by admin » Thu Jul 02, 2015 6:05 pm
Screenplay:
[Narrator] Litomerice: today, the last stop before Theresienstadt ...
an old fortress with thick walls and a moat.
The Nazis drove the Czechs out of the town and turned the barracks into a concentration camp ...
absurdly overcrowded with Jews ...
from the basements to the attics ...
hunger, epidemics, and constant deportations into the gas chambers of Auschwitz.
Looking for traces, Inge and Gary are taking Ana and the group from Stuttgart ...
to those places that were of special importance in their lives as prisoners.
During the Communist regime, survivors of Theresienstadt, were not allowed to visit their former cells because the barracks were used by the Czech army.
[Woman] You were in here, too.
The people from Stuttgart were all taken up these stairs.
This is the very place.
People slept on the bare floor. Many died here. They were covered with linen.
I remember one man from Stuttgart, he tried to jump out of the window. My father kept him back.
But the next day he jumped and killed himself.
It was one of those windows.
[Narrator] 30,000 deaths in three years due to hunger, illness, and forced labor.
The crematorium is still there.
[Garry Fabian, KZ-Uberlebender] There were carts, flat carts that milkman, or bakery shops use. Normally they were drawn by horses. In Theresienstadt, they were drawn by people. And on these carts there were heaps of dead bodies every day.
[Narrator] Those who were on the side of the Nazis ...
seldom have the courage to talk about it today. Even more remarkable, what a woman from Stuttgart remembers. She worked as a telephone operator for the SS and for the Commander of Theresienstadt.
[Gerlinde R., Ehem, Telefonistin] The food didn't really deserve to be called food.
The soups I got to see were just foul water. It looked like sewage. Sometimes they got meat, horsemeat. But in such small portions that many prisoners died of hunger.
That was part of the plan. But I was divided on the subject.
Personally, I lived a fabulous life there, a life I could never have afforded myself.
And, on the other side, there was such misery.
[Narrator] This, of course, was carefully concealed. The Nazis even succeeded in fooling the world public. For a short period of time, the camp was turned into a setting for a propaganda film.
[Propaganda Film] "There's a lot of gardening to be done by the families.
The fruits and vegetables are a welcome addition to the bill of fare."
The prisoners were forced to play the role of happy settlers.
Afterwards, they were deported to Auschwitz. Hardly anybody survived.
The propaganda film is one of the most bizarre aspects of the camp.
