Back To Terezin

Legacies, Lies and Lullabies: The World of a Second Generation Holocaust Survivor is a smorgasbord of history, memoirs, interviews, poems, recipes and cultural tidbits. It explores the rise of Hitler, the perils of life in Terezin, the soap opera of Eastern European relatives, and the invisible baggage of the second generation. A riveting must-read for anyone who hungers for a slice of humanity.

Through inmates' own voices from secret diary entries and artwork to excerpts from memoirs and recordings narrated after the war, "Terezin" explores the lives of Jewish people in one of the most infamous of the Nazi transit camps in Czechoslovakia.

Terezín, as it was known in Czech, or Theresienstadt as it was known in German, was operated by the Nazis between November 1941 and May 1945 as a transit ghetto for Central and Western European Jews before their deportation for murder in the East. Terezín was the last ghetto to be liberated, one day after the end of World War II. The Last Ghetto is the first in-depth analytical history of a prison society during the Holocaust. Rather than depict the prison society which existed within the ghetto as an exceptional one, unique in kind and not understandable by normal analytical methods, Anna Hájková argues that such prison societies that developed during the Holocaust are best understood as simply other instances of the societies human beings create under normal circumstances. Challenging conventional claims of Holocaust exceptionalism, Hájková insists instead that we ought to view the Holocaust with the same analytical tools as other historical events. The prison society of Terezín produced its own social hierarchies under which seemingly small differences among prisoners (of age, ethnicity, or previous occupation) could determine whether one ultimately lived or died. During the three and a half years of the camp's existence, prisoners created their own culture and habits, bonded, fell in love, and forged new families. Based on extensive archival research in nine languages and on empathetic reading of victim testimonies, The Last Ghetto is a transnational, cultural, social, gender, and organizational history of Terezín, revealing how human society works in extremis and highlighting the key issues of responsibility, agency and its boundaries, and belonging.

A selection of children's poems and drawings reflecting their surroundings in Terezín Concentration Camp in Czechoslovakia from 1942 to 1944.

A moving, deeply researched account of survivors’ experiences of liberation from Nazi death camps and the long, difficult years that followed When tortured inmates of Hitler’s concentration and extermination camps were liberated in 1944 and 1945, the horror of the atrocities came fully to light. It was easy for others to imagine the joyful relief of freed prisoners, yet for those who had survived the unimaginable, the experience of liberation was a slow, grueling journey back to life. In this unprecedented inquiry into the days, months, and years following the arrival of Allied forces at the Nazi camps, a foremost historian of the Holocaust draws on archival sources and especially on eyewitness testimonies to reveal the complex challenges liberated victims faced and the daunting tasks their liberators undertook to help them reclaim their shattered lives. Historian Dan Stone focuses on the survivors—their feelings of guilt, exhaustion, fear, shame for having survived, and devastating grief for lost family members; their immense medical problems; and their later demands to be released from Displaced Persons camps and resettled in countries of their own choosing. Stone also tracks the efforts of British, American, Canadian, and Russian liberators as they contended with survivors’ immediate needs, then grappled with longer-term issues that shaped the postwar world and ushered in the first chill of the Cold War years ahead.

At Terezín, many children sang for the Nazi officials and the Red Cross. They were used as propaganda tools, between 1943 and 1944, to make the world believe that Hitler had given a "paradise" to the Jews. Only around 100 of the 15,000 innocent people who passed through this transit camp survived. Ela Stein Weissberger, deported at the age of 11, is one of the few survivors. In Hans Krása's opera Brundibár (The Bumblebee) performed at the camp, she played the role of the Cat, the rebellious animal who attacks the mustached monster in the hope of winning the war! Her poignant testimony gives voice once again to the courageous, hopeful children who left 4,500 drawings, diaries and poems at Terezín. Like an internal road movie, the author offers a parallel narrative—she looks back on her own family history, her search for Ela, her anecdotes from the shooting of a documentary film, and she speaks up for all children targeted by hatred. Writer, journalist, director and stage director, Henriette Chardak has written biographies of Kepler, Pythagoras, Leonardo da Vinci... and an investigation into the health effects of sweeteners (Le light c'est du lourd, Max Milo, 2018).

The sheets of paper are as brittle as fallen leaves; the faltering handwriting changes from page to page; the words, a faded brown, are almost indecipherable. The pages are filled with recipes. Each is a memory, a fantasy, a hope for the future. Written by undernourished and starving women in the Czechoslovakian ghetto/concentration camp of Terezín (also known as Theresienstadt), the recipes give instructions for making beloved dishes in the rich, robust Czech tradition. Sometimes steps or ingredients are missing, the gaps a painful illustration of the condition and situation in which the authors lived. Reprinting the contents of the original hand-sewn copybook, In Memory's Kitchen: A Legacy from the Women of Terezín is a beautiful memorial to the brave women who defied Hitler by preserving a part of their heritage and a part of themselves. Despite the harsh conditions in the Nazis' "model" ghetto - which in reality was a way station to Auschwitz and other death camps - cultural, intellectual, and artistic life did exist within the walls of the ghetto. Like the heart-breaking book I Never Saw Another Butterfly, which contains the poetry and drawings of the children of Terezín, the handwritten cookbook is proof that the Nazis could not break the spirit of the Jewish people.

In his first Holocaust book, Terra Treblinka, the author, explores the searing legacy of the Holocaust present in Europe and over it. In Back to Terezin, the poet tears open the lie that the Holocaust is over. It did not end in 1945. The earth is still crying with the victims’ blood; their souls flutter bitterly above death camps. Waves of Holocaust denial, hate, racism, and genocides expand and threaten to drown democracy. The poet is left with deep sorrow and visions of revenge at nights. He is immersed in mourning family members; he does not know their names but keeps searching incessantly obsessively in deserted archives and desecrated cemeteries.