"During the Second World War, the Nazis imprisoned thousands of Jewish people in the Czech fortress town of Terezin. They falsely presented it to the world as a model settlement but this lie masked a far more sinister reality. In fact, Terezin was a transit camp for deportations further east, part of the Nazis' larger plan to exterminate all European Jews. Trains carried nearly 90,000 inmates, including children, to Auschwitz and other death camps. Most of them perished. Thousands more died of starvation or disease in Terezin's filthy, overcrowded conditions. Despite their harsh daily struggle to survive, some people managed to paint, sketch, write operas and to perform plays and music. This remarkable book tells the story of Terezin through the words of its inmates. The accompanying drawings and paintings are by artists who worked, at great risk, in secret, to portray the true nature of life in the community. The result is both a movig testimony to the barbarity of the Holocaust and the strength of the human spirit." -- Back cover.