SLOVENŠTÍ ŽIDÉ V GHETTU TEREZÍN (1944 – 1945)

1450 people were deported from the Jewish transit camp in Sereď (Slovakia), to the Terezín ghetto in the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia in 4 transports between December 1944 and March 1945. Eleven of the deported perished on the way from Sereď while 35 died in Terezín. The rest survived the Holocaust. Based on research in Czech and Slovak archives, as well as in oral and visual history databases and books of memoirs, the paper studies the experience of the people deported to Terezín from Slovakia in its various aspects – their origin (there was a number of Hungarian nationals among the deportees), their previous fates (particularly after the German occupation of Slovakia from August 1944), the extent of knowledge about the mass extermination of Jews „in the East“ among those deported from Slovakia in comparison with other Terezín inmates, their living conditions in the ghetto (including health and sanitation, public, cultural and religious life), the fate of children among the Slovak Jews in Terezín and the specific experience of the end of the war and liberation.