Terezín, as it was known in Czech, or Theresienstadt in German, was operated by the Nazis between November 1941 and May 1945 as a transit ghetto for Central and Western European Jews before their deportation for murder in the East. Today, Theresienstadt is best known for its use as Nazi propaganda to impress the International Red Cross. This important aspect must be contextualized within the society of the 140,000 people who were imprisoned there. Dr. Anna Hájková’s new book The Last Ghetto offers both a modern history of this Central European ghetto and the first in-depth analytical history of an imprisoned society during the Holocaust. Based on research from ninety-nine archives, ten countries, and nine languages, the book offers an unflinching gaze on the social experience in extremis.
Join the Museum for a discussion with Hájková and Benjamin Carter Hett, author of The Nazi Menace: Hitler, Churchill, Roosevelt, Stalin, and the Road to War about The Last Ghetto.
Dr. Anna Hájková is Associate Professor of Modern European Continental History at the University of Warwick. In addition to her academic work, Dr. Hájková is a queer history activist and public intellectual. Her first book, The Last Ghetto: An Everyday History of Theresienstadt, was published in 2020.
Benjamin Carter Hett earned a J.D. at the University of Toronto and practiced litigation in Canada before earning a Ph.D. in History at Harvard. He has taught at Harvard College and the Harvard Law School and, since 2003, at Hunter College and the Graduate Center, City University of New York. He is the author of several books including The Death of Democracy: Hitler’s Rise to Power and the Downfall of the Weimar Republic ; The Nazi Menace: Hitler, Churchill, Roosevelt, Stalin, and the Road to War; Burning the Reichstag; and Crossing Hitler. Hett has been the recipient of fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation and the American Council of Learned Societies. He is presently working on a project about Arthur Nebe and the German criminal police during the Second World War.
Watch Here: