Suffering not over for Terezín inmates, as liberating troops arrived to free them
On May 8th millions of people around Czechia rejoiced in the news that Germany had finally surrendered and the war was over. But for many inmates of the Terezín ghetto, the suffering was far from over. Many had nowhere to go and another 1,500 inmates succumbed to the typhus epidemic that spread through the camp.
Terezín was a military fortress that never served its original purpose. In 1941 Reich Protector Reinhard Heydrich ordered that Terezín should be turned into an “assembly” camp for Jews from the Protectorate and neighbouring states –from which they would be transported to labour or extermination camps in Nazi-occupied Poland, Belorussia, and the Baltic States.
The first Jewish transports arrived in Terezín in November, 1941 and by the end of the war, more than 140,000 Jewish men, women and children had passed through Terezín. Around 87,000 prisoners had to board transports that took them to concentration and extermination camps. Only a fraction of them lived to see the end of the war. Some 35,000 people died in Terezín itself.
As the Allied forces closed in, in the final weeks of the war, the Nazis began to empty ghettos and camps in Eastern Europe and send prisoners on death marches to camps and ghettos closer to Germany. Approximately 15,000 such prisoners arrived in Terezín in the last weeks of April 1945. This increase almost doubled the camp’s population to approximately 30,000 people, severely worsening conditions inside the camp. Those arriving were ill, starved and barely alive. This is how some former inmates who survived their internment recounted the experience.
“Some were transported in on trains in terrible conditions. There were 70 crammed inside one carriage and only 20 of them were still living. Some no longer even resembled human beings, they were just bones holding together.”
“I was a child and whenever a new transport came I would go around the camp hoping to find my grandmother. I knew she could not have survived, but I still kept searching.”
“They were half-crazed with thirst and hunger. They no longer resembled human beings. It was only then that we realized what happened to our relatives.”
“It was like a nightmare that I remember to this day. Because it was worse than what we experienced at Terezín before. We were hungry, yes, but these people were starved and very ill. There was no medicine and very soon, a typhus epidemic broke out. The last days in the camp were truly terrible.”
The International Red Cross took over the running of Terezín on May 2,1945. On May 4 the last German guards left the camp and the first Red Army troops arrived on May 8, liberating the ghetto. Despite the joint efforts of Czech, Jewish and Russian doctors and around 30 volunteer nurses, another approximately 1,500 inmates succumbed to the typhus epidemic after the war ended.
Documentary filmmaker Adam Drda says that memories of the liberation of Terezín were very diverse among the survivors.
"People who were healthy remember rejoicing and celebrating. But there were not many of those. The majority remember being sick, feeling ill and not experiencing any euphoria or joy. Some fled from the camp as soon as its doors opened, disobeying orders to stay because of the typhus epidemic. Others remained in quarantine. And many had nowhere to go, particularly among the German Jews. Some wanted to move to Israel or Palestine right away. So Terezín continued functioning as a camp for at least another month after the war ended.”
One of the survivors recalls having mixed feelings with the arrival of freedom.
“I remember we were in some barracks and from the window we could see the liberating troops arriving. We started waving and that was a moment of joy. But at the same time it mingled with a fear of what I would find when I got home. A fear of who I may have lost and would never see again. So yes, there was a deep feeling of fear what the end of the war would bring.”
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