The Jewish Cemetery and Crematorium

The dead of the Terezín Ghetto were from the start buried in individual and mass graves near Bohušovice. It was thus that the Jewish Cemetery developed, in which lie some 9 000 victims from the ghetto. The Nazis also decided to create at Terezín a camp crematorium, which came into service on September 7th 1942, and was used in the cremation not only of the dead from the ghetto, but also from the Gestapo police prison in the Small Fortress, and later also those from the forced labour camp at Litoměřice. According to surviving cremation records, some 30 000 victims were cremated here. Urns containing ashes were stored in the columbarium located in the fortress ramparts, but the Nazis were able to destroy the majority before the end of the War.

From the middle of March 1945 until the arrival of the first evacuation transports, cremations were halted; victims from all three components of the persecution were instead buried in mass graves. Meanwhile, a separate crematorium was established at the Litoměřice camp, with came into service in April 1945; in the space of a month, some 400 corpses were cremated there. After the arrival of the evacuation transports at the end of April 1945, cremations began again at Terezín.

The appearance of the original cemetery for Jewish prisoners near Bohušovice was developed architecturally and in plan after the War, and the whole area is now presented as a garden that gently flows into the surrounding landscape. The site from which the Nazis threw the ashes of martyred prisoners into the Ohře in November 1944 has also been made into a site of reverence.