Terezín was a garrison town built between 1780 and 1790 and named for the queen mother Maria Teresa. The Nazis, upon taking over Czechoslovakia, converted the town into a walled ghetto for Jews and the area known as the Kleine Festung, or “Little Fortress,” became a prison for enemies of the state. The Nazis called the new ghetto Theresienstadt.

It soon became “home” for a great number of Jews from occupied Czechoslovakia. Also the Nazis needed a place to put prominent citizens and veterans of WWI, so Theresienstadt became the place for them, as well. The 7,000 non-Jewish Czechs living in Terezín were expelled by the Nazis in the spring of 1942.

During the winter of 1943, the International Red Cross requested an opportunity to inspect the camp. Germany agreed, but only on the condition that the inspection team wait until the following summer. Jewish laborers immediately began to transform the edifice of Theresienstadt from a dirty, dingy camp to a bright, sunny, cheerful Jewish “town.” The Jewish prisoners planted flowers, painted, and scraped. Overcrowding was a problem, and the Nazis did not want the Red Cross team to report these conditions to the world. Instead, they shipped thousands of new arrivals directly to death camps in Eastern Europe instead of sending them to Theresienstadt first.

They also erected fake shops and cafés to imply that the Jews lived in relative comfort. The Danish Jews whom the Red Cross visited lived in freshly painted rooms, and there were not more than three in a room. The guests enjoyed the performance of a children’s opera, Brundar, which was written by inmate Hans Krása. The hoax worked, and the Red Cross produced a positive report about their experience at Theresienstadt.

After the Red Cross visit, the Nazis began to dissolve the camp, sending more and more Jews to Auschwitz until October of 1944, when only 400 people were left in the camp.