O. 64.2 - Theresienstadt Collection: Original documentation from the Theresienstadt Ghetto

O. 64.2 - Theresienstadt Collection: Original documentation from the Theresienstadt Ghetto
 
 The Documentation Collection from the Theresienstadt Ghetto is comprised of three principle collections: 
 
 A. The Zeev Sheck Collection, also known as the Dokumentační Akce-Praha (Prague Documentation Project) Collection [Files 1-110];
 
 B. The Hermann Weisz Collection [Files 111-422];
 
 C. The Miscellaneous Collection including documentation from the ghetto submitted to the Yad Vashem Archives by private bodies and others [Files 423-469]. 
 
 
 A. The Zeev Sheck Collection
 
 Provenance of the Collection:
 
 Born in Olomouc (Czechoslovakia) in 1920, Zeev (Wilhelm) Sheck was active in the Maccabi Hatzair youth movement, and worked as a Hebrew teacher in Prague. On 19 November 1943, he was deported to the Theresienstadt Ghetto, and from there to concentration camps. He was liberated in the spring of 1945 and he returned to Prague. 
 
 Zeev Sheck founded and directed Dokumentační Akce (The Prague Documentation Project)e. The Project documented the fate of the Jews of Bohemia and Moravia during the Holocaust, and [concentrated] mainly [on] the history of the Theresienstadt Ghetto. Sheck made aliya to Eretz Israel, bringing with him most of the documentation regarding the ghetto which he had gathered until his aliya in 1947.
 
 After the establishment of the State of Israel, Sheck served as a Secretary in the Israeli Embassy in Prague, 1950-1953, and in 1956 in London. In 1960 he served as the head of the Foreign Ministry Western Europe Department. In 1967 Sheck served as the Israeli Ambassador in Vienna.
 
 He established the Beit Theresienstadt Museum in 1975, and was its first director.
 
 In 1977 Sheck was sent to serve as Israeli Ambassador in Rome where he died in 1978. 
 
 History of the Collection:
 
 Zeev Sheck was a member of the Hechalutz Center, which conducted underground activities in the Theresienstadt Ghetto, from 1943. Sheck and his associates collected diverse documentation: documents from the ghetto administration, legal and illegal activity plans; supplemental material for educational and cultural activities and reports about these activities; notes, entrance tickets to events, drawings, sketches and literary works by writers and amateur artists. Towards the end of 1943, a decree prohibiting the collection and possession of such material without the permission of ghetto headquarters was first issued. At the meeting of the (underground) Cultural Committee it was decided that the Hechalutz members would carry out a reduced collection plan.
 
 In October 1944, before Sheck was deported from the ghetto, he entrusted the collection to Alice Ehrmann, with the instructions that she preserve the material and continue to collect additional documents. Ehrmann, who later became his wife, was not included among the deportees, and indeed, she filled her mission under great personal danger. 
 
 In the spring of 1945, when the ghetto was under the threat of liquidation, Ehrmann hid the documentation in two boxes in the wall of the ghetto. Only a small number of people knew the actual location.
 
 Alice Ehrmann was liberated in May 1945, and she took the documentation with her to Prague.
 
 Zeev Sheck survived the Holocaust and returned to Prague in May 1945. He decided to set up the Documentation Project with the knowledge and support of the World Administration of the Jewish Agency, the World Jewish Congress and the Jewish community in Prague. From July 1945 Zeev Sheck managed the Project .
 
 The material gathered by the members of the Hechalutz movement in the Theresienstadt Ghetto served as the basis of the Project documentation. Within the framework of the Prague Documentation Project, documentation regarding the ghetto administration, documentation belonging to former inmates and documents attesting to the fate of the Jews and communities in Bohemia, Moravia and Slovakia during the Holocaust was gathered.
 
 The Project workers copied most of the original documentation which was gathered in the ghetto and transferred the copies to the archives of the Jewish community in Prague. Documents for which there were two original copies or more were divided between the Documentation Project and the Prague Jewish Community Archive.
 
 Dr. H. G. Adler, who collected documentation regarding the Theresienstadt Ghetto after the war, added his material to the Prague Jewish Community Collection, where it has remained.
 
