„Ich wand‘re durch Theresienstadt …“

In 1941, the SS set up the Theresienstadt camp in the Bohemian town of Terezín. It served as a prison for 150,000 German, Austrian, Czech and later Dutch and Danish Jews until 1945. They all became victims of the inhuman National Socialist racial ideology. One in four of the Jews imprisoned in Theresienstadt died there. Looking back, it seems hard to imagine that despite the catastrophic living conditions, gruelling forced labour, constant hunger, illness and the omnipresent fear of death, a lively cultural life developed in Theresienstadt: organized by the prisoners, there were lectures, theater and opera performances, cabaret, jazz concerts and numerous chamber music performances. The musical reading "Ich wand're durch Theresienstadt ..." recalls the incomprehensible suffering, the hopes and the artistic self-assertion of the Jews imprisoned in Theresienstadt. Special attention is paid to the fates of young people at the time.

Roman Knižka reads from memoirs by Ruth Klüger, Eva Erben, Helga Hošková-Weissová, Hannelore Brenner-Wonschick, Gerty Spies and Margot Kleinberger, among others. Poems and texts by children and young people who were imprisoned in Theresienstadt will be heard, as well as poetry by the writer Ilse Weber, who worked as a pediatric nurse.

Edith Erbrich, a survivor of the ghetto, will describe her own memories of Theresienstadt. On February 14, 1945, Edith, then seven years old, was deported with her sister and her Jewish father in one of the last transports from Frankfurt Main to Theresienstadt. Her Catholic mother was denied transportation. On the night of May 8, 1945, the Russian army liberated the Theresienstadt camp. Father and daughters survived.

The Opus 45 wind quintet plays compositions by Pavel Haas, Hans Krása, Viktor Ullmann and Gideon Klein, among others. Imprisoned in Theresienstadt and murdered by the National Socialists, the work of these important composers was forgotten for a long time after the end of the Second World War.