Small fortress Theresienstadt

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Plan of Theresienstadt
The administrative courtyard of the Small Fortress
Accommodation in the Little Fortress
National cemetery in front of the main entrance to the Small Fortress

The Small Fortress ( Malá pevnost ) is part of Theresienstadt , which was built from 1780 to 1790 as a fortress by Emperor Josef II .

kuk monarchy

The Small Fortress on the opposite side of the Eger was used as a prison soon after it was built . In addition to numerous military prisoners, the Habsburg Monarchy imprisoned political prisoners here , including the Greek freedom fighter Alexander Ypsilantis , the Hungarian and Czech rebels of the revolution of 1848/49, and the perpetrators of the assassination attempt in Sarajevo ( Gavrilo Princip and others), whose assassination of the Austrian heir to the throne Franz Ferdinand von Austria-Este initiated the First World War .

Gestapo prison

After the destruction of Czechoslovakia was under occupation by Nazi Germany one in June 1940 in the Small Fortress Gestapo - prison furnished.

The Nazis took advantage of the existing infrastructure and "perfected" the place. They made it part of their apparatus of repression and extermination. The prison was administered by the Gestapo office in Prague . In the beginning there were only male prisoners; Only after the successful assassination attempt on Reinhard Heydrich was a women's department set up in June 1942. In 1943, a fourth was added to the three existing prison yards, which was intended for male prisoners.

Between 1940 and 1945 around 27,000 men and 5,000 women were transferred to the Theresienstadt prison by the various Gestapo offices, initially with prisoners from Prague, then from all of Bohemia and from 1944 also from Moravia . Most of the Czechs were held in the Small Fortress until the end of the war , including many people who resisted the Nazi regime. In the last few years also citizens of the Soviet Union , Poland , Yugoslavia and, towards the end of the war, prisoners of war from the ranks of the Allied armies.

About 8,000 of the inmates perished in other camps to which they were deported until the end of the war . 2,500 died in the camp after torture, illness and because of the working and living conditions. 250 inmates were in the fortress itself executed . Among the victims there is also a group of Jews from the Rhineland who arrived on October 4, 1944 - "by mistake" - in the small fortress and not in the "ghetto" in a transport from Cologne . Almost all of them were murdered.

Since its establishment , the commandant of the Gestapo prison was SS Hauptsturmführer Heinrich Jöckel , who commanded the 1st company of the SS Guard Battalion in Bohemia and Moravia .

Victim

Perpetrator

post war period

After the Second World War , an internment camp for Germans who were to be expelled from the Czech Republic was set up in the Small Fortress . During the expulsion, a total of 3800 Germans were interned here, including children. A total of around 600 people died from the internees. The camp was administered by the communist interior ministry. An exhibition in the rooms of the Small Fortress deals with this part of the history of Theresienstadt.

On the initiative of former prisoners and survivors from the Second World War, the Czechoslovak government decided in 1947 to turn the Small Fortress of Terezín into a memorial. A ghetto museum is located in the "Magdeburg barracks" in the Great Fortress, which was the seat of the Judenrat established by the SS .

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Malá pevnost , Prague 1988, p. 46.
  2. ^ Martina Schneibergová: Senator Bartha: Internment camp for Germans was administered by the communist interior ministry. In: radio.cz. January 27, 2006, accessed April 27, 2019 .

Coordinates: 50 ° 30 ′ 45 ″  N , 14 ° 9 ′ 26 ″  E