The Last Ghetto

Terezín, as it was known in Czech, or Theresienstadt as it was known in German, was operated by the Nazis between November 1941 and May 1945 as a transit ghetto for Central and Western European Jews before their deportation for murder in the East. Terezín was the last ghetto to be liberated, one day after the end of World War II.The Last Ghetto is the first in-depth analytical history of a prison society during theHolocaust. Rather than depict the prison society which existed within the ghetto as an exceptional one, unique in kind and not understandable by normal analytical methods, Anna Hájková argues that such prison societies thatdeveloped during the Holocaust are best understood as simply other instances of the societies human beings create under normal circumstances. Challenging conventional claims of Holocaust exceptionalism, Hájková insists instead that we ought to view the Holocaust with the same analytical tools as other historical events. The prison society of Terezín produced its own social hierarchies under which seemingly small differences among prisoners (of age,ethnicity, or previous occupation) could determine whether one ultimately lived or died. During the three and a half years of the camp's existence, prisoners created their own culture and habits, bonded, fell in love, andforged new families. Based on extensive archival research in nine languages and on empathetic reading of victim testimonies, The Last Ghetto is a transnational, cultural, social, gender, and organizational history of Terezín, revealing how human society works in extremis and highlighting the key issues of responsibility, agency and its boundaries, and belonging.

In this overwhelming book, Anna Hájková has assembled - in extraordinary gutwrenching detail - these stories of Terez ... It is the loss of life in all its mucky beauty, and the loss of living-breathing-evolving community on such a mass scale, after all, that contributes to the breathtaking horror of genocide. JORDANA SILVERSTEIN, University of Melbourne, Gender & History
This is a powerful contribution to our understanding of the ghetto and of how societies are constructed in general, revealing in complex detail the lived experiences of those who inhabited Theresienstadt. Barnabas Balint, University of Oxford, Oxford, UK, Journal of the Social History Society
Hájková has not simply written a book depicting the "transnational, cultural, social, gender, and organizational history" of the "well known, poorly understood ghetto", but she shows with great sensitivity, concisely and immense knowledge the everyday history of this limbo, the "last ghetto. Thomas Krzenck , Zeitschrift für Geschichtswissenschaft
Anna Hájková's The Last Ghetto: An Everyday History of Theresienstadt is an essential addition to the literature about the camp, rivaled in scholarly insight only by H.G Adler... And since it is unlikely that many American readers will have the stamina to persevere through the more than 800 pages that examine the features of Adler's "coerced community," readers should feel no hesitation in turning to Hájková's thoughtful and thorough analysis. Lawrence Langer, University of Wisconsin-Madison, George L. Mosse Program in History
Hájková's book The Last Ghetto is a well-researched, captivatingly written, and engaging scholarly work about the life of prisoners in Theresienstadt. Hájková's book is crucial reading and paradigm-shifting work for anyone who wants to understand a prisoners' society in extremis Denisa Nešťáková, Herder Institute in Marburg, Marburg, GermanyComenius University in Bratislava, Bratislava, Slovakia, East Central Europe
This excellent study provides a critical investigation of the social, political, and even sexual relationships in the ghetto, their complex nature in a coerced setting and the developing power structures dominated by the young Czech elite. Wolf Gruner, University of Southern California, AJS Review
Hájková brings solid research and a much-appreciated enrichment to readers' understanding of the Theresienstadt ghetto. The author worked for a decade with public and private archives in nine languages and offers readers a deeper understanding of what she calls "a forced community. J. Kleiman, CHOICE
Hajkova's history of Terezin is a tour de force. Thanks to Hajkova's astonishing research and courageous reappraisal of victim society, aspects of this history that have been overlooked or marginalized are now before our eyes. A major contribution to the history of the Holocaust, The Last Ghetto also opens up new perspectives on class, nationalism, ethnicity, gender and sexuality in twentieth-century Europe. A deeply, wrenchingly human story that everyone ought to read. Alexandra Garbarini, author of Numbered Days: Diaries and the Holocaust
This splendid and devastating, gorgeously written, paradigm-shifting book offers one transformative revelation after another. Exemplifying radical empathy without sentimentality, it represents the very best the new Holocaust history has to offer. Dagmar Herzog, Graduate Center, City University of New York, author of Unlearning Eugenics: Sexuality, Reproduction, and Disability in Post-Nazi Europe
Theresienstadt has been shrouded in myths since Nazis first presented it as a 'model ghetto' to trick the world that Jewish prisoners were being treated humanely. Hájková's The Last Ghetto reveals the interior life of the ghetto and persuasively demonstrates that like the society that produced it, this society in extremis was riven by ethnic, gender, political, linguistic, and economic divisions that prevented a common sense of Jewishness from forming among the prisoners. Barry Trachtenberg, Michael H. and Deborah K. Rubin Presidential Chair of Jewish History,Wake Forest University
The Last Ghetto is the most important book on Theresienstadt to appear in many years. With unparalleled knowledge of the sources and deep sensitivity, Anna Hájková has made a major contribution to the history of the Holocaust. With her focus on the everyday life of the ghetto's inhabitants, she also provides us with a model of social, cultural, and gender history. Dan Stone, Professor of Modern History, Royal Holloway, University of London
[I]n my opinion, Hájková is the most revolutionary and groundbreaking of all—she asks the fundamental questions that historians usually ask about human societies and which tend to be avoided in writing on the Jews in the Holocaust. Amos Goldberg, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Jerusalem, Israel, American Historical Review
An excellently written book that will help shape future historiography on the ghettos under Nazi rule for years to come. Marc Buggeln, University of Flensburg, Modern European History
Making sense of life in Theresienstadt, as this brilliant, moving, and exceptionally well-researched monograph makes clear, meant finding strategies for survival, strategies that brought solidarity within groups but also tensions and hierarchies between them. Much of this was imagined retrospectively as resistance, but were such strategies resistance? Hájková has posed new questions, opening up a whole new field of research. Bill Niven, Austrian History Yearbook
Anna Hájková's The Last Ghetto is a book that requires thorough reading. It introduces the reader in detail to the most important people and groups in Theresienstadt, covering a variety of aspects of ghetto life. The readership may initially wonder if all these details are necessary. But towards the end of the reading, the impression solidifies: this is a masterpiece of everyday history, an investigation of life under extreme conditions, which is not only used by historians of the Holocaust. should be read, but also by all those who are interested in life in captivity. And as far as this life in captivity is concerned, the focus of the book is on the aspect of life, with all its complexities. Wilson T. Bell, Zeitschrift fuer Weltgeschichte

Anna Hájková is associate professor at the University of Warwick and the co-director of Warwick Center for Global Jewish Studies. Her first book, The Last Ghetto: An Everyday History of Theresienstadt, came out in 2020 with Oxford University Press to academic and popular acclaim. Her new work on queer history of the Holocaust was published in Czech, German, British, US American, and Israeli newspapers. Hájkováhas also guest edited a special issue of German History, Holocaust, Sexuality, Stigma.

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