Despite the conditions of Theresienstadt many people felt privileged to be in the model ghetto. It was “infinitely better than the east”. The people of Theresienstadt were not normal Jews, they were privileged Jews. Theresienstadt was the ghetto where the most respected Jews of Europe were sent; famous artists and musicians, scholars and Rabbis, as well as war veterans and any Jew married to an Aryan. There were precise regulations to who came into the ghetto; a Jew could not be ordinary. The regulations for a war veteran had to have held a high honor in World War One; veterans needed an Iron Cross, second class, or have suffered 50% disability from wounds. Three Thousand of less then 200, 000 remaining men of World War One, in the middle of 1942 met those requirements. Either people of mixed marriages were also placed in the ghetto, those that had an Aryan spouse living, a marriage dissolved by death, or a divorced woman with mixed children. Many influential people moved through Theresienstadt during its time. Such musicians like the conductor of Royal Danish Symphony, the former concertmaster of Holland’s concert GE Bouw orchestra, and many individual violinists, pianists, and vocalists. Leo Baeck, one of the most respected rabbis passed through Theresienstadt, as well as the former Prime Minister of the German state Saxony, vice governor of Indonesia, the surgeon general of the Dutch army and a Jewish baron from Bavaria. One man by the name of Ernst Eichengruen, was a well-known scientist who worked for Bayer, and was the one to discover the marketable form of aspirin. Ernst married to an Aryan, forgot, when filling out a patent application, to put the name “Israel” for his middle name. Since this was now the law for all Jews in his area at that time he was packed up and sent to Theresienstadt although he had brought fame and fortune to the Bayer Company. These people are only a few exa...
