THEN THE STONES SPEAK: Balancing the Weight of Terezín’s History with its Need for Contemporary Development

Abstract

Terezín is facing a crossroads. The historic bastion fortress town in north-west Czechia is most widely known as the site of the Nazi-controlled Theresienstadt Ghetto, a major prison and transit camp for Jews during the Holocaust. Between 1941 and 1945, 144,000 prisoners were transported to Terezín. Most were sent onwards to extermination camps such as Auschwitz and Treblinka. 33,000 died in Terezín itself. Yet today, Terezín is still a living town, with a population of around 3,000. In many ways, the future of Terezín’s Dresden Barracks – the largest building in Terezín – can be seen as a paradigm for the changing face of Holocaust commemoration throughout Europe. Uninhabited and damaged by years of weathering, in its current state it serves neither to memorialise the thousands persecuted within the Nazicontrolled Theresienstadt Ghetto, nor to support the town’s current need for inhabitants and infrastructure. Then the Stones Speak focuses on the coming postwitness era, where no survivors of the Holocaust remain. Mediating between site-specific and broader social current issues, the thesis will explore questions that on the surface may seem intuitive. How best to preserve sites of historical trauma when living memory is lost? Should one preserve these sites, or should the needs of current and future inhabitants take precedence? The thesis will take a multi-layered approach, focusing on a broader background on Holocaust sites and sites of trauma around the world, before zooming in on Terezı́n and the Dresden Barracks. A reuse approach for the dilapidated building will be proposed following interviews with municipality officials, ghetto survivors and historians, site visits, and investigations into the experiences of prisoners within the Dresden Barracks through written accounts and artworks produced during the ghetto years. The scheme will involve an overall programme, as well as detail designs of moments throughout the building, incorporating the concept of “past presencing” as a means to mediate between the building’s traumatic history and the current living needs of the town. The aim of the thesis is to contribute to a growing discourse over the contemporary use of sites such as Terezín as its development progresses in real time.