The Theresienstadt Ghetto in Terezin

In an attempt to garner sympathy, Jewish WW2 survivor Gidon Lev dramatically announced his departure from TikTok due to “anti-Semitism.” According to the Times of Israel article pictured below, “Lev, 88, survived Theresienstadt, a concentration camp in what was then Czechoslovakia, for four years between the ages of 6 and 10.“

Much of this so-called anti-Semitism is coming from the outcry about Israel’s ongoing genocide of the Palestinian people. As The Times of Israel states:

Thousands of followers unfollowed Lev and many more sent him negative messages in connection with the war between Hamas and Israel in Gaza, which began when Hamas terrorists murdered some 1,200 people, mostly civilians, in towns and villages near Gaza.

Interesting how The Times of Israel doesn’t bother to mention how many people the Israeli government has murdered anywhere in their article. It is over 13,000 at the time of writing this. However, this isn’t another article about the conflict between Palestine and Israel. Although it is the Jews that keep bringing up the Holocaust to try to shield themselves from criticism for murdering thousands of innocent Palestinians. I care because they care.

According to the Wikipedia entry on Gidon Lev:

Gidon Lev (born Peter Wolfgang Löw, 3 March 1935)^{[NIS 1][4]} is a Czechoslovakian-born Israeli dairy farmer and Holocaust survivor who was interned at the Nazi ghetto of Theresienstadt between the ages of 6 and 10.^[5] Of the 9,000 children imprisoned in or transported through Theresienstadt concentration camp, he is one of the more than 2000 children estimated to have survived.

First I would like to point out how there is no citation for the claim that some 5,000 children didn’t survive the war. Just an interesting thing to note. Reading this statement as a regular person, you’d be led to assume that think that these children were gassed. Keep in mind that the Theresienstadt concentration camp (aka the Theresienstadt ghetto, aka the Terezin concentration camp) was located in Czechia. It was not claimed to be a death camp, and it is not claimed that there were gas chambers there.

Wikipedia also does not state if Lev was ever sent to Auschwitz, as many from Theresienstadt were transported there. However, a source Wikipedia cited said this:

Lev was born in 1935 in the Czech Republic and was transported with his family to a concentration camp when he was 6, Gray wrote in a 2020 article for The New York Post. Lev and his mother were the only two members of their family who survived the Holocaust, Gray wrote, after they were liberated from a concentration camp in Terezin. 

Interesting how Wikipedia merely says ‘a concentration camp’. It’s almost like they want the reader to assume the worst. However, the concentration camp in question is Theresienstadt. This means that Lev was never in an alleged death camp. For him, being a Holocaust survivor means that he survived the war living in a ghetto.

About Theresienstadt the CoDoH Holocaust Encyclopedia says:

In November 1941, the entire northern Czech town of Theresienstadt (Terezin in Czech) was turned into a ghetto for Czech and elderly German Jews, as well as privileged German Jews, among them Jewish luminaries and many decorated veterans of the First World War and their families. Later, deportees from other countries arrived there as well.

The entry for Theresienstadt on Wikipedia says this about the ghetto:

Theresienstadt was known for its relatively rich cultural life, including concerts, lectures, and clandestine education for children. The fact that it was governed by a Jewish self-administration as well as the large number of “prominent” Jews imprisoned there facilitated the flourishing of cultural life. This spiritual legacy has attracted the attention of scholars and sparked interest in the ghetto. In the postwar period, a few of the SS perpetrators and Czech guards were put on trial, but the ghetto was generally forgotten by the Soviet authorities.

Keep that part about a Jewish self-administration in mind.

The orthodox Holocaust Encyclopedia has this to say about the ghetto:

Theresienstadt served as a holding pen for Jews in the above-mentioned groups. It was expected that the poor conditions there would hasten the deaths of many deportees, until the SS and police could deport the survivors to killing centers in the East.

They also feature this quote:

Inge Auerbacher was born on December 31, 1934. At eight years old, she was experiencing the end of 1942. A lot of people were scared and sick most of that time, not just Jews, and it would only get worse as war waged on.

So is there any truth to the Holocaust fabulist claim that the conditions were purposefully poor in Theresienstadt as to cause death and suffering?

Unlike Auschwitz, Theresienstadt was well-documented. Holocaust fabulists will brush off idyllic scenes like the one below as being staged propaganda. How convenient. They, of course, have no actual evidence for that claim.

Here are some more claims from the orthodox Holocaust Encyclopedia:

Succumbing to pressure following the deportation of Danish Jews to Theresienstadt, the Germans permitted the International Red Cross to visit in June 1944. It was all an elaborate hoax. The Germans intensified deportations from the ghetto shortly before the visit, and the ghetto itself was “beautified.” Gardens were planted, houses painted, and barracks renovated. The Nazis staged social and cultural events for the visiting dignitaries. Once the visit was over, the Germans resumed deportations from Theresienstadt, which did not end until October 1944.

The only statement that can be proven as factual in the proceeding paragraph is that the Red Cross did indeed visit in 1944. CoDoH forum user Merlin300 brings up this point:

The Germans did allow Red Cross inspectors into several of the camps and did film and photograph all the camps so the claim the Germans could stop a program of mass murder, savage brutality, and starvation, to dress the victims up, fatten them up and have them chat with Red Cross Inspectors for several days without giving away anything seems absurd on its face.

