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When
reports about the genocidal campaign against the Jews began to
filter in, the Germans decided to invite representatives of the
International Committee of the Red Cross to visit the Theresienstadt
Ghetto-camp. The delegation reached Theresienstadt on July 23, 1944.
To prepare for the visit, the German commanders of the camp
orchestrated every detail, opening fake shops, a cafe, a bank,
kindergartens, and schools, to name but a few. They blanketed the
town with flower gardens. They hand-picked the inmates with whom the
committee members would meet and told them what to say. Immediately
after the visