Pohlednice z Terezína
Postkarte aus Theresienstadt
Postcards from Terezín
Installation of the postcards – a tour of the city
Cell 42, courtyard IV of the Small Fortress, headquarters of the Terezín Memorial, Czech Republic
May 29 till December 31, 2026
A 60-metre-long display of nearly four hundert picture postcards depicting the whole of today‘s Terezín through colour photographs of all its front doors, accompanied by historically accurate documentation of the concentration camp and ghetto period.
A postcard is like a letter with the door left open – half public, half private. It was an important tool in the Nazi system and was also used to create a false impression of Terezín – concentration camp prisoners were then forced to write, for instance: ‘Dear Mum, I’m fine.’
The installation is part of the double project Terezín – unfolding here in space.
about the Terezín project:
It all began with our dealing with Theresienstadt / Terezín, particularly with regard to the period of Nazi occupation; between 1941 and 1945, the entire town was then turned into a concentration camp for Jews. To address this phenomenon Theresienstadt, we made all the front doors in this city the focus of our work. To this end, we photographed them in their entirety, building a meticulous archive (as no such archive previously existed). From the outside, without people, without cars, doors closed.
Artistic hypothesis: these images of doors are capable of giving form (Gestalt) to the irretrievable painful absence.
This photographic archive material shall be presented in two ways:
as a series of projections
and
as a postcard installation.
In both cases, all doors appear with no exceptions or selection, following the hegelian truism: that the whole is the truth.
The closer we get to (what was then) Theresienstadt, the more we feel particularly affected and outraged as performing and visual artists – specially on account of the performative deception there as a principle for the society – and particularly in demand!
Stanislav Lada, Terezín Memorial: more
Terezín, a fortified town founded at the end of the 18th century by Emperor Joseph II, was established as part of the defensive system of the Habsburg Monarchy. Its regular Baroque structure, formed by a network of streets, barracks, and fortifications, was originally intended for military purposes. Over time, however, the town’s military significance declined, and Terezín gradually transformed into a civilian settlement whose everyday life was long shaped by the rhythm of a small provincial town.
A fundamental turning point came with the period of the Second World War. In 1941, the Nazis turned Terezín into a ghetto and transit camp intended primarily for the Jewish population from the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia, as well as from Germany, Austria, the Netherlands, Denmark, and other European countries. Terezín fulfilled several functions at once—it was a place of forced concentration, a labor camp, and also an instrument of Nazi propaganda, presented as a “model ghetto.” Above all, however, it functioned as a transit station on the way to extermination camps in the East.
It was precisely this transit character that determined the fate of most prisoners. Approximately 155,000 Jews were deported to Terezín. Around 35,000 people died here as a result of hunger, disease, and exhaustion. About 87,000 prisoners were deported further east, especially to extermination camps such as Auschwitz-Birkenau, Treblinka, and Sobibor; only about 3,600 of them returned home after the war. Approximately 17,000 people survived in Terezín until the end of the war. These figures testify to Terezín as a place that was more a waystation than a destination—a temporary place of confinement whose boundaries became, for most, merely a stop on the path to death.
Within this space, doors and gates take on a crucial significance. They are not merely architectural elements, but symbols of the boundary between worlds. They separate the external reality of freedom from the internal space of restriction, control, and uncertainty. Every door in Terezín meant more than just an entrance or an exit—it was a place of decision, hope, and fear. Through them passed transports of new arrivals; through them departed transports heading east. Closed doors could protect as well as isolate; open doors could mean a fleeting return to humanity—or, conversely, the beginning of a journey from which there was no return.
After the liberation in 1945, Terezín became a place of returns and losses. For a short time, it served as an internment camp for Germans, and the town gradually returned to being an ordinary settlement, while still bearing the weight of its past. Today, Terezín is above all a place of memory, reminding us of the tragedy of the Holocaust and warning against the consequences of hatred and indifference.
The photographs of Terezín’s doors and gates are therefore not merely a record of architecture. They are silent witnesses to history. Every detail carries the imprint of the lives of those who passed through them—sometimes willingly, more often against their will. Here, doors are not only a boundary of space, but also a boundary between past and present, between forgetting and remembrance.
a production by Wedding Film in cooperation with the Terezín Memorial
supported by the Deutsch-Tschechischer Zukunftsfonds and the European Union’s Culture Moves Europe programme – Goethe Institut
