Chapter 70 Chapter 69

Theresienstadt is not like Auschwitz.It really has no secrets at all.The German government even took great pains to boast about this "Jewish Paradise" in Terezin, an important Czech town near Prague, through news reports and photos.At this time, Baen Riel heard that his cousin was imprisoned there. This unusual Jewish refuge founded by the Nazis, also known as Theresienbad (Terezin Amusement Park), is quite famous in Europe.Reputable and wealthy Jews scrambled to get deported there.The German secret police demanded huge sums of money from them, selling them spacious apartments in Terezin and guaranteeing them medical care, hotels and food rations for life.Whenever disease, starvation, and deportations to the "East" wiped out the Jewish population of certain large cities, the Jewish leaders of those cities were sent here.People of half Jewish descent, respected elders, outstanding artists and scholars, and veteran Jewish soldiers with outstanding military exploits all live in this city with their families.Privileged Dutch and Danish Jews ended up living here too.

News pictures in European magazines showed these lucky Jews wearing yellow stars, sitting peacefully in small cafes, attending lectures and concerts, working happily in factories or shops, sitting in flower-filled gardens. Take a walk in the park, rehearse an opera or play, watch a local football game, or wear a morning shawl to worship in a well-appointed synagogue, or even dance in a crowded small nightclub.Some of them have names and faces that are familiar.Outside of Nazi Europe there were only distorted bits and pieces of information about the place, but the reports of Yuyang of the Red Cross made its existence known to the outside world.For all the European Jews who had not yet gone to the "East", the Plenum gladly gave Ellen all they could.Jastrow's location.

Europe was reeling from anti-Semitic propaganda and wartime hardships.The fact that such a comfortable place should be given to the Jews in such a situation naturally aroused resentment.Dr. Goebbels expresses this sentiment in a speech: . . . the Jews of Terezin sit in cafes drinking coffee, eating cakes and dancing; while our soldiers have to suffer and suffer, To defend their homeland Of course, there was no shortage of hints in the neutral and allied countries that Theresienstadt was nothing more than a Potemkin village, a Nazi farce, so representatives of the German Red Cross were invited to see for themselves Witness it, then publicly confirm the existence of this bizarre sanctuary.The Germans claimed that every other Jewish camp in the "East" was like Theresienstadt, only not as luxurious.For this, the Red Cross and the world will just have to take their word for it.

There were not many American Jews in Theresienstadt, indeed anywhere in Nazi Europe.Most of them fled before the war.As for the few who remained, some survived by influence, prestige, wealth, or luck, like Berenson and Gertrude.Steins; some went into hiding and disappeared throughout the war; some were gassed at Auschwitz, and their American citizenship was a useless laughing stock.Natalie, her uncle, and her little doll all came to this Jewish paradise. In human affairs National Socialist Germany seemed to be a novelty.Its roots are ancient, its soil is ancient, and yet it is a mutant.In the ancient world, Sparta and Plato's ideal republic were all but the vaguest omens.Although Hitler borrowed heavily from the various measures introduced by Lenin and Mussolini, no suitable comparison can be found in modern politics.From Aristotle to Marx and Nietzsche, no philosopher has ever foreseen such a thing, and no one has been able to provide a human basis for it.The Third Reich was a startling phenomenon that suddenly appeared in history.It only lasted a measly twelve years and is now defunct.It left behind unprecedented historical facts about humanity and society, and historians, social scientists, and political analysts are still stuttering and groping among the piles of relics.

Ordinary people prefer to forget about it: it was a sordid twelve-year episode in the decline of Europe, best swept under the rug.Scholars insist on classifying it academically: populism plus terror, restoration of capitalism, replica of Bonapartism, right-wing dictatorship, the success of a demagogic politician; endless academic labels have developed into lengthy and heavy tome.In fact, there is not a single work that can explain the ins and outs of the Third Reich.National Socialist Germany, the evil red spot that pollutes all mankind, is still expanding and confusing.It is a more fundamental and evaded problem in current human affairs than population explosions, nuclear bombs, and energy depletion.

Theresienstadt illuminates it, because the Jewish Paradise, unlike Auschwitz, is not esoteric.It is a bad example of National Socialism, but because it still has a semblance of reason, we can understand it if we only use our imagination.It's just a hoax.A great government expends energy on it, and it works.Strange to say, Natalie.Henry and her children's best hope of survival rested on this gigantic deception orchestrated and staged by the Germans. For Hitler and his few cronies, the extermination of the Jews of Europe—and, after the German expansion, the extermination of the Jews of the world—was always an unquestionable goal.It manifested itself in the actions and documents of the early days of the war.But it is difficult to find much trace from the text. Hitler obviously never signed anything, but the order issued by him to carry out his threat in the middle is self-evident.

But old ideas in the world outside of Germany created difficulties: mercy, justice, the right of every human being to life and security, the massacre of women and children, and so on.But for the National Socialists, the nature of war is slaughter.Women and children in Germany were dying under the bombing, and it was up to the government to define the enemy.The Jews were Germany's worst enemy, and this was at the heart of the National Socialist policy.Adolf.Hitler wrote his will before beating his brains out in his Berlin bunker.In his will, he boasted of his "humane" slaughter of the Jews - that's the word he used - and committed suicide.It also encouraged the defeated Germans to continue killing them.

