Terezín Studies and Documents

On Saturday our GEDENKDIENST volunteer Laurenz welcomed the team of the Alpine Peace Crossing to Jachymka to show them our work.

Alpine Peace Crossing (APC) is an Austrian organization based in Krimml (Salzburg province).

Our Volunteer Laurenz was in Austria last week to promote the GEDENKDIENST program at his former school, the HAK 1 in Salzburg. Speaking to about 60 people from the 4^th grade he talked about his experiences and encouraged the students to also use the opportunity to do a Gap-Year with a positive impact. Besides the remembrance work and the work and history of our institute, Laurenz told the students about the challenges and the many wonderful things that come with moving abroad and starting a new job fresh out of school.

We want to thank the HAK 1 business school in Salzburg for giving Laurenz the opportunity to promote the program and the students for their keen interest.

Thanks to the generous support of various donors, we have been able to add new books to our library collection. Among them is a wide range of specialist literature in German, English and Czech that complements our existing collection. 

We would like to present a few highlights to our readers here. The complete list of new additions can be found in the PDF document.

On the occasion of the meeting of the International Auschwitz Museum Council, its members paid tribute to the Jewish and Roma victims of the Treblinka labor camp at the site of their mass graves. Pictured are T. Kraus, Colette Avital and Roman Kwiatkowski.

This Sunday 11th May 2025 we attended a commemorative act in Lety u Písku to honor the Roma and Sinti victims from Bohemia and Moravia. 1300 people passed through the camp. Of those 335, mainly children, have died due to the inhumane conditions. After the mass transport in 1943 to the extermination camp in Auschwitz - Birkenau, the buildings of the Lety camp were torn down and burnt.

Thanks to Spielberg's film Schindler's List, the whole world knows the story of the rescue of 1,200 Jewish prisoners at the end of the Second World War. The whole world knows who Oskar Schindler was and why he became a symbol of good in a time of evil. But that same world has no idea where this heartbreaking story actually took place. That could change now.

Yesterday, together with the participants of the seminar and excursion Bergen-Belsen on the Threshold of Freedom, we attended a reception at the British Embassy in Prague on the occasion of the 80th anniversary of the liberation of the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp by the British Army on 15 April 1945.