Der Führer schenkt den Juden eine Stadt (The Führer Gives a City to the Jews) was a documentary film that was shot in the Czechoslovak countryside of Theresienstadt , today Terezín, to sell the "goodness" of the Nazi camps to the international community.
Movie recording
The Ministry of Propaganda of the Third Reich, with Joseph Goebbels At the head, he was in charge of disseminating and popularizing the ideas of the Nazi party and mitigating the criticism of the international community in the special treatment they gave to Jews and other minorities. In the words of Goebbels…
There is no need to dialogue with the masses, slogans are much more effective. They act on people like alcohol does. The crowd does not react as a man would, but as a woman, sentimental instead of intelligent. Propaganda is a difficult but noble art that requires genius to carry it out. The most successful propagandists in history have been Christ, Muhammad, and Buddha.
To clean up the image that the concentration camps had abroad, the Ministry of Propaganda shot a documentary film entitled Der Führer schenkt den Juden eine Stadt in which the daily life of the Jews in the Theresienstadt camp was reflected. This camp had the particularity that it was used as a transit camp for Czech Jews who were later sent to the extermination camps in Poland and, in addition, as a ghetto for the resettlement of Czech, German, Austrian and Danish Jews. Logically, the film focused on resettlement . The script tried to sell the ghetto as a place where the Jews did their jobs; the children went to school and played sports; they took care of their animals and their gardens; they had their craft workshops, a library and medical consultation; they came and went as they pleased through the countryside... one of the greatest displays of hypocrisy in history .
Still, no one believed that pantomime. They forced the situation to the maximum and in June 1944 they agreed that a delegation from the International Committee of the Red Cross visit the field. Some arrangements were made beforehand:to avoid overcrowding, a group was sent to the Auschwitz camp, the barracks were tidied up and painted, the Jews who were not very presentable hid, they were instructed on what to say and do, they were put on a children's play, they were allowed to walk free…another masquerade. On May 3, 1945, control of the camp was transferred by the Germans to the Red Cross and a few days later, on May 8, 1945, the Red Army entered Theresienstadt.
This field contains a particularly heartbreaking and cruel story... that of the girls Eva and Kitty
Sources and Images:Ghetto Theresienstadt, The Holocaust Explainet