 The workers at the Prague Documentation Project did not make copies of the original documentation regarding the activities of the Hechalutz movement in the Theresienstadt Ghetto because Zeev Sheck took this documentation with him to Eretz Israel along with other original documentation in February 1946. 
 While was Sheck was aboard the ship to Eretz Israel, he met Gershom (Gustav) Schocken, the Chief Editor and Publisher of the "Ha'aretz" newspaper. Sheck told Schocken about the documentation collection project that the Hechalutz members had carried out in the Theresienstadt Ghetto. Schocken, who was impressed by the project, helped Sheck make contact with Dr. George Herlitz, the Director of the Central Zionist Archives, which received the collection for a short time. From there the Collection was transferred to the Central Archive for the History of the Jewish People at Mount Scopus in Jerusalem. At this stage, Zeev Sheck was still adding more documentation to the Collection. In 1961 relevant documents were selected from the Collection in preparation for the Eichmann Trial.
 
 In November 1976 some of the documentation was entrusted to Yad Vashem for permanent safekeeping. Some of the visual documentation (photographs, pictures and so on) have remained in the Central Archive for the History of the Jewish People, and another part was transferred to Beit Theresienstadt.
 
 Until his death in 1978, Zeev Sheck continued to collect documents which were added to the documentation submitted to Yad Vashem. His widow Alice (Ehrmann) Sheck added more documentation, and afterwards the Collection was closed and no more new material was added.
 
 Structure of the Collection:
 
 The Collection has been catalogued as files and divided into 10 sub-collections in the following order:
 
 File Number Sub-File
 
 1-23 A. Ältestenrat (Council of Elders) in the Theresienstadt Ghetto;
 
 24-66 B. Jüdischen Selbstverwaltung (Jewish Self-Government) Departments
 
 24 - Zentralsekretariat (Central Secretariat)
 
 25-26 - Post und Verkehr (Postal and Transport) - postal services
 
 27 - Bank der Jüdischen Selbstverwaltung (Jewish Self-Government Bank)
 
 28 - Das Recht des jüdischen Siedlungsgebietes (the Jewish Self-Government Constitution)
 
 29 - Raumwirtschaft, Gebäudeverwaltung, Matrik und Beerdigungswesen (Housing and Population Registry)
 
 30-33 - Zentralevidenz (Central Registration Unit)
 
 34-40 - Arbeitszentrale (Work Center)
 
 41-45 - Technische Abteilung (Technical Department)
 
 46-49 - Transportabteilung (Transport Department)
 
 50-56 - Gesundheitswesen (Health Department)
 
 57-64 - Jugendfürsorge (Youth Department)
 
 65-66 - Freizeitgestaltung (Leisure Time Department);
 
 
 67-81 C. Artists in Theresienstadt;
 
 82-86 D. Zeev Sheck, articles, manuscripts, drafts for lectures;
 
 87-95 E. Personalities;
 
 96-99 F. Personal Documentation;
 
 100-103 G. Karl Löwenstein, Head of the Security Services;
 
 104-105 H. Testimonies and memoirs;
 
 106 I. The International Red Cross;
 
 107-110. J. Camp Headquarters.
 
 The Collection contains documentation of the ghetto Ältestenrat, including a collection of 500 Orders of the Day from December 1941 through April 1945, as well as surveys and reports presented to the ghetto headquarters, documentation of the Jüdischen Selbstverwaltung Departments according to areas of activity, medical research, works created by ghetto artists, and issues of newspapers and publications by ghetto inmates.
 
 Additionall6y, the collection includes the files of the Jugendfürsorge, including articles regarding education written by teachers and youth leaders in the ghetto, papers and essays by written children in the ghetto, reports from the "Yad Tomechet" (Helping Hand) aid project and poems/songs, musical scores, plays and stories by artists deported to the ghetto, among them Petr Ginz, Ilse Weber, Viktor Ullmann and Karel Fleischmann.
 
 Bibliography:
 
 Yad Vashem Archives, File O.64/82-83;
 
 Aran, Esther, "The Underground Archive in the Theresienstadt Ghetto", Yad Vashem Archives, Records Group O.64, Yad Vashem, Jerusalem, 5746 (1986);
 
 Shendar, Yehudit, "Sketch the Contour of My Own Shadow”, Last Portrait: Painting for Posterity, Yad Vashem Art Museum, Tel-Aviv, 2012, pp. 204-195 (sic).
 
