Theresienstadt 1941–1945 The Face of a Coerced Community

First published in 1955, with a revised edition appearing five years later, H. G. Adler's Theresienstadt, 1941?1945 is a foundational work in the field of Holocaust studies. As the first scholarly monograph to describe the particulars of a single camp - the Jewish ghetto in the Czech city of Terezin - it is the single most detailed and comprehensive account of any concentration camp. Adler, a survivor of the camp, divides the book into three sections: a history of the ghetto, a detailed institutional and social analysis of the camp, and an attempt to understand the psychology of the perpetrators and the victims. A collaborative effort between the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum and the Terezin Publishing Project makes this authoritative text on Holocaust history available for the first time in the English language, with a new afterword by the author's son Jeremy Adler.

Part I. History: 1. The Jews in the 'Protectorate', 1939–41; 2. Theresienstadt: history and establishment; 3. Deportations to and from Theresienstadt; 4. Closed camp: November 1941/July 1942; 5. 'Ghetto': July 1942/summer 1943; 6. 'Jewish settlement area': summer 1943/September 1944; 7. Decline and dissolution; Part II. Sociology: 8. Administration; 9. The transport; 10. Population; 11. Housing; 12. Nutrition; 13. Labor; 14. Economy; 15. Legal conditions; 16. Health conditions; 17. Welfare; 18. Contact with the outside world; 19. Cultural life; Part III. Psychology: 20. The psychological face of the coerced community.

H. G. Adler (1910–88), poet, novelist, and scholar, was deported with his family to the Theresienstadt Ghetto in 1942. From there, they were moved to Auschwitz and then to the outlying camps of Buchenwald. Eighteen members of his family, including his first wife Gertrud Klepetar, perished in the camps. He returned to his birthplace of Prague in 1945, and then went into voluntary exile in the United Kingdom in 1947, where he wrote a total of twenty-seven books, including the celebrated Holocaust novels The Journey, Panorama, and The Wall. He received several prizes for his work, including the Leo Baeck Prize for Theresienstadt, 1941–1945.