945 conditions within the camp worsened as more and more people were brought into the camp. It was not until the International Red Cross gained control of the camp in May of 1945 that peace was brought to the “paradise ghetto” Theresienstadt. Theresienstadt: High Culture in Horrible Conditions Theresienstadt became well known as the “paradise ghetto” throughout Europe during World War II. While all other camps were seen as concentration camps, the S.S. began to believe that they were in fact doing the Jews a favor by placing them in Theresienstadt. Unlike any other place, Jews had freedom to walk around the city during designated times, were allocated food parcels from the Red Cross, at times more than once a month, and they even had access to a variety of special events through its vibrant cultural life. George E. Berkeley’s book, Hitler’s Gift: the Story of Theresienstadt attempts to describe Theresienstadt beyond the ghetto walls it encompassed. For Berkeley, there was no ghetto, Theresienstadt was a concentration camp, but unlike its counterparts,
Beyond what most concentration camp inmates had, Theresienstadt inmates had hope. By using culture as a part of the survival, it was easy to see that once cultural life fell apart, primitive behavior could easily fall upon them. Jews made the best of their circumstances, surviving each deportation and maintaining hope until they were liberated in 1945. Jakob Edelstein first established Theresienstadt in 1942. This allowed a large group of Czech Jews, the S.S., more importantly Eichmann, to see the ghetto as an excellent cover-up for what was really happening or what was going to happen to other Jews and people across the German Reich. Jews who had stature in the Reich, others who had honorably worn the German uniform, and elderly Jews were the first to be sent to the ghetto, since Eichmann and Heydrich knew that if the German people knew or saw them go to their end, there would be questions. While transport after transport was brought in, camp life came alive in the city the Nazis attempted to establish for the Jews. After a Jewish council, the Council of Elders, was set up in order to bring order to Theresienstadt, the camp began to establish itself. A coffeehouse was built, a library with books even the S.S. were willing to donate, a bank, shops and even apartments were set up for its inhabitants. People were fed, they were allowed to write home and receive parcels, and religions of all kinds were tolerated. Theresienstadt painted a picture of happiness and liveliness, but as one woman, Elsie Dornitzer remembers, “Upon our arrival in Theresienstadt, my husband I suffered the typical admission shock which paralyzed one’s whole being. My husband was never able to recover…” (40). As Berkeley describes it, Theresienstadt was a “joke hatched in hell” (40). Once brought through the gates of the small town, people were stripped of their belongings, segregated by sex and thrown into barrack-like conditions. For the first six months the camp was running life was horrendous. People were placed in “Rooms that had once housed three of four people [and] now had to shelter up to 60. Triple-tiered bunks, each tier sleeping two persons, were placed almost cheek-by-jowl, leaving barely enough room for climbing in and out of… Such conditions naturally favored the growth of vermin and battling them soon became, ‘a war waged hour by hour, day and night’” (44-45). With the water systems primitive, showers happened once every month or so and each toilet served 50-100 people. Food rations were just as terrible, with calories ranging for 1300-1800 per person. Parcels were never received during this early period, as all survivors remember never receiving extra food. Letters were strictly censored. The metaphorical colors used to describe Theresienstadt from its beginnings were in reality gray, black and grim but those colors soon came to life with the camp’s stability in 1943. Once the former residents in Theresienstadt were thrown out, camp life eased. Segregation became less enforced and the conditions better, “The water system now delivered four gallons per resident per day… The improved delousing system along with the increased efficiency of the fumigation squads enabled the camp to gain some control over the vermin. Finally, the improved kitchen facilities, while they did nothing to increase the supply of food, had managed to shorten the waiting lines” (71). Trades also became much more important within the camp. Engineers and craftspeople alike were respected and physicians and professional musicians and artists were able to live a life much like they had before the war. Although conditions greatly improved up until 1944, “One Theresienstadt joke had it that vitamins B and P were the two ingredients most necessary for surviving at the camp. B stood for Beziehung or connection; P for Protektion or pull. [As one man states], “Without connections or pull, every errand became a path of thorns” (97). With the S.S. and its leaders taking a more “Austrian Schlamperei (sloppiness)” approach to controlling the camp, it became easier to establish other outlets within the camp to keep the people in high spirits and to give them hope. This came in the form of music, lectures and acting. While the first transports of Jews were brought into the camp, it was “The arrival of the first Aufbaukommando (construction detail) [that] signaled the beginning of a cultural life unparalleled in the history of Western civilization” (117). With the arrival of German and Austrian Jews, lectures began and formal theatre presentations were held. The establishment of the Leisure Time Bureau meant the beginnings of theater space, scenery, instruments, furniture and posters for events. As time went by, performances became more lavish in their presentation, countless instruments were smuggled in and the S.S. helped bring in dozens of pianos for children to be taught to play. As for most of the people, music was the camp’s forte and it needed no narrative to captivate an audience. One woman, Ruth Elias, describes her experience:
This subculture of music and theater, paintings and poetry provided people with an outlet from the horrors of Theresienstadt, without which there would have been much more depression despair, illness and death. As Berkeley states, “While cultural outlets often served as an escape from reality, they also enabled many to endure reality” (132). That reality was harsh, more and more people were being sent away and deported and exemptions that existed before were stripped away. In the fall of 1944, promptly called the “fall exodus,” over two-thirds of Theresienstadt’s population was deported. Soon afterwards almost all were replaced with the arrival of tens of thousands of new inmates, some refugees from other camps, others that were stripped of their scant privileges they had had in various other countries. What had once been a thriving community, if even for a short time, was brought back to its beginnings. This new population brought with it more problems. Diseases, death and a sense of hostility accumulated within the camp, “But if Theresienstadters reacted with disgust and dismay at the actions of the new arrivals, some began to emulate them. With food already scarce and with the new arrivals threatening to consume all that was left, many once orderly residents began raiding or trying to raid the food supplies. The situation was threatening the ghetto’s existence” (224). By the time the SS began to leave the camps and the International Red Cross took its place as the leaders were deported and the war came to an end, displaced Jews were soon sent back to their homes. Those who had survived were taken in buses or in some cases cattle cars, to their homelands. In June of 1945, the last few Jews left Theresienstadt. Theresienstadt was a ghetto/concentration camp unlike any other. While food might have been scarce there as in any other place, its residents were provided with outlets and opportunities no other camp had. The very idea that they even had such a prominent subculture that aided in the survival of many of the residents up to some of their deportations gave the camp hope that they could and would survive. |
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Any student tempted to use this paper for an assignment in another course or school should be aware of the serious consequences for plagiarism. Here is what I write in my syllabi:
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