Poslední ghetto - Všední život v Terezíně – Hájková Anna (2022)

The Last Ghetto is an understandable, engaging, and painful read about what life was like for prisoners in Terezín. The everyday life that Hájková presents to readers does not take the form of sentimental photographic snapshots. It is not an escape from the harsh reality of life in the ghetto to the last bastion of untainted humanity. The author offers a glimpse into a multi-layered past, a kind of past presence, where the basic characteristic of people, even in very tense situations, is their own actions. Careful work with a vast amount of personal testimonies and documents forms the cornerstone of this book's success. And although Hájková presents readers with a wealth of testimonies, names, and situations, she relatively smoothly follows the main interpretative thread. The excerpts of memories do not merely pile up as evidence under which the reader should resign their own thinking. However, the contribution of The Last Ghetto is not exhausted with a new interpretation of the history of Terezín. Hájková repeatedly states in the book that her work can also be read as an example of how to analyze prisoner communities or even societies in extreme conditions.