Melancholy Terezín

Dear Mr. Bartos,

As a historian, I do have to take some issue with the loose use of terminology in this article. Terezin was not a "death camp." This term is reserved for those camps where Jews were executed in mass numbers: Auschwitz-Birkenau, Treblinka, Sobibor.. It is also not a concentration camp. This term was used for labor camps, which Terezin was not. Terezin was a ghetto - and a "model one" at that. Many Jews were then sent on from Terezin to concentration camps (like Sachsenhausen) or to death camps (like Birkenau), or to the Gestapo prison called the Small Fortress.

You are correct that many people do not go in to see the Magdeburg Barracks, which show the life of the ghetto. Instead they visit the Small Fortress which was established as a gestapo prison. There were over 1500 Jews that passed through Terezin prison, having been arrested mostly for resistance activities and for violating Jewish regulations. Some were imprisoned here for "rule-breaking" in the ghetto. Finally, there was a group that was brought to the fortress who had been evacuated from other camps.

I hope that I do not sound pedantic. It is actually important to distinguish between the different types of camps. It is important that people who come to Terezin realize that this was a ghetto and not a death camp. For those who are not well informed, they will walk out thinking that the Holocaust was not as bad as it was cracked up to be - and this would be a disservice to history.