Beit Theresienstadt

A documentation and commemoration project was initiated while Ghetto Theresienstadt was still populated, with the objective of telling future generations what happened there. Zeev Shek, one of the prisoners (who later became the first chairperson of the Beit Theresienstadt Association) together with some of his friends, secretly collected documents and records of events in the ghetto. After he was sent to Auschwitz, his girlfriend Alisa (who later became Zeev’s wife) continued his work. Following liberation Zeev settled in Prague and again with help from a few of his friends from the ghetto, continued to collect materials documenting operations of the Final Solution.

Beit Terezin archives contain original documents in addition to photocopies of documents stored in other institutions, all pertaining to the ghetto period, and including a catalogue listing details of about 160,000 prisoners of Ghetto Theresienstadt. Over 900 files are classified under topics such as: art, literature, self-administration, medicine, labor department, children’s homes, children’s comics, music, academic studies, research, personal testimonies, and biographical information.

An integral part of the archive is the library which contains about 5,000 books, periodicals, catalogues, sheets of music composed and performed in the ghetto, documentary films, audio recordings, in Hebrew and other languages.

The world’s largest collection of drawings, paintings and sculptures created by adults and children while they were interned in Ghetto Theresienstadt is perhaps the “backbone” of the archive, and also includes Judaica objects and everyday objects.