As if it were life : a WWII diary from the Theresienstadt Ghetto /

Philipp Manes was an average, well-to-do middle-class Berlin merchant, who considered himself first and foremost a German, and then a Jew. In 1942 he was deported to Theresienstadt, together with his wife Gertud. Theresienstadt, initially intended for the Jews of Czechoslovakia, later became the "showpiece"ghetto of the Third Reich to show the world that the Jews were being treated humanely. It was controlled by the SS but run by a council of Jewish elders, and presented to the Red Cross as an idyllic utopia with shops, cafes, concerts and theatre groups. Manes himself organized over 500 evening lectures. But in reality, Theresienstadt was a holding post for Jews being shipped to certain death, chiefly in Treblinka and Auschwitz. Manes wrote his first-hand account in the ghetto before his deportation to Auschwitz, where he and his wife were killed.
Manes' account is filled with careful and fascinating details of everyday life in those years, and delivers an accurate portrait of the ghetto, its inmates and practices, offering a new understanding of one of the most painful periods in the history of mankind.