Jiri Munk's employment book from Terezin

This is my employment book from Terezin.

At first, as a child, I didn't have to work, but when the last transports left Terezin, there was suddenly a big labor shortage. Up to then the mandatory working age had been 15, but now they lowered this limit, so I also had to start working. Mainly in 1945, I did so-called "ordonantz" which was a messenger-boy between the ghetto leadership and its residents, or between the ghetto leadership and the German command. I used to be afraid, because I occasionally had to take some document or report to the SS headquarters. My hands would shake when I had to go among the SS-men.

True, most of them were more indifferent than anything else, but there were also sadists, who used to for example drive around Terezin on a bike and beat people. Most of them were executed after the war, but some of them managed to escape.

The SS didn't show their faces much in the ghetto itself, because order was kept by constables. But when we did by chance come across a member of the SS, we always went and hid somewhere, because we were afraid of them.

The Centropa Collection at USHMM

The Centropa archive has been acquired by the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, DC. USHMM will soon offer a Special Collections page for Centropa.

Academics please note: USHMM can provide you with original language word-for-word transcripts and high resolution photographs. All publications should be credited: "From the Centropa Collection at the United States Memorial Museum in Washington, DC". 

Please contact collection [at] centropa.org (collection[at]centropa[dot]org).