For ten months, a section of Birkenau held something found nowhere else in Auschwitz: Jewish families who had not gone through a selection, living together with their children. This was the so-called Theresienstadt family camp. Of the 17,500 people sent there from the Terezín ghetto, only 1,294 survived the war.
From Terezín to Birkenau
Terezín, known in German as Theresienstadt, was a ghetto and transit camp in the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia, about 60 kilometres north of Prague. Jews from the Czech lands, Germany, Austria and other countries were held there before being deported further east.
In September 1943 two transports carried about 5,000 people from Terezín to Auschwitz-Birkenau. More transports followed in December 1943 and May 1944, bringing about 12,500 more. Almost half of the later arrivals had first been deported to Terezín from Germany, Austria and the Netherlands.
A camp unlike the others
The new arrivals were placed in sector BIIb of Birkenau. Unlike other Jewish deportees, they were not selected on arrival. Families stayed together, their hair was not shaved, and they could keep some of their own clothes. They were registered and tattooed with camp numbers.
These differences did not make the camp safe. The prisoners suffered from hunger, cold, overcrowding and disease, and the death rate was as high as elsewhere in Birkenau.
The children’s block
The young German Jewish athlete and educator Fredy Hirsch persuaded the SS to allow a separate barrack for the children. There, teachers held secret lessons, children put on plays and sang, and the walls were painted with scenes from fairy tales. For a few hours each day, hundreds of children had a place of relative warmth and care in the middle of Birkenau.
The liquidation of the camp
The reason the SS created the family camp has never been fully explained. It was most likely part of an effort to deceive the outside world, including the International Committee of the Red Cross, which visited Terezín in June 1944. Prisoners were forced to write postcards to relatives in Terezín, dated in advance, to show that they were alive.
On the night of 8 March 1944, six months after their arrival, the people of the September transports were told they were being moved to a labour camp. Instead they were taken to the gas chambers and murdered. Fredy Hirsch, whom the prisoners’ underground had hoped would lead an uprising, died that day of an overdose of sedatives.
In early July 1944 the SS carried out selections in the camp, and some of the younger prisoners were sent to labour camps in Germany. Between 10 and 12 July the remaining 6,000 to 7,000 prisoners were murdered in the gas chambers.
Remembering the family camp
8 March is commemorated in the Czech Republic as the anniversary of the largest single mass murder of Czechoslovak citizens in history. For the history of the deportations from Prague and Bohemia, see also our article on the victims of Auschwitz. The Terezín Memorial and the Holocaust.cz database publish more about the camp and the names of its prisoners.
Frequently asked questions
A section of Birkenau, BIIb, where Jews deported from the Terezín ghetto were held as families, without a selection on arrival, from September 1943 to July 1944.
About 17,500 people were sent there from Terezín. Only 1,294 of them survived the war.
The people from the September 1943 transports were murdered on the night of 8 March 1944. The remaining prisoners were murdered between 10 and 12 July 1944.
Plan your visit to the Memorial
Visiting Auschwitz-Birkenau in person is the most powerful way to understand its history. We organise guided visits with licensed Memorial educators from Kraków, Warsaw, Prague, Vienna and other cities. See our tours
