“The Second Life” of the Theresienstadt Films after the Second World War

Abstract

Films shot in the ghetto of Theresienstadt between 1942 and 1945 were long considered lost. Several fragments were found and to this day remain scattered in European and Israeli archives. The results of historical research over decades and other newly revealed facts enable us now for the first time to reconstruct how different film fragments made their way into international archives after 1945. Recently found documents in the Archive of Security Services (former archive of the StB) in Prague became a new source of information about the production and later use of the propaganda film Theresienstadt. Ein Dokumentarfilm aus dem jüdischen Siedlungsgebiet / Theresienstadt. A Documentary Film about the Jewish Settlement (1944-45). They are connected with a Prague trial in the mid-1960s relating to the illegal transfer of fragments of this film to West Germany. Based on archival studies this article reconstructs the post-war history of the film materials from the Theresienstadt ghetto, which has become a prime source for studying the Holocaust. The study contains two tables tracing the “second life” of the film materials in different archives.

Keywords

• Irena Dodalová
• Kurt Gerron
• Michael Bornkamp
• Přemysl Schönbach
• Prague
• Ghetto Theresienstadt