Newsgroups: alt.revisionism Subject: Holocaust Almanac: Theresienstadt & the death toll Summary: The plight of the elderly victims of the Nazi state's callous disregard for human rights discussed by Bondy. Followup-To: alt.revisionism Keywords: theresienstadt Archive/File: holocaust/czechoslovakia/theresienstadt theresien.08 Last-Modified: 1994/09/21 "The old people were quickly crushed. They shrank down to skeletons, were plagued by diarrhea, struck down by pneumonia. The slightest scratch caused blood poisoning and gangrene; the lack of vitamins led to night blindness. In fall and winter they went for days without removing their clothes. The lice brought to the ghetto by old people from Vienna quickly spread, consumed them, and paraded across their sheets and pillows. The elderly were taken to the disinfection center and died of cold. Many simply burned out, for lack of strength, lack of will to go on fighting. At the start of the ghetto, the names of the dead were published in the daily ordinance, but as the number of deaths increased, reaching 130 per day, it became impossible to continue this practice. The peak month was September 1943: almost 19,000 people arrived at the ghetto, 13,000 were sent east, and almost 4,000 deaths were recorded. Sometimes the young people tried to preserve their strength by consciously ignoring the old and living in a separate world. The Germans emptied every Jewish hospital and mental institution throughout the Reich and shipped the inmates to Theresienstadt. When nurse Trude Groag arrived at the ghetto with a transport from Olmu"tz that included a group of mentally ill people, she asked Edelstein at the train station if there was a mental institution in the ghetto. Edelstein replied that there were a few small ones, but on the whole the mentally ill were sent to Poland. 'And there?' she wanted to know. Yesef shrugged his shoulders without elaborating." (Bondy, 299-300) Work Cited Bondy, Ruth. Elder of the Jews. New York: Grove Press, 1989. (Translated from "Edelshtain neged had-zeman". Zmora, Bitan, Modan, publishers, 1981
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