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Zeev Shek, (born May 13, 1920; [1] died October 2, 1978, Rome, [2] [3] ), a Holocaust survivor, was an Israeli diplomat. He was also one of the founders of the Beit Theresienstadt museum, opened in 1975. [4]
According to Daniel, Zeev grew up in a large and religious family. [5]
Shek met his wife, Alisa Ehrmann-Shek, in Prague as part of the Zionist youth movement and both were deported to the Theresienstadt Ghetto. When his mother was sent to Auschwitz, where she was murdered in the gas chamber, he volunteered to go with her. [2]
Hospitalized and in a coma after liberation, Zeev woke up in an American hospital, he heard English and thought he died and went to the British mandate in heaven. [5]
He was determined to document the events in the ghetto and before he left for Auschwitz, made sure his wife carried on his mission. They reunited after the war and emigrated to Israel in 1946. He became the personal secretary to Moshe Sharett before becoming an ambassador. While serving as Ambassador to Italy, Shek died of a heart attack in Rome in 1978, at the age of 58. [3] Son Daniel Shek is also a diplomat. [2] Haaretz reported Shek was one of the founders of the Israeli Foreign Ministry. [5]
Before serving as Ambassador to Italy, Shek was the head of the Israeli Foreign Ministry's Western European division so he had "overseen Israel's protracted negotiations for treaty status with the European community." [3] He also served as Ambassador to Austria [1] and Ambassador to the UN in Vienna and the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe.
Terezín is a town in Litoměřice District in the Ústí nad Labem Region of the Czech Republic. It has about 2,800 inhabitants. It is a former military fortress composed of the citadel and adjacent walled garrison town. The town centre is well preserved and is protected by law as an urban monument reservation. Terezin is most infamously the location of the Nazis' notorious Theresienstadt Ghetto.
Theresienstadt Ghetto was established by the SS during World War II in the fortress town of Terezín, in the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia. Theresienstadt served as a waystation to the extermination camps. Its conditions were deliberately engineered to hasten the death of its prisoners, and the ghetto also served a propaganda role. Unlike other ghettos, the exploitation of forced labor was not economically significant.
Hans Krása was a Czech composer, murdered during the Holocaust at Auschwitz. He helped to organize cultural life in Theresienstadt concentration camp.
Theresienstadt. Ein Dokumentarfilm aus dem jüdischen Siedlungsgebiet, unofficially Der Führer schenkt den Juden eine Stadt, was a black-and-white projected Nazi propaganda film. It was directed by the German Jewish prisoner Kurt Gerron and the Czech filmmaker Karel Pečený under close SS supervision in the Theresienstadt concentration camp, and edited by Pečený's company, Aktualita. Filmed mostly in the autumn of 1944, it was completed on 28 March 1945 and screened privately four times. After the war, the film was lost but about twenty minutes of footage was later rediscovered in various archives.
Peter Kien was a Jewish artist and poet active at the Theresienstadt concentration camp. He died at the age of twenty-five.
Malva Schalek, aka Malvina Schalková, was a Czech-Jewish painter. Trained in Prague, she went on to work in Vienna as a painter. From 1942 to 1944 she was imprisoned in the Theresienstadt concentration camp. In 1944 she was moved to the Auschwitz concentration camp, where she was murdered. Many of her works are held in the Ghetto Fighters' House in Israel.
Erich Kulka was a Czech-Israeli writer, historian and journalist who survived the Holocaust. After World War II, he made it his life's mission to research the Holocaust and publicize facts about it.
Benjamin Israel Murmelstein was an Austrian rabbi. He was one of 17 community rabbis in Vienna in 1938 and the only one remaining in Vienna by late 1939. An important figure and board member of the Jewish group in Vienna during the early stages of the war, he was also an "Ältester" of the Judenrat in the Theresienstadt concentration camp after 1943. He was the only "Judenältester" to survive the Holocaust and has been credited with saving the lives of thousands of Jews by assisting in their emigration, while also being accused of being a Nazi collaborator.
