Theresienstadt Ghetto was established by the SS during World War II in the fortress town of Terezín, in the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia (German-occupied Czechoslovakia).

The fact that it was governed by a Jewish self-administration as well as the large number of "prominent" Jews imprisoned there facilitated the flourishing of cultural life.

[2] To lull victims into a false sense of security, the SS advertised Theresienstadt as a "spa town" where Jews could retire, and encouraged them to sign fraudulent home purchase contracts, pay "deposits" for rent and board, and surrender life insurance policies and other assets.

[8] Deportees to the ghetto had to surrender all possessions except for 50 kilograms (110 lb) of luggage, which they had to carry with them from the railway station at Bauschowitz (Bohušovice), 2.4 kilometres (1.5 mi) away; the walk was difficult for elderly and ill Jews, many of whom died on the journey.

[9] The 24 November and 4 December transports, consisting mostly of Jewish craftsmen, engineers, and other skilled workers of Zionist sympathies, were known as the Aufbaukommando (Work Detail)[8] and their members were exempt from deportation until September 1943.

The Germans provided the materials for these improvements, largely to reduce the chance of communicable disease spreading beyond the ghetto, but Jewish engineers directed the projects.

[16][20] In May, the self-administration had reduced rations for the elderly in order to increase the food available to hard laborers, as part of its strategy to save as many children and young people as possible to emigrate to Palestine after the war.

[25] Most of the people deported from Theresienstadt in 1942 were killed immediately, either in the Operation Reinhard death camps or at mass execution sites in the Baltic States and Belarus, such as Kalevi-Liiva, Maly Trostenets, and Baranavichy.

SS chief Heinrich Himmler refused, due to the increasing desire for Theresienstadt as an alibi to conceal information on the Holocaust reaching the Western Allies.

[39][40] The RSHA archives were transported to Theresienstadt in July 1943, reducing the space for prisoners,[41] and stored in the Sudeten barracks until they were burned on 17 April 1945 on SS orders.

The streets were renamed and cleaned; sham shops and a school were set up; the SS encouraged the prisoners to perform an increasing number of cultural activities, which exceeded that of an ordinary town in peacetime.

"[48] On 23 June 1944, the visitors were led on a tour through the "Potemkin village";[49] they did not notice anything amiss and the ICRC representative, Maurice Rossel, reported that no one was deported from Theresienstadt.

Instead, the SS commandant reported to Hans Günther, the director of the Central Office for Jewish Emigration in Prague, whose superior was Adolf Eichmann.

[75] The first gendarme commander,[73] Theodor Janeček, was a "rabid antisemite" whose behavior "sometimes surpass[ed] the SS in cruelty", according to Israeli historian Livia Rothkirchen.

[87] Most of the nurses were untrained and had to do all the work, including cleaning sickrooms, disposing of human waste, serving food, and keeping the patients entertained.

[39] Even before the Red Cross visit, "prominent" individuals received better living conditions and more food, and their deportation could only be ordered by the SS (not the self-administration), resulting in a significantly higher possibility of surviving.

[109] The origins began in the spontaneous "friendship evenings" organized by the first prisoners in December 1941; many promising artists had arrived in the Aufbaukommando transports, including the musicians Karel Švenk, Rafael Schächter, and Gideon Klein.

[47][112] The Ghetto Swingers performed jazz music,[113] and Viktor Ullmann composed more than 20 works while imprisoned at Theresienstadt, including the opera Der Kaiser von Atlantis.

Ullmann believed that the activities represented spiritual resistance to Nazism and a "spark of humanity":[124] "By no means did we sit weeping by the rivers of Babylon; our endeavors in the arts were commensurate with our will to live.

Despite the fact that the DRK was led by SS doctors who were involved in Nazi human experimentation, the report by Walther Georg Hartmann [de] accurately described the ghetto's conditions: "dreadful" and "frightfully overcrowded".

[126] The ICRC, having come under increasing pressure from Denmark,[127] Jewish organizations and the Czechoslovak government-in-exile to intervene in favor of Jews, requested to visit Theresienstadt in November 1943.

[128][129] It is unclear to what extent the ICRC valued making an accurate report on Theresienstadt,[130] given that it had access to independent information confirming that prisoners were transported to Auschwitz and murdered there.

[39][46] In late May, Eppstein, Zucker, and other Theresienstadt leaders were allowed to sign SS-dictated letters, which were sent to the Aid and Rescue Committee, a Jewish organization in Budapest.

Rudolf Kastner, the leader of the committee, forwarded the letter abroad, causing an unduly positive impression of Theresienstadt to develop outside German-occupied territory.

[46] The visitors spent eight hours inside Theresienstadt, led on a predetermined path[136] and only allowed to speak with Danish Jews and selected representatives, including Paul Eppstein.

[46] Driven in a limousine by an SS officer posing as his driver,[127][137] Eppstein was forced to deliver an SS-written speech[138] describing Theresienstadt as "a normal country town" of which he was "mayor",[16][46] and give the visitors fabricated statistical data on the ghetto.

[140] While the preparations for the Red Cross visit were underway, the SS had meanwhile ordered a prisoner, probably Jindřich Weil, to write a script for a propaganda film.

[142] Completed on 28 March 1945, the film was intended to discredit reports of the genocide of Jews reaching the Western Allies and neutral countries, but it was only screened four times and did not achieve its objective.

A Czech court in Litoměřice found a perimeter guard, Miroslaus Hasenkopf, guilty of treason and sentenced him to 15 years imprisonment; he died in prison in 1951.

However, the Jewish legacy was not recognized in the post-war era because it did not fit into the Soviet ideology of class struggle promoted in the postwar Czechoslovak Socialist Republic, and discredited the official position of anti-Zionism (exemplified by the 1952 Slánský trial and intensified following the 1967 Six-Day War).