Skip To Content
JEWISH. INDEPENDENT. NONPROFIT.
Breaking News

Mementos of Doomed Jews Found in Terezin Ghetto

House owners rebuilding their attic in the Czech town of Terezin have found photos, shoes and other possessions of Jews forced into a ghetto there under Nazi rule, a heritage project said on Thursday.

Terezin (Theresienstadt), a fortress and garrison town built at the end of the 18th century, was used by the Nazis as a transit camp for Jews rounded up in Czechoslovakia and deported from elsewhere in Europe. They were held in the ghetto until they could be transported to camps farther east.

Nearly 160,000 Jews went through Terezin. Most perished either there or in the death camps of Nazi-occupied eastern Europe. The camp remained in operation from autumn of 1941 till its liberation in May 1945

The discovery of the objects, some of which bore their owner’s names, was disclosed by the Ghetto Theresienstadt project, which is funded by German and Czech sponsors.

“The unexpected finds such as these suggest that an abundance of precious legacies from the ghetto period are still waiting to be discovered in buildings throughout Terezin,” the group said in a news release.

The group said the highlight of the find was the head tefillin, a small black capsule containing a handwritten parchment scroll with the “Hear, O Israel” verses from Deuteronomy.

Pious Jewish men are obliged to wear tefillin during their morning prayers and the capsules, one for the head and one for an arm, are cherished belongings.

The group said the home owners wished to remain anonymous because of the sensitivity of the issue among Terezin inhabitants. They discovered the objects while replacing a roof truss in their attic in November.

“In their view, the way that the objects were concealed under the beams indicates the great importance that the prisoners gave in hiding their possessions,” the group said.

The Ghetto Theresienstadt projects started in 2012 and is supported by the German Federal Cultural Foundation;, the Remembrance, Responsibility and Future Foundation; the Prague-based German-Czech Future Fund; and other groups in Germany and Czech Republic.

A message from our Publisher & CEO Rachel Fishman Feddersen

I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s award-winning, nonprofit journalism during this critical time.

We’ve set a goal to raise $260,000 by December 31. That’s an ambitious goal, but one that will give us the resources we need to invest in the high quality news, opinion, analysis and cultural coverage that isn’t available anywhere else.

If you feel inspired to make an impact, now is the time to give something back. Join us as a member at your most generous level.

—  Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO

With your support, we’ll be ready for whatever 2025 brings.

Republish This Story

Please read before republishing

We’re happy to make this story available to republish for free, unless it originated with JTA, Haaretz or another publication (as indicated on the article) and as long as you follow our guidelines. You must credit the Forward, retain our pixel and preserve our canonical link in Google search.  See our full guidelines for more information, and this guide for detail about canonical URLs.

To republish, copy the HTML by clicking on the yellow button to the right; it includes our tracking pixel, all paragraph styles and hyperlinks, the author byline and credit to the Forward. It does not include images; to avoid copyright violations, you must add them manually, following our guidelines. Please email us at [email protected], subject line “republish,” with any questions or to let us know what stories you’re picking up.

We don't support Internet Explorer

Please use Chrome, Safari, Firefox, or Edge to view this site.