The Department of Germanic Studies Research Seminar Series presents

Book presentation: The Last Ghetto: An Everyday History of Theresienstadt
Anna Hajkova (Warwick University)

Abstract

Theresienstadt was operated by the Nazis between November 1941 and May 1945 as a transit ghetto for Central and Western European Jews before their deportation for murder in the East. Today, Theresienstadt is best known for the Nazi propaganda of the International Red Cross visit, cultural life, and children. But these aspects explain little what defined the lives of its 140,000 inmates. The Last Ghetto offers both a modern history of this Central European ghetto and the first in-depth analytical history of a prison society during the Holocaust.

“Gender was one of the most important categories of the inmate society in Terezín. The ways people understood belonging, propriety, and kinship was profoundly gendered, and in some ways more conservative than the liberal prewar societies in Central Europe of which the inmates used to be part. Moreover, Theresienstadt produced its own social hierarchies under which even small differences among prisoners decided their fate. During the three and a half years of the camp’s existence, prisoners created their own culture and habits, bonded, fell in love, and forged new families. Based on extensive archival research in nine languages and on empathetic read ng of victim testimonies, The
Last Ghetto casts light on human society works in extremis.”

About the speaker

Dr Anna Hájková is associate professor at the University of Warwick. She is the author of The Last Ghetto: An Everyday History of Theresienstadt (OUP, 2020). She is currently working on queer Holocaust history.

Join online via Zoom

For more information, contact: Dr Brangwen Stone – brangwen.stone@sydney.edu.au

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