Description
Book SynopsisFirst published in 1955, with a revised edition appearing five years later, H. G. Adler''s Theresienstadt, 19411945 is a foundational work in the field of Holocaust studies. As the first scholarly monograph to describe the particulars of a single camp - the Jewish ghetto in the Czech city of Terezin - it is the single most detailed and comprehensive account of any concentration camp. Adler, a survivor of the camp, divides the book into three sections: a history of the ghetto, a detailed institutional and social analysis of the camp, and an attempt to understand the psychology of the perpetrators and the victims. A collaborative effort between the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum and the Terezin Publishing Project makes this authoritative text on Holocaust history available for the first time in the English language, with a new afterword by the author''s son Jeremy Adler.
Trade Review'Adler's Theresienstadt 1941–1945, completed in London and first published in German in 1955, is monograph as monument. … A meticulous chronicle that is at once a sober and self-aware sociology of the absurd, a memoir in which the writer does not appear, and a penetrating ethnographic study. … Both a masterpiece of scholarship and a literary event …' J. Hoberman, BookForum
'The value of Adler's work is that it does not just deal with one ghetto, but with the exercise of particular forms of power and the possibilities of human autonomy, with the 'coerced community' and the 'administered human being'. In this way, as Adler's son Jeremy points out in his afterword, it has exercised a profound influence on later writers, from Raul Hilberg and Hannah Arendt, to W. G. Sebald.' Peter Pulzer, The Times Literary Supplement
'This immensely significant and moving chronicle is an indispensable resource. Essential.' J. Hardin, Choice
'More than sixty years after its original publication, H. G. Adler's Theresienstadt remains indispensable to anyone who has more than a casual interest in what was among the most perverse and strange sites of incarceration in the Nazi empire. Although sadly few people realize it, Adler's book is also essential reading for anyone engaged in trying to understand the Holocaust.' Ben Barkow, German Historical Institute London Bulletin
'Adler draws capably on ideas from anthropology, economics, education, ethics, Judaism, penology, philosophy, political science, and other such fields… It belongs in every library, public and private, that would house the best in Holocaust scholarship.' Arthur Shostak, The European Legacy
Table of ContentsPart I. History: 1. The Jews in the 'Protectorate', 1939–41; 2. Theresienstadt: history and establishment; 3. Deportations to and from Theresienstadt; 4. Closed camp: November 1941/July 1942; 5. 'Ghetto': July 1942/summer 1943; 6. 'Jewish settlement area': summer 1943/September 1944; 7. Decline and dissolution; Part II. Sociology: 8. Administration; 9. The transport; 10. Population; 11. Housing; 12. Nutrition; 13. Labor; 14. Economy; 15. Legal conditions; 16. Health conditions; 17. Welfare; 18. Contact with the outside world; 19. Cultural life; Part III. Psychology: 20. The psychological face of the coerced community.
