Pancrac & Terezin 1939-1945 (Illustrated typescript of an unpublished concentration camp memoir)

A detailed personal account describing the author's arrest and torture in Prague and subsequent internment in Theresienstadt (Terezin). Karel Berousek was a tram driver whose limited involvement in the Czech resistance earned him a visit from the Gestapo in 1942. He was held and interrogated in Pankrac Prison, which had been commandeered as a Gestapo headquarters and staffed with Waffen SS guards. The German authorities decided that his crimes warranted imprisonment rather than execution in the prison's notorious guillotine room, and Berousek was transferred to Theresienstadt, a notorious work camp and departure point for tens of thousands of Jews sent east to their deaths.

Within the fortress Berousek endured brutal living conditions, the arbitrary cruelty of guards, and hard labor on an empty stomach. He was then released suddenly and without ceremony, walking out in flea-infested clothes. The former tram driver was made to sign a nondisclosure agreement by the Gestapo after arriving back home, and he kept his head down and worked as a welder until his county's liberation from German rule. Berousek then wrote a memoir, which he finished in April 1946, in order to lift his depression and answer the questions of whose loved ones had never returned from the camps. The result is a valuable, unique narrative of an ordinary man under extraordinary pressure.