Compared to the later camps it was like a sanatorium

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Miloš Pick arrived in Terezín in the year 1943. There was hunger in the camp but the prisoners did not have to put up with cruel treatment: “Compared to the later camps, it was like a sanatorium. I worked in a locksmith’s workshop. I was staying at the youth barracks.” In Libáň, a friend of Miloš Pick, Miloš Hájek, had given him the contact details of an underground organization: “That way I got inside the group that was living in the barracks. There were about twelve of us. One of us worked in a bakery, so each day he was able to bring half a loaf of bread. We lived symbolically, like a commune. We ate from a common cooking pot, one of us always divided the food in it. Scraping the left over bits from the pot was a special treat and we took turns to do that.” Miloš Pick stayed in Terezín until September 1944.

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Miloš Pick

Miloš Pick was born in August 16th in 1926, in a Jewish family in Libáň, where his grandfather and father owned a small factory. After the Nazi occupation he joined local resistance movement. With his friend he printed and distributed leaflets. In January 1943, Hájek was transported to Terezín. He became a member of Communist Party in 1943 as well. In September 1944, he was moved to Auschwitz. He managed to escape death in a gas chamber by reporting to Mengele higher age and a locksmith profession during the first selection on the ramp, after he got a warning from his friend Gert Körbel. Later Pick was sent to forced labor in Reich. From November 1944 to April 1945 he had been working in a factory in Meuselwitz-Buchenwald. At the close of the war in April 1945 Hájek escaped with a few friends from a death march back to Bohemia. All Jews transported from Libáň but Miloš Pick and his sister Soňa have perished. Their parents were murdered in Auschwitz. After the 1948 Miloš Pick had been working in the State Planing Commision. He was expelled from the Communist Party after the soviet invasion in August 1968.

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Terezín (Theresienstadt), Main Fortress

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The Terezín Main Fortress is part of the defensive complex founded by Emperor Joseph II in 1780. It lies on the confluence of the Rivers Labe, (Elbe), and Ohře, and was originally supposed to serve as a defensive fortress in the case of a Prussian invasion. It was never used in a military capacity however, as the Prussians simply circumvented it. Terezín gained the status of garrison town, the army remained present here until the end of the 20th century. The fortress comprises two parts: the Main Fortress and the Small Fortress. Already since its construction, the Small Fortress served as a military prison; the Main Fortress was inhabited. However, the Nazis decided to create a Jewish ghetto there, and so the civilian inhabitants were deported and on 24 November 1941 the Jewish ghetto of Terezín was founded. When preparing the ghetto, the Nazis made use of the Jewish Community of Prague. The Nazis claimed that Terezín would be a camp in which the Jewish population of the Protectorate would be interned, but from which it would not be transported East. In 1942 at a conference in Wannsee, the Nazis confirmed the specific status of the Terezín ghetto. It was supposed to be a so-called “old-age ghetto,” which would house old people, often veterans of World War 1 not only from the Protectorate, but also from Germany and Austria. In this way, the Nazis created an alibi for themselves – they could claim that old people were not being sent East into “labor camps,” but that they remained in Terezín. This was a lie because even from Terezín transports were dispatched, which were full of old people. In actual fact, the primary function of the ghetto was to collect the Jews and transport them elsewhere. The average number of inmates during the four years of the ghetto’s existence fluctuated between thirty to forty thousand, (before WWII the town had about 7,000 inhabitants, military garrison included). During its peak in September 1942, however, the camp held almost 58,500 prisoners (At the time, an average of 127 people died every day!). The overloaded capacity meant that the ghetto offered very bad living conditions causing a high death rate. To top it all, towards the end of the war a typhus epidemic broke out in the camp. Overall, approx. 155,000 people passed through the Terezín concentration camp, of which 118,000 did not survive World War II, (including those killed by the typhus epidemic). Terezín was liberated without any fighting. On 1 May 1945, control of the camp was entrusted to the Red Cross, on 5 May the last Nazis fled before the nearing front, and on 8 May 1945 the first Soviet units arrived.