Theresienstadt Papers

[1] The papers were preserved at the liberation of the camp in May 1945 by Theresienstadt librarian Käthe Starke-Goldschmidt and later loaned to the Altona Museum for Art and Cultural History in Hamburg by her son Pit Goldschmidt.

Many prominent artists from Czechoslovakia, Austria, and Germany were imprisoned at Theresienstadt, along with writers, scientists, jurists, diplomats, musicians, and scholars.

As part of the general preparations for the Red Cross visit, in the spring of 1944, the Gestapo screened the Jews of Theresienstadt, classifying them according to social prominence.

The so-called prominents included cultural professionals, high-ranking military officers, politicians, scientists, aristocrats, bankers and industrialists and also, in some cases, their families.

[8] The 64 watercolors and drawings from the Theresienstadt camp were rescued by chief librarian Hugo Friedmann who had been gathering them secretly with the knowledge of library director Emil Utitz.

[10] The collection includes a self-portrait by Julie Wofthorn as well as images by Felix Bloch, Bedřich (Friedrich) Fritta, Leo Haas, Peter Kien and Otto Ungar.

Some of these artists were eventually deported, with their families, to Auschwitz because the camp commandant became aware that they were smuggling images of "atrocity propaganda," as the Nazis termed it, to Switzerland.