Alfred Hirsch was a German-Jewish athlete, sports teacher and Zionist youth movement leader, notable for helping thousands of Jewish children during the German occupation of Czechoslovakia in Prague, Theresienstadt concentration camp, and Auschwitz. Hirsch was the deputy supervisor of children at Theresienstadt and the supervisor of the children's block at the Theresienstadt family camp at Auschwitz II-Birkenau.
The Theresienstadt family camp, also known as the Czech family camp, consisted of a group of Jewish inmates from the Theresienstadt ghetto in Czechoslovakia, who were held in the BIIb section of the Auschwitz II-Birkenau concentration camp from 8 September 1943 to 12 July 1944. The Germans created the camp to mislead the outside world about the Final Solution.
On 21 August 1943, during the liquidation of the Białystok Ghetto, about 1,200 Jewish children were put on trains and taken to Theresienstadt concentration camp, where they were held in isolation from other prisoners. On 5 October, they were told that they would be sent to Switzerland in exchange for German prisoners of war. Instead, the train went to Auschwitz concentration camp where all were murdered in gas chambers. The reason for the unusual route of the transport is still debated by scholars; it is believed to be connected to Nazi–Jewish negotiations ongoing at the time and the intervention of Mohammad Amin al-Husseini, who feared that the children would settle in Palestine.
Theresienstadt was originally designated as a model community for middle-class Jews from Germany, Czechoslovakia, and Austria. Many educated Jews were inmates of Theresienstadt. In a propaganda effort designed to fool the western allies, the Nazis publicised the camp for its rich cultural life. In reality, according to a Holocaust survivor, "during the early period there were no [musical] instruments whatsoever, and the cultural life came to develop itself only ... when the whole management of Theresienstadt was steered into an organized course."
During World War II, the Theresienstadt concentration camp was used by the Nazi SS as a "model ghetto" for fooling Red Cross representatives about the ongoing Holocaust and the Nazi plan to murder all Jews. The Nazified German Red Cross visited the ghetto in 1943 and filed the only accurate report on the ghetto, describing overcrowding and undernourishment. In 1944, the ghetto was "beautified" in preparation for a delegation from the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) and the Danish government. The delegation visited on 23 June; ICRC delegate Maurice Rossel wrote a favorable report on the ghetto and claimed that no one was deported from Theresienstadt. In April 1945, another ICRC delegation was allowed to visit the ghetto; despite the contemporaneous liberation of other concentration camps, it continued to repeat Rossel's erroneous findings. The SS turned over the ghetto to the ICRC on 2 May, several days before the end of the war.
Beit Terezin or Beit Theresienstadt is a research and educational institution that opened in 1975 in Kibbutz Givat Haim (Ihud), a museum and a place of remembrance of the victims of Nazi Germany persecution at the Theresienstadt concentration camp.
Anna Hájková is a Czech-British historian who is currently a faculty member at the University of Warwick. She specializes in the study of everyday life during the Holocaust and sexuality and the Holocaust. According to Hájková, "My approach to queer Holocaust history shows a more complex, more human, and more real society beyond monsters and saints."
Aviva Bar-On is a Czechoslovakian-Israeli Holocaust survivor.
Gidon Lev is a Czechoslovakian-born Israeli dairy farmer and Holocaust survivor who was interned at the Nazi ghetto of Theresienstadt between the ages of 6 and 10. Of the 9,000 children imprisoned in or transported through Theresienstadt concentration camp, he is one of the more than 2000 children estimated to have survived.
Alisa “Alice” Ehrmann-Shek is a Holocaust survivor whose diary documents the last six months of the Theresienstadt Ghetto.
Daniel Shek is a former Israeli diplomat who served as Ambassador to France and Consulate General to the Pacific Northwest of the US based in San Francisco. He is a member of the Kadima party.
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