Terezin, North Bohemia, July 28 (CTK) – Experts have for the first time mapped and partially deciphered the inscriptions engraved by Jewish prisoners in Terezin that served as a ghetto for European Jews in 1941-1945, Oliver Bradley, spokesman for the international project ghettospuren.de, has told CTK.
The project focuses on the passage of the former gate Poterna III to the Terezin (Theresienstadt) fortress where prisoners engraved their names, dates as well as various drawings in the sandstone. The engravings are being endangered by weathering.
There are several square metres of the former prisoners’ traces in the passage from 1941-1945 when the town of Terezin was overcrowded and closed to the surrounding world.
Apart from names and figures, even a Hanukkah Jewish candlestick, the Stars of David and portraits of the ghetto guards appeared on the walls.
Within the Terezin 1941-1945 – Material Evidence and Traces project, urbanist Uta Fischer has for the first time in 70 years deciphered the meaning of the engravings. A number of them were really created by the Terezin prisoners, she said.
It was like a detective’s search since except for some name fragments and dates, there were no clues, Fischer told CTK.
She added that vandals as well as weather had damaged the engravings and some of them were unreadable.
This is why experts have relied on the photographs taken by former Terezin inmate Jiri Lauscher shorty after the liberation in May 1945.
So far several dozen names have been identified, and thereby also the particular persons’ life stories.
The prisoners jointly created a collective memorial place of the gloomy passage, hoping that the future generations would learn about their fates this way, Fischer said.
A team of experts has been mapping the Terezin ghetto for three years.
Last year, they uncovered a number of heritage items and documents, hidden in the cellars and lofts in Terezin houses.
After the occupation of the Czech Lands by Nazi Germany in March 1939, the Nazis selected the former garrison town Terezin as a ghetto for European Jews during the war, while the nearby Small Fortress turned into the Prague Gestapo prison.
Transports of Jews, first from the Protectorate Bohemia and Moravia and then from other countries, such as Slovakia, Germany, Hungary, Austria and Denmark, arrived in the town. Over 155,000 Jews were gradually sent to Terezin in 1941-1945 and 117,000 of them died during the war.
Terezin was just a transit camp for Jews from where regular transports were dispatched to extermination camps, mainly to Oswiecim (Auschwitz) in Poland.
A memorial was established in the Little Fortress in 1947. The Ghetto Museum was opened in the town in 1991 only, after the collapse of the communist regime.
