Façades for the International Commission

Bedrich Fritta

1943–1944

Sketch of storefronts next to a pile of corpses and brick wall and a couple is kissing against a wall in left foreground.
In the Terezin concentration camp, before a visit by the International Red Cross and the Danish Red Cross in 1944, the Nazis created an elaborate ruse, designed to convince the delegation that the camp was actually a “self-governing town,” and not a prison camp where tens of thousands had died and which served as a transit point for deportation to Auschwitz. To this end, they constructed a fake park, theater, school, sports area, playground, and café, and forced ghetto inhabitants to put on a show and pretend to be happy. Even a fake documentary film was produced. Here, Bedřich Fritta satirizes the deception. Behind the false façades are dead bodies and, at left, a gaunt prisoner looks out from the window of a prison. After the departure of the international delegation, almost everyone who had been forced to act in the farce was deported to Auschwitz, including Bedřich Fritta.

Credits

© Thomas Fritta-Haas, long-term loan to the Jewish Museum Berlin, photo: Jens Ziehe.

Published in: The Posen Library of Jewish Culture and Civilization, vol. 9.

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