In late 1943 when information on the extermination camps began to get through to the outside world, the Nazis decided to show off Theresienstadt to a committee of the International Red Cross. In anticipation of this inspection, overcrowding was reduced by deportations to Auschwitz; library and medical facilities enhanced; a new concert/ recreation hall/ community center was built; and the town was adorned with flowers. The inspection (June 23, 1944) was followed by the making of a propaganda film on the "New Life of the Jews Under the Protection of the Third Reich." Below is a thumbnail of a souvenir sheet consisting of four copies of the parcel admission stamp was prepared as gifts to the visiting inspectors. Please click on the thumbnail to see the full image, and then click your back key or "Red Cross Sheet" in the left frame to return.
The deportees to Theresienstadt included many artists, writers and scholars. Of the inmate paintings which survive the camp, perhaps none are more poignant than the drawings of the children. In September, 1968, the Czech government issued a set of commemorative stamps depicting three of the drawings. Below are thumbnails of two first day covers featuring the three stamps. The 30h value is Jew and Guard by Jiri Beutler, age 10; the 60h value is Butterflies by Kitty Brunnerova, age 11; and the 1k value is Flowerpot by Jiri Schlessinger, age 10. Please click on the thumbnail to see the full image, and then click your back key or "Children Drawings" in the left frame to return.
A well organized effort, financed by aid organizations and individual Jews abroad, was started in Portugal and Switzerland to supply basic needs to the victims confined to ghettos and camps. Below is a thumbnail of a Portuguese preprinted export form from the firm of "Sam Amon" pertaining to the export of fish to Theresienstadt to an inmate, Helene Schwarz. Please click on the thumbnail to see the full image, and then click your back key or "Miscellaneous" in the left frame to return.
Frantisek Benes and Patricia Tosnerova, Mail Service in the Ghetto Terezin 1941-45 (1996)
Sam Simon, Handbook of the Mail in the Concentration Camps 1933-1945 and Related Material, (1973). Referred to as Simon
Berkely, Hitler’s Gift, The Story of Theresienstadt, (1993)