Terezin was a Czech town for over a century before Hitler evacuated its inhabitants and “gave” it to the Jews of Europe, rechristening it “Theresienstadt.” Since the complete disappearance of the most prominent composers, conductors, statesmen, soldiers, scientists, scholars, and actors in the world might have raised a few eyebrows, Hitler found it convenient to resettle them all in one place, where he could show the world how well he was treating them–the propaganda documentary Hitler Gives the Jews a City remains to this day one of the most terrifying films ever made. Almost 200,000 Jews passed through the camp; at its busiest, the town, nine blocks long and five blocks wide, housed over 58,000 people—each person had just over a square yard of space. Over the course of two and a half years, 87,000 Jews were sent from Terezin to the gas chambers at Auschwitz.

And yet despite the deprivations they suffered and the horrors that awaited most of them, the Jews of Terezin chose to use their gifts to create the most vibrant artistic community Europe had ever seen. On any given day, camp inmates had their choice of dozens of concerts, plays, and lectures to attend. At one point, the commander of the camp delayed a transport east so that the soloists for a scheduled concert of the Verdi requiem mass could perform before they were sent to what they knew to be their deaths.

The artistic energy in Terezin carried over into other spheres of life, most particularly the education and care of the children. The adults defied the orders forbidding them to teach, and held regular classes in literature, Hebrew, math, and, of course, the arts. The “self-governing” Council of Elders reduced the rations of food to the elderly and gave the surplus created to the children. The boys of barracks L417 published a secret magazine called Vedem, or In the Lead, and the children’s poetry and artwork from the camp has been published in many collections, most notably I Never Saw Another Butterfly. Nevertheless, of the 15,000 children who passed through the camp, 132 survived.

The musical TEREZIN deals with questions of
how truth will not be silenced;
how art refuses to be coopted by tyranny;
and, most of all, how the human need to create
will always triumph over the urge to destroy.