 
 B. Hermann Weisz Collection
 
 Provenance of the Collection:
 
 Born in 1917, Hermann Weisz was an attorney at law by profession and active in the Eretz Israel Office in Prague. On 30 November 1941, he was deported to the Theresienstadt Ghetto where he served as the Deputy Director of the Jüdischen Selbstverwaltung Zentralevidenz until the liberation of the camp. With help from Jüdischen Selbstverwaltung workers, Weisz copied much documentation regarding the activities of the various Jüdischen Selbstverwaltung departments, principally documentation regarding the transports arriving in and leaving from Theresienstadt. 
 
 After the liberation, Weisz immigrated to Paris, and from there to Canada, where he died in 1979.
 
 History of the Collection:
 One of the responsibilities of the Theresienstadt Ghetto Zentralevidenz unit was to maintain an accurate record of the transports arriving in and leaving from Theresienstadt, recording births and deaths and running statistical analyses on this data.
 
 Hermann Weisz took the precaution of preparing a second underground copy of these records. Department workers, who were aware of the purpose of this preparation, participated in the preparation of the copy. When the camp headquarters gave the order to destroy all documentation, the second copy had already been prepared, and the workers kept it hidden until the liberation.
 
 Hermann Weisz transferred the documentation to Paris in 1947, and from there to Canada. Weisz kept the documentation in his possession until his death in 1979; in 1980, Dr. Stephen Barber discovered the documentation and brought it to Israel; the documentation was deposited in the Yad Vashem Archives.
 
 Structure of the Collection:
 
 The Collection has been catalogued as files and divided into 8 sub-collections in the following order:
 
 File Number Sub-File
 
 111-211 A. Lists of the deportees from Bohemia and Moravia to the Theresienstadt Ghetto;
 
 212-276 B. Lists of the deportees from Germany, Austria, the Netherlands, Denmark and Slovakia to the Theresienstadt Ghetto;
 
 277-332 C. List of the deportees from Theresienstadt to the East;
 
 333-366 D. Lists of the deportees from various areas to the Theresienstadt Ghetto;
 
 367-384 E. Lists of the inmates of various camps who were transferred to Theresienstadt by death march, April-May 1945;
 
 385-406 F. Orders of the Day, reports and statistical data;
 
 407-408 G. Personal documentation belonging to Hermann Weisz;
 
 409-422 H. A series of 14 albums and documentation from the various Jüdischen Selbstverwaltung departments
 
 The documentation includes complete lists of the deportees from the Protectorate, Germany, Austria, the Netherlands, Denmark and Slovakia to the Theresienstadt Ghetto, as recorded on their arrival in Theresienstadt. There is information regarding the approximately 36,000 inmates who perished in Theresienstadt, along with their dates of death. Additionally, the documentation includes lists of those deported to the East from Theresienstadt, a list of 1,200 children from Bialystok, statistical notes regarding deaths and a list of 12,000 inmates of various camps who were transferred to Theresienstadt in the spring of 1945. In addition to the lists, the Hermann Weisz Collection also includes 14 albums in which there is much documentation, collected in the ghetto regarding the activities of the Jüdischen Selbstverwaltung departments.
 
 
 
 Bibliography:
 
 Yad Vashem Archives, Files O.64/407-408;
 
 Aran, Esther, "The Underground Archive in the Theresienstadt Ghetto", Yad Vashem Archives Records Group O.64, Yad Vashem, Jerusalem, 5746 (1986).
 
 C. The Miscellaneous Collection
 
 History of the Collection and its structure:
 In the Collection there is personal documentation of former inmates of the Theresienstadt Ghetto including certificates and various documents, ghetto currency scrip, diaries, memoirs, testimonies, songs/poems, musical scores, literary works and more. Additionally there is official documentation attesting to the activities of the Jüdischen Selbstverwaltung in the ghetto, gathered by private individuals after the war. In the Collection there is documentation regarding the memorialization of the Theresienstadt Ghetto in Israel, surveys and articles written after the war regarding the history of the ghetto and regarding the inmates who held positions in the ghetto.
 
 The documentation in the Miscellaneous Collection was submitted to the Yad Vashem Archives by private individuals.