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April 8 - June 30, 2010]
“MONOPOLY – LIVING IN ILLUSION” -
The exhibition “Monopoly – Living in Illusion” was opened on April 8, 2010, Nissan 24, 5770, at 19:00 hours, at “Museum of Banking and Tel Aviv Nostalgia”. The exhibition shows two facets of life in ghetto Theresienstadt:
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The existence and function of a bank in the ghetto and the organization of labor in the ghetto.
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Spotlighting children’s life in the ghetto (1942 – 1945), versus the life of Tel Aviv’s children in those years.
It is important to know that the ghetto leadership (“Council of Elders” as it was called) in fact managed a city with up to 58.000 inhabitants, in a place built originally, with an infrastructure for not more than 7.000 souls, most of them in barracks.
The ghetto leadership built up the town took care of the infrastructure and attempted to maintain the place. Food had to be supplied to all ghetto inmates, productive workplaces had to be found for them, in the hope that such work would save them from transports to the East, hospitals had to be established and the inmates’ health had to be cared for under the threat of epidemics, disease and hunger and, of course, youth and education had to be attended to – the many restrictions imposed by the Germans notwithstanding.
The leaders enabled cultural life as far as possible and mainly had children occupied by education, creative activities and games (e.g. the ghetto “Monopoly” game), keeping them safe under the given circumstances.
All this took place under hard collective punishments by the Germans, threats of executions and torture and the constant fluctuation of the ghetto population – transports arriving from all communities of Central Europe and transports leaving for the East, to the forced labor and extermination camps. The Germans even initiated the establishment of a bank and ghetto money that had no practical value; there were nearly 50.000 bank accounts, workers and new arrivals received banknotes.
The organization of labor in the ghetto was documented a short time ago by Beit Theresienstadt through publication of a special album titled “Working in a Trap”.
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