As for the soft-hearted prejudices of the outside world, kept in the dark during this massacre, the National Socialists' main countermeasure was deceit.Wartime secrecy made it possible to cover up the actual killings.None of the journalists ever traveled with the Special Operations Forces, and none entered Auschwitz.The problem is: first, to stop the ever-increasing leaks and rumors about the massacre; second, to destroy all evidence.Paul.Blobel's cremation team and Dai Rongjin's Jewish Paradise are two complementary aspects of this great deception.Theresienstadt can show that there was no massacre at all.Crematoriums can destroy all evidence of the actual massacre.

Today, the idea of ​​permanently covering up the massacre of millions of people seems ludicrous.But at the time, the energies and creative talents of the entire German nation were at Hitler's disposal.The Germans were still crediting him with many other astonishing, arrogant "merits". The most successful part of this deception was carried out against the Jews themselves.During the four full years of the massacre, most of them remained ignorant, few suspected it, and few really believed that the train was sending them to their death.The Germans have painstakingly spun all manner of lies about where they are going and what they are supposed to do when they arrive.This deception continued until the last few seconds of their lives, when they were stripped naked and escorted into the "sterilizing showers" that were actually gas chambers.

From today's perspective, it seems strangely simple-minded that millions of doomed Jews should believe this deception and go like cattle to the slaughterhouse.But just as a patient would not believe that he had leukemia and clung to any reassuring straw, European Jews refused to believe the rumors and rumors that the Germans were going to kill them all. In the end, if they believed this, they had to believe that the legal government of Germany was engaged in an organized and grand scheme of fraud and murder of an unimaginable magnitude.They have to believe that the function of the state created by human society to protect itself has changed its nature in an advanced Western country. Thousands of innocent men, women and children were executed in secret.This is exactly the truth.But until the end, most of the Jews who died could not understand this fact.Even now, in retrospect, we cannot entirely blame them, for we ourselves do not understand this plain fact at all.

The Theresienstadt part of the deception is complex, and Natalie's chances of survival lie in its disjointed, contradictory purposes. The Jewish Paradise is just a transfer site, a transit station to the "East".The Jews there called it "Schleuse", which means water lock or water gate.But this transfer site has its special features.Privileged Jews were greeted warmly upon arrival, invited to a meal, and encouraged to fill out forms detailing what kind of hotel or apartment they would like to stay in, and to write down what they had brought with them. Goods, jewelry and cash.Next, they were robbed of everything, and they were carefully searched up and down, searching for valuables.Of course that passionate prelude facilitated the plunder.Thereafter, they were treated like ordinary Jews who filled the houses and streets of the ghetto. This welcome farce was often avoided whenever large numbers of Jews arrived.The newcomers were simply herded into a hall where their belongings were looted en masse, and they were given some worn-out clothes afterward, and escorted to the crowded, vermin-infested, and disease-infested urban area, On four bunks, on a sunless attic already filled with the sick and hungry, in a room where four were once occupied, and now fully forty, or Take shelter in a hallway or staircase that is also full of unlucky ones.But the newcomers were not immediately gassed to death as soon as they arrived.In this sense, it is Jewish Paradise. Some things that happened outside the German plan further decorated the facade of this paradise.From the very beginning, the well-organized Jews in Prague persuaded the SS to establish a Jewish municipal institution in the fortress city.This city government is half real and half a joke.It is a joke, because it must obey the orders of the Germans in everything, including issuing a list of people sent to the "East"; but it is true, because the various departments under it do manage health, labor, food, etc. Rationing, housing and cultural work.All the Germans cared about were tight security measures, their own comfort and enjoyment, factory production quotas, and sending live people to fill trains.As for other matters, the Jews could well take care of themselves. A bank was even opened and a special, beautiful Theresienstadt currency was issued, with an astonishing design for all banknotes by an unknown artist depicting the Crucifixion holding a newspaper. Moses.Of course, this banknote is just a joke in the ghetto, and you can't buy anything with it.But the Germans required bankers and Jewish clerks to keep an elaborate fake record of salaries, deposits, and disbursements, which could also fool the casual eye of an occasional Red Cross observer.The German efforts at Terezin had been a total fraud; food rations had never been raised to a sufficient level, medicine had never been provided, and the influx of Jews had never diminished. Terezin is a beautiful city.It is not just a stable on a stretch of sand like Auschwitz.The stone houses and the long nineteenth-century barracks lined the straight streets, and they looked nice, as long as you didn't see the sick, hungry hordes of residents inside.When there are guests, these residents are driven to secluded places.In normal times, Terezin could accommodate four or five thousand people, including soldiers living in the barracks.Now, an average of 50,000 to 60,000 people live in the Jewish Quarter.It is like a flooded area or a city on the edge of an earthquake area, full of survivors, the difference is that the disaster continues unabated, and the influx of refugees continues, the number of which is due to the alarmingly high The death rate and the floodgate to the "East" have been reduced. Lectures, concerts, plays, operas, they all happened.The Germans allowed talented residents to forget hunger, disease, crowding, and fear through these activities in the park.There are also cafes and nightclubs, but there is nothing to eat and drink, but musicians are plentiful.The Jews could carry on this spooky peacetime entertainment until they were sent off on the wheel.Ellen.The library where Jastrow worked was a good one, because all the Jewish books that came here were collected.Besides, there were even some front shops with windows full of loot from the half-dead people who passed by.Naturally, nothing is for sale. For a while, only commissioners of the German Red Cross were allowed into Theresienstadt.The SS didn't need to spend much effort, and it was easy for them to write some Yuyang reports.The success of the deception, however, put the Germans in an unexpected dilemma.The Red Cross Society of neutral countries urgently requested that observers be sent to pay a visit to Jewish Paradise.This led to one of the strangest episodes in the eccentric history of Theresienstadt, the "Grand Beautification Campaign."Natalie's fate depended on it.