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The first
deportees to the Theresienstadt Ghetto arrived at the end of
November 1941. By the end of May 1942, 28,887 Jews, one-third of the
Jews in the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia, had been banished
to this camp. The Czech Jewish leadership initially supported the
plan to establish this ghetto, hoping that it would spare the Jews
from deportation to the East. In the first few months, conditions in
Theresienstadt resembled those in other Nazi concentration camps,
and the hopes that the ghetto would prevent deportation to the East
were also dashed. After the first deportation of 2,000 Jews to Riga
in January 1942, the inmates of the ghetto lived in dread of
deportation at all times.
Between
November, 1941 and April 20, 1945, 140000 Jews had been expelled to
Theresienstadt. Of these 32,497 people died there from the
intolerable conditions. Of the 86,934 who had been deported from the
Ghetto to Auschwitz, 3097 survived. At the end of October 1944, only
11,068 inmates remained in Theresienstadt. |
