It first served as a fortress to protect Prague & later as a prison. The assassin of Archduke Ferdinand & wife, which led to WWI was imprisoned there.
Hitler claimed he had built a city for the Jews to protect them from the war, but in actuality turned the ghetto city into a concentration camp. The people living there were very poor & had little running water & what they had was not sanitary. Also there was little electricity. Hitler pretended he was going to have town fixed up & deported Jews there to do the job. They were in reality building their own concentration camp. He later moved the inhabitants out of the town.
Terezin became one of the most notorious camps. It did not have a crematory at first but after so many deaths they built one. It did not have gas chambers until almost end of war, but never used. Auswitzch did & most of the prisoners from Terezin were sent there to be gassed & cremated.
At first they buried the thousands who died in Terezin, but as the cemeteries got full they would cremate the dead & dump ashes in a nearby river.
It is estimated (according to different sources) that the number of prisoners who were in or went through Terezin was 140,000 to 200,000. Of this number some 17,000 survived. Between 15,000-18,000 children went through Terezin, 132 survived, less than 1%. Some estimates say only 97 children survived.
The Nazis kept meticulous records but when they knew they were losing the war they began burning records sorta like Enron did, when they shredded documents.
On May 3, 1945 the Germans forced 87,000 through Terezin & on to the east on a death march. They were told they were being led to safety but most were brutaly murdered or tortured to death. Many more dying of starvation, disease, etc. Only a few thousand survived.
The Soviet (Russian) Army was advancing so that is why this was done. The prisoners were taken from Auswitzch & Ravensbruch (women's camp) & other concentration camps.
If not for a few days most of the 87,000 would have survived.
Gas chambers were built shortly before the war's end. The German soldier in charge pretended they were not working as he knew Russians were advancing. This spared the remainders lives.
On May 8, 1945 the Russians liberated Terezin. Only 400 remained including my husband & parents & his friend & her mother.
Two German factions were arguing what to do with the remainder of prisoners. One group wanted to send them on death march also. Other group did not as they thought it would not look good if Russians had no one to liberate.
Before they could decide the Red Cross stepped in & Russians liberated camp May 8, May Day in Russia.
Twenty one years later on May 8, 1966 our identical twins Dawn & Denise were born. We already had 2 other daughters Susan 5 & Sherill 3.
Since then we had 3 more daughters. We have 8 grands, the oldest will be 24 next month was the first boy in my husband's (Rosenthal's) family in over 50 yrs. My husband was the only child of his father Rudi Rosenthal. His mother was previously married & had 4 sons from that marriage. So he was youngest of her 5 sons. She had no daughters, we have no sons.
We have 5 grandsons, 3 granddaughters & 1 great granddaughter. None of these would have been born if my husband had not survived.
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