KL Theresienstadt Library Book with Stamp - Holocaust

KL Theresienstadt Library Book with Stamp - Holocaust
Rare song booklet which beonged to the Library of the Getto/concentration camp Theresienstadt in Czech Republic.The booklet "Das Vaterunser" is small and religious content book.The Theresienstadt Central Library was one of several libraries in the combined ghetto and camp. The Central Library had been opened on the order of the camp commandant in November 1942 and remained active until the camp was dissolved, although the bulk of library staff was deported to Auschwitz in autumn of 1944 after the library had been beautified and shown to the Red Cross. During its years in operation, the library grew from a collection of 4,000 volumes to, at the end of the war, 180,000. Books included Hebraica, Judaica, fiction and classics alongside volumes of philosophy, history, and linguistic and scientific literature.It has a very rare and not often seen stamp of the library in Theresienstadt KL:The stamp says:ZentralbuchereiTheresienstadt Böhmen & MahrenLeiter: Emil UtitzEmil Utitz was in charge of the central library of Theresienstadt.Emil Utitz was born in 1883 in Prague. After studying in Prague, Munich and Leipzig he taught at the universities of Rostock and Halle as a professor of psychology and aesthetics. It is likely to have been during this period that he turned away from Judaism, but after the First World War he returned to to Judaism again. In 1933 he was forced to leave Germany, and returned to his birthplace, becoming a professor at the German University in Prague. He was deported to Terezín in 1942, surviving until the camp's liberation in 1945. He was in charge of the Terezín ghetto's central library.