Terezin Small Fortress

The small fortress and town at Terezin was constructed at the end of the 18th Century on the right bank of the Ohre River. The fortress served at a prison during the 19th Century.
It continued in this use during WWI and mainly housed opponents of the Austro-Hungarian monarchy. One famous prisoner to be held here during this time was Gavrilo Princip, the assassin of Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria. He was held in isolation cell 1 and died at the prison after nearly 4 years of imprisonment on 28th April 1918 of tuberculosis.
The Fortress served as a prison for the Prague Gestapo from 10th June 1940 to May 1945 with it being the largest prison in the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia. The Fortress was under the command of SS-Hauptsturmführer Heinrich Jöckel who was executed after the war in October 1946. With the Terezín Ghetto being used to imprison Jews the Fortress was used for political opponents to the Nazis, members of the Czech Resistance, British POWs and others from Yugoslavia, France, Italy and the Soviet Union. During its use by the Gestapo around 32,000 people including 5,000 women were held there.
From 1943 executions were carried out at the Fortress based on the Sonderbehandlung Treatment. More than 250 prisoners were executed at the Fortress with the last taking place on 2nd May 1945 and totalling 51 prisoners.
Living conditions within the Fortress were poor and constantly deteriorating, the majority of the prisoners within the Fortress were used as forced slave labour with various companies outside the Fortress but also for military production right up until the end of the war. Terezín also acted like a traditional prison where prisoners would eventually be sent to concentration camps. In 1944 the Nazis used the prison and ghetto as misleading propaganda of their treatment of Jews and other opponents of their regime, this process was called beautification and was in preparation of a visit from the Red Cross. Between August and September a video was shot called The Führer Gives a City to the Jews (Der Führer schenkt den Juden eine Stadt).
Around 2,600 people died at the Fortress due to hunger, torture and poor hygiene with thousands more dying being transported from Terezin to concentration camps.
After the war epidemic Typhus erupted in the Fortress and Ghetto with Czech epidemiologists Karel Raška and František Patočka arriving from Prague to implement measures to stop the spread of the epidemic within the Fortress and Ghetto.
During 1945-1948 the Fortress served as an interment camp for German POWs and then the German population of Czechoslovakia who were destined to be expelled from the country in line with the Beneš decrees.
There were several trials held for atrocities committed at the Fortress during the war during the 1950s, 1960s and even as late as the 2000s with the accused either being imprisoned or executed.
Photos can be found here: www.kentexplorehistory.com/po...

[@Wolfsschanze99]

Amazing, I only passed through this part of the world from Vienna to Krakow on the train, many things I would of liked to see there.
Terrible conditions for the prisoners, imagine being locked up in one of those cells.