The Last Ghetto : An Everyday History of Theresienstadt – Hájková Anna (2022)

Known in Czech as Terezín and in German as Theresienstadt, this ghetto was operated by the Nazis between November 1941 and May 1945 as a transit ghetto for Central and Western European Jews before their deportation to be murdered in the East. It was the last ghetto to be liberated, one day after the end of World War II. The Last Ghetto is the first in-depth analytical history of a prison society during the Holocaust. Rather than portraying the society within the ghetto as exceptional and impossible to understand through normal analytical methods, Anna Hájková argues that such societies are best understood as other examples of the societies human beings create under ordinary circumstances. Challenging conventional claims of Holocaust exceptionalism, she maintains that the Holocaust should be viewed with the same analytical tools as other historical events. The prison society of Terezín developed its own social hierarchies, in which seemingly small differences among prisoners, including age, ethnicity, or previous occupation, could determine whether someone lived or died. During the three and a half years of the camp’s existence, prisoners created their own culture and habits, formed bonds, fell in love, and established new families. Based on extensive archival research in nine languages and an empathetic reading of victims’ testimonies, this transnational cultural, social, gender, and organizational history of Terezín reveals how human society works in extreme circumstances and highlights questions of responsibility, agency and its limits, and belonging.