An Attic Full of Stories – L 237
It is hard to imagine that this small attic room had to be shared by as many as three people. Prisoners, therefore, became resourceful, and even creative, when setting up their cramped abodes. Through their wall drawings and graffiti, they told stories of human trial: lovesickness, sleepless nights and longings for home. Yet, despite the indescribably atrocious hygienic conditions that made vermin a daily problem in the ghetto, humor could sometimes still prevail in the everyday lives of the prisoners, such as a Dutch author’s verse about an eternal plague of bedbugs.
The overall presentation of the following photographs provides a unique and, above all, close look into the lives of the prisoners who lived here. The viewer is given access to an unparalleled world, one rarely more than 13 square meters in size. It is all the more surprising that such a large quantity of graffiti and wall drawings could have gone undiscovered until 2013. This attic is only one of many such spaces where traces of ghetto life still exist. In the course of this project, we would also like to identify their authors and, if possible, document their fates. We will continually post our results on www.ghettospuren.de
WE ARE LOOKING FOR (EYE)WITNESSES!
Were you imprisoned in Theresienstadt or do you know people who were imprisoned in the city (1941-45)?
Please visit our photo galleries. Do you recognize anything? Please share your knowledge with us. We would appreciate a short message from you.