A sleepy countryside town today, Terezín epitomizes one of history’s darkest chapters. 140,000 people were deported here by the Nazis when it served them as a GESTAPO prison, ghetto and concentration camp during the Holocaust.The concentration camp of Terezin has been the greatest field of extermination of the Czech Republic that the Nazis obtained inside the Fortress of Terezin during the second world war. The Fortress of Terezin was built between 1780 and 1790 for want of the emperor of Austria Joseph II of Asburgo-Lorena that made it build in honor of the mother Maria Teresa of Austria (Teresa in Czech language is written exactly Terezín).
The structure, divided into two main bodies called "Great Fortress" and "Small Fortress", was born for defensive purposes, and had the function of protecting the city of Prague from Prussian attacks coming from the northern territories.
In 1882 the Fortress lost its original purpose and the Small Fortress was transformed by the Habsburg monarchy into a maximum security prison where military prisoners and political opponents of the monarchy were imprisoned.
The Terezin Fortress sadly went down in history in 1938, when the Third Reich took control of it and used it first as a prison and later as a concentration camp.
During the period of the Holocaust about 144,000 Jews were imprisoned there, of which over 33,000 lost their lives, while another 88,000 were deported to Nazi extermination camps. The Ghetto of Terezin was used by the Nazis as a "model ghetto" for their propaganda, to show to foreigners and to the diplomacy of other countries.
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