The Cultural Life of the Terezín Ghetto in 1960s Survivor Testimony: Theatre, Trauma and Resilience

Abstract

In the World War II Jewish ghetto at Terezín (in German, Theresienstadt), a stunningly active cultural life sprang up on the initiative of the prisoners themselves. Although their activities, which ranged from lectures to concerts to theatrical performances, were officially permitted by the Nazis, today they are often described as ‘spiritual resistance’. In this chapter, however, rather than focusing on what theatrical performance did against the Nazis, I will concentrate on what theatrical performance might have done for the prisoners. Drawing upon an unusual body of testimony collected in the 1960s from a group of Czech-Jewish survivors, I argue that theatrical performance enabled the prisoners to carry out the steps that psychiatrist Judith Herman claims are necessary for recovery from traumatic experiences: they were able to establish a safe space, to create coherent narratives of potentially traumatizing experiences, and to reconnect with themselves, each other, and the world outside the ghetto.