Čekání na smrt: Rodinný tábor českých Židů v Osvětimi – Hes Milan (2019)

In September 1943, two transports carrying five thousand Jewish prisoners left Terezín for Auschwitz-Birkenau. On arrival, the prisoners did not undergo the usual selection and were placed in the special B IIb camp, where they were allowed to survive under a somewhat less restrictive regime. Their records nevertheless bore the designation Sonderbehandlung, or special treatment, which meant execution without trial. The Nazis’ treatment of the Czech Jews in Auschwitz raised many questions. What purpose was the camp intended to serve? Was it meant to provide an alibi for the administration of the Auschwitz “death factory”? Did the Nazis want to stage a new performance for representatives of the Red Cross, as they had succeeded in doing at Terezín? How much time was allowed them, and what determined their fate? When and why did the SS decide to liquidate the “family camp”? The book seeks to answer these questions by describing the prisoners’ daily conditions, drawing also on survivors’ testimonies and accounts of forms of resistance in Auschwitz in which the “Terezín prisoners” were involved. This tragic story began with the anti-Jewish policies implemented in the Protectorate and the Nazi plans for the “Final Solution” to the Jewish question. It culminated in mass murder during the night of 8–9 March and from 8 to 10 July 1944. Of the 17,500 prisoners in the “family camp,” fewer than 1,300 survived.