The Last Ghetto. An Everyday History of Theresienstadt

Anna Hájková’s history of everyday life in the Theresienstadt ghetto is an intentionally ‘unsentimental analysis’ (p. 242) of this complex place that was a transit, advantage and propaganda ghetto as well as a camp for exchange Jews and a dumping ground for prisoners evacuated on foot from camps further east in the final months of the war. Drawing on a very wide range of sources, Hájková uncovers the deep fractures within this society in extremis. In particular, the significance of national and ethnic divisions between Czech, Austrian and German Jews disrupts any notion of a unified Jewish experience of Theresienstadt. Emphasizing conflict, Hájková paints a picture at odds with the ‘redemptive narrative’ (p. 242) of cultural flourishing that is often associated with the Theresienstadt ghetto. In many ways, the divisions between a prisoner elite made up of the first Czech Jewish prisoners and the underclass of elderly German and...

Archaeology · Criminology · Czech · Ethnic group · Everyday life · Flourishing · German · Judaism · Political science · Sociology · Underclass · Anthropology · Eastern European Communism and Reforms · European history and politics · Gender Studies · History · Law · Philosophy · Psychology · Social Psychology