Center for Holocaust & Genocide Studies
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Terezin Camp

Theresienstadt (Terezin) was built in the 19th century and named after Austrian Empress Maria Theresa. It served as a fortress and a prison. The most famous inmate was Gavrilo Prinzip, assassin of Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria. That assassination was one of the causes of World War I.

When Germany annexed Bohemia and Moravia as the "Protectorate" in 1939, the Czech population of Terezin was moved out and it became a ghetto/concentration camp. The minutes of the Wannsee Conference (January 20, 1942) referred to the camp as the old aage ghetto for the Jews. Jewish intellectuals, artists, children and others were sent to this camp. The streets were renamed with numbers and letters and conditions were very overcrowded. Near the ghetto Terezin was the Little Fortress which housed prisoners who was subject to torture for offenses in the ghetto.

Entrance with "Arbeit Mach Frei" sign ("Work Liberates") found in most concentration camps	Main Street
Barracks in Little Fortress	Appelplatz in Little Fortress
Visiting group from Denmark in Little Fortress	Barracks and shelves for Inmates
Bathrooms in Little Fortress	Terezin Ghetto, Building G-201
Cemetery with large cross. The cross has caused controversy because most of the victims were Jews	Rows of headstones in graveyard, Little Fortress