On November
24, 1941, Terezin became the Theresienstadt ghetto, to which
the Nazis expelled 140,000 Jews, the majority of whom
eventually perished in death camps. Cultural life flourished
in the ghetto even as residents were being dispatched to the
gas chambers of Auschwitz, and living conditions were more
humane there than at any of the other Jewish ghettos
established by the Nazis. Theresienstadt was the only ghetto
that permitted foreign visitors, albeit under carefully
managed conditions. The most prominent inmate was Rabbi Leo
Baeck, the philosopher and theologian who had been chairman
of the General Association of German Rabbis in the 1920s.
Under the Nazis he was president of the Reich Representation
of German Jews and its successor organization, the Reich
Association of Jews in Germany, until it was dissolved in
June 1943. Rabbi Baeck refused opportunities to leave
Germany, believing it was his duty to stay, to serve the
Jewish community in its time of greatest need. He was
deported to Theresienstadt in 1943; after liberation in May
1945, he settled in London, where he served as chairman of
the Council for Jews from Germany.
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Below:
Until this post card was discovered in 1999, Rabbi Baeck's
family and colleagues believed that no correspondence from
his incarceration at Theresienstadt had survived. Rabbi
Baeck had written to Rabbi Emil Kronheim of Stockholm on
January 23, 1944, but the card was evidently held by the
Nazis for more than five months without explanation before
being posted on July 6 from Berlin Charlottenburg. It
expressed gratitude for a November 5 card or letter, and for
parcels received from Rabbi Kronheim's congregation, but
elliptical wording has led one of Rabbi Baeck's assistants
at Theresienstadt to suggest that it may have contained an
informally coded message as well. The straight line marking
on the front states, "Reply only by postcard written in
German." As a German Jew, Rabbi Baeck was required to call
himself Leo Israel Baeck as the sender. |