The Hell of Theresienstadt as a Paradise Garden in Nazi Propaganda Film

Abstract

The article approaches the hell of Theresienstadt by starting with reflections on its historical reality as a special camp and as part of the Nazi policy of extermination. It then gives some insights into authentic experiences of the “forecourt of hell”, as remembered by survivors of the Holocaust and expressed in the interviews conducted during field research in the years 2017 and 2018. Set against this background, we finally reconstruct and interpret the reality of the place as it is presented in the Nazi propaganda film Theresienstadt: Ein Dokumentarfilm aus dem judischen Siedlungsgebiet (Terezin: A Documentary Film from the Jewish Settlement Area). Based on an analysis of selected parts of the film, we develop the thesis that the Theresienstadt film represents a very distinct means of presenting Nazi political ideology through a propaganda tool. This is because the film stages a “hall of mirrors” that distorts the hell of ghetto life into a paradise, in order to expose this “heaven on earth” as nothing but an optical illusion and a phantasm. The more-or-less hidden main message of the “documentary film” is that skilled and well-informed observers of this Jewish fake paradise will be able to decode the mirror writing and discover the ongoing downfall of humanity, and thereby finally become aware of an existential threat that transmits and reveals its own verdict of annihilation.