Terezín Small Fortress — fortification, Gestapo prison and memorial
Story period: Fortress from the 18th century · police prison 1940–1945 · transport in October 1942
Location: Terezín Small Fortress
The Small Fortress formed part of Terezín’s eighteenth-century fortifications. In 1940–1945 the Prague Gestapo used it as a police prison for resistance members and people arrested for helping the persecuted. In autumn 1942 relatives and supporters of the parachutists passed through it before transport to Mauthausen. The site became a memorial after the war. Its history is distinct from that of the ghetto in the Main Fortress.
Two parts of one fortress system
18th century–1939
The Small Fortress belonged to a military system that also included the Main Fortress.
Joseph II had Terezín built to defend the Habsburg monarchy’s northern frontier. The Small Fortress served the army, while the Main Fortress also contained the town. The distinction matters: the Gestapo police prison occupied the Small Fortress, whereas the Nazi ghetto was established in the Main Fortress.
A Gestapo police prison
1940–1945
A place of detention and transfer to other institutions of repression.
The Gestapo established the prison in June 1940 as Prague’s prisons could no longer accommodate the growing persecution. Overcrowded casemate cells exposed prisoners to hunger, disease, forced labour and violence from guards. Many were sent on to concentration camps without trial.
The Terezín Memorial estimates that around 32,000 men and women passed through the prison. They included resistance members and people detained for individual defiance, helping the persecuted or breaching anti-Jewish regulations. From 1943, executions without trial also took place in the fortress.
The parachutists’ relatives and helpers
summer–October 1942
Most prisoners nicknamed ‘parachutists’ were not parachutists themselves.
From summer 1942 the Gestapo held relatives of Jan Kubiš and Josef Valčík, as well as helpers of the parachute teams, here. The prison label ‘parachutists’ referred to this group, not to membership of a parachute unit. Entire families were among them; younger children were separated from adults.
Transport to Mauthausen
22–24 October 1942
Prisoners were taken from the fortress to a train and murdered after reaching the camp.
On 22 October, a group of prisoners left the Small Fortress for Bohušovice station and travelled south by train through Prague. They reached Mauthausen during the night. The Terezín Memorial connects the mass murder on 24 October to 252 condemned people; other sources define the October victims differently.
Liberation, epidemic and remembrance
1945–present
The prison regime’s end did not end the survivors’ suffering.
A typhus epidemic broke out in the Small Fortress in spring 1945. After the guards left on 5 May, medical staff, former prisoners and later the Soviet army provided assistance. A National Cemetery was established outside the former prison. In 1947 the Memorial to National Suffering was founded, later becoming the Terezín Memorial. The site now commemorates imprisonment and the victims of Nazi repression.
The historical site is the Small Fortress east of the fortified town, not central Terezín. The National Heritage Institute records the grounds and approaches as a defined area with a boundary uncertainty of about 50 metres. Chrona does not reproduce that polygon or assert an exact point inside the prison.
Explore further
- The Heydrich Terror
the repression during which the helpers were imprisoned
- Mauthausen
destination of the October transport; many helpers were murdered here
Sources
- Atentát: Operace Anthropoid 1941–1942 · 92