Album of Photographs – Liberation of the Theresienstadt Ghetto – May 1945

Album of Photographs – Liberation of the Theresienstadt Ghetto – May 1945
An album with about 50 photographs documenting the Theresienstadt Ghetto as witnessed by soldiers of the Red Army during its liberation. Theresienstadt, [May 1945; a few later or earlier photographs].
The Theresienstadt Ghetto was established by the Nazis in 1941 near the town of Terezin in Czechoslovakia. It was run by the SS, the prisoners suffering from overcrowding, starvation, and disease. In preparation for a visit of an investigative commission of the International Red Cross, the Germans decided to turn Theresienstadt into a "model ghetto": stores, a coffee house, a bank and a school were opened, and gardens were planted in the ghetto. Later, a propaganda film (Theresienstadt. Ein Dokumentarfilm aus dem jüdischen Siedlungsgebiet) was made in the ghetto, screened for representatives of the Red Cross. Not long after the production was completed, most of the prisoners of the ghetto were deported to extermination camps.
This album documents the ghetto upon its liberation by the Red Army. The photographs depict survivors receiving first treatment in a yard, the victims as they were found after the liberation, the gallows, the graves, paper boxes with ashes of victims (some with name labels), the private swimming pool built by prisoners for the camp commander's children and more (many of the photographs are highly graphic and explicit).
Several photographs at the beginning and end of the album depict other people and events: portrait photographs of two of the camp commanders – Heinrich Jöckel and Stefan Rojko and photographs from a state funeral ceremony held for the victims in September 1945, attended by Jan Masaryk.
The photographs are mounted in the album. Most of them are captioned on printed notes (Czech). Several of the photographs in the album are found in the archive of the Czech photography agency ČTK, whose photographer Josef Vosolsobe visited the camp on May 9, 1945.
Approx. 13X8.5 cm. Good condition. Minor blemishes. Size of album: approx. 32X23 cm. The leaves and some of the photographs are numbered by hand. Stains and small tears to edges of tissue guards. The binding is slightly worn.