I would like to add that it also absurd to think that the Germans could have turned a place that was supposedly meant to cause people to die of illness and starvation into a place that would fool a Swiss representative of the Red Cross into giving it a clean bill of health.

More documentation of Theresienstadt exists in film. In 1944, the Germans released The Fuhrer gives the Jews a town. The film was later “lost” and of its 90-minute runtime only 20 minutes have resurfaced. You can watch some of this resurfaced footage on here on Archive.org. You can take a gander at the film and judge its merits for yourself.

I find it funny, not funny ha-ha, that Holocaust revisionists are accused of being crazy conspiracy theorists while the Holocaust fabulists make the sort of claims they do. When it comes to Theresienstadt they are claiming that evil Nazis had built a ghetto where they purposefully made the conditions poor in order to cause sickness and death. Yet they were able to to pretty up the place with some paint and plants enough to fool the public about its true nature. All of this while fighting a war on multiple fronts and leaving behind zero evidence of their evil schemes. Sounds pretty kooky to me.

You can also watch an interview that Ernst Zundel had with Alexander McClelland for insider information on Theresienstadt. McClelland was a former Australian POW who was an inmate there. McClelland had tried to escape from the Nazis ten times, so we know he was no ally of Germany. Despite this, he was never executed (obviously) or even mistreated by the Germans. McClelland dedicated his retirement to exposing the lies that Jews told about Theresienstadt. In particular, he debunks the claim that Australian, British, and New Zealand POWs were massacred at Theresienstadt concentration camp in 1945.

Now that we have seen evidence that contradicts the Holocaust fabulist version of what Theresienstadt was like, what about the claim mentioned earlier, the one about 5,000 dead children? Continue to part two to find out more.

PART TWO:

Before we get into the numbers, I’d like to share some images of the Theresienstadt ghetto that I came across while in the midst of my research. They were found on a blog of someone that had taken a tour of the area. Here are the photos with the captions included:

These pictures might be surprising to a person with the modern idea of a ghetto. If you think that the area was only made nice after the Nazis were defeated, I suggest you look at this 1941–45 map of the place and read the list of amenities that were available to the Jewish people living there.

As you may recall from part one, the Wikipedia entry for Gidon Lev made an uncited claim that “Of the 9,000 children imprisoned in or transported through Theresienstadt concentration camp, he is one of the more than 2000 children estimated to have survived.“

However, this is a case of stories not being straight as according to the information that my robot assistant, Sarah (Bing AI), dug up only 200 children survived. As you can see from the conversation below, the figure of only 200 children surviving is widely accepted by historians and scholars.

The references Sarah used for the claim of 200 children surviving were newspaper articles. The reference Wikipedia uses for the number of people that allegedly died in the camp is from a book that is written in German. This makes it difficult for the average person to verify these claims. After more prodding and poking, I discovered that deaths were recorded in the Tagesbefehl, or order of the day. This page describes a single Tagesbefehl in which one birth was recorded, but there were 47 deaths. This is most likely cherry picked to paint Theresienstadt in the worst light possible. Unfortunately, I was unable to find access to more of the Tagesbefehl.

In the entry for the Theresienstadt ghetto, Wikipedia states, “About 33,000 people died at Theresienstadt, mostly from malnutrition and disease.” There is no citation given; however, it is possible that the records reflect this. On the other hand, as regular readers know, there is no reason to take anything said about the Holocaust at face value.

Alexander McClelland, who I mentioned in part one, had obtained records of Theresienstadt and shared them in his interview with Ernst Zundel. It seems as these records have been lost to time as I am unable to find them online. During the interview, McClelland mentioned that in Theresienstadt over 50% of the people were over the age of 66. He goes on to say that about 43,000 residents in the ghetto were over the age of 61. This most certainly was a contributing factor to the deaths in the camp as the elderly are going to be more vulnerable to the harsh conditions caused by wartime.

Back to the matter of the children. The following information shown below is from the United States Holocaust Memorial and Museum (USHMM) website. It is possible that the number of fewer than 200 children surviving comes from the fact that 120 children were found at the children’s home shortly before the camp was liberated. This would mean that it is assumed that anyone not found at the camp had died, which would be an unscientific assumption.

First, unlike what Holocaust fabulists would have you believe, no one that was transported from the ghetto to Auschwitz/Birkenau gassed, this is because homicidal gas chambers did not exist. However, I have further information about this particular group of people in my Theresienstadt Family Camp article. Secondly, according to McClelland’s research there were 1,600 children in the camp when the Red Cross took it over in May of 1945. He also found that children from Theresienstadt were put in foster homes. Finally, I would like to quote one of Sarah’s answers:

It’s important to note that while these records are extensive, they may not account for every single individual due to the chaotic and devastating circumstances of the Holocaust.

Because of the chaos and disruption the war caused, you cannot just assume that because someone is not where you expected them to be means they were murdered.

Because of all these factors, I cannot accept the claim that out of 15,000 children less than 200 survived without actual evidence.

Holocaust fabulists paint the Theresienstadt ghetto as a terrible place of misery and suffering that was above and beyond what the general population was facing, but the evidence simply does not support this picture.