merely two weeks before, over five thousand Jews were deported to the concentration camps in the East so that the city would appear less crowded. Hitler succeeded in two things with Theresiensadt; one he fooled the world with his well-planned hoax and propagation film, making people believe the Jews were treated humanely. The other success was, that he kept Theresienstadt as close to a ghetto in the sense that still fit the purpose and definition; to kill off as many Jews as quickly and efficiently as possible. At one point there were 88, 000 people living in an area no bigger then seven-football fields long and five football fields wide; all of them were to fit in 219 houses, 14 military barracks and administration buildings. Any new arrivals at that point were jammed into cellars lacking plumbing and with no heat, or windows, and sometimes no floors, which meant the people would sleep in the dirt. They were crammed into any space available including attics, which also had lack of heat and plumbing and were stifling in the summer for lack of ventilation. The people would freeze to death in the winter and die of heat exhaustion in the summer. Rooms that had once housed four to six people now housed close to 60. To make room for such an amount of people, they would construct bunks that stacked on top of one another all the way to the ceiling. A person could not roll over in bed without disturbing the residents on either side; such disturbances led to beatings. The total living area through out all of Theresienstadt had shrunken to about 18 square feet per person. If a person weren’t dying of a disease or hunger, they were certainly driven mad for lack of privacy. One would never have a second alone anywhere in all of Theresienstadt. Numerous people would overhear any conversation a person had. Solitude was un-imaginable. With people living so tightly, epidemics broke out left and right. In the first year, alone ente...
