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Current AffairsSurvivors remember first transport to Terezín in winter of 1941
It's exactly seventy years since the first transport of Czechoslovak Jews
left Prague, bound for the garrison town of Terezín, transformed by the
Nazis into a ghetto and concentration camp. Some 140,000 Jewish men, women
and children were sent to Terezín, known as Theresienstadt in German; most
of them were later killed at Auschwitz. A number of events were held this
week bringing together Terezín survivors, one of them on Thursday evening
at the Institute for the Study of Totalitarian Regimes. More
MailboxMailbox
This week in Mailbox: the proposed exhumation of the remains of the Danish
astronomer Tycho Brahe, the history of Charles University, a link to the
latest edition of Czech Books, the government’s approval to sell the
Czech national carrier. Listeners quoted: Swen Gummich, Klaus Jurascheck,
Abigail Hirsch, Aloisie Krasny.
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Czech BooksLisa Peschel: rediscovering the forgotten theatre of Terezín
During the Second World War, over 140,000 people were imprisoned in the
Terezín ghetto north of Prague. Their only crime was to be Jewish. One in
four died in the ghetto itself, and most who survived later perished in
other Nazi camps. But despite appalling overcrowding, there was still a
semblance of normal life in Terezín. The ghetto’s streets still had
names; people would still go to work in the morning, and come home to their
cramped barracks at night. And against the odds, Terezín had a thriving
cultural life. This included theatre, a fact that gripped the imagination
of the American theatrical historian, Lisa Peschel. She has spent years
trying to find out more about the texts that were written and performed in
the ghetto. Her detective work, in close cooperation with survivors, has
yielded an astonishing amount of material, and Lisa has now edited a book
that brings some of these texts together. Published in Prague by Akropolis,
the book is in Czech and German, but Lisa promises that there will soon be
an English edition too. She told me more about her fascinating - and
important - research.
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