Theresienstadt (film)

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

This article (or section) may need to be wikified to meet Wikipedia's quality standards.
Please help improve this article, especially its section layout, and relevant internal links. (help)
This article has been tagged since March 2007.

In the summer of 1944 the Nazi government perpetrated a hoax against the Danish Red Cross by taking them on a tour of the Theresienstadt concentration camp in the Sudetenland, occupied Czechoslavakia. They fixed up and cleaned the camp prior to arrival and arranged cultural activities to give the appearance of a happy, industrious community. They even sent a considerable part of its population to Auschwitz to cover up the overpopulation of the camp.

The gimmick was so successful that the Nazis attempted to expand on it by having Kurt Gerron, a Jewish actor/director, make a short film about the camp to assure audiences that the inmates kept there were not being abused. In return they promised that both he and his family would live. Shortly after he finished shooting the film, however, both he and his family were "evacuated" to Auschwitz were they were gassed upon arrival.

The footage that Gerron shot was intended to be edited into a film called either Theresienstadt. Ein Dokumentarfilm aus dem jüdischen Siedlungsgebiet (Terezin: A Documentary Film of the Jewish Resettlement) or Der Fuhrer schenkt den Juden ein stadt (The Fuhrer Gives the Jews a City) however the progress of the war in that period (late 1944 to early 1945) made that impossible, so the scenes were used independently. Only about 20 minutes of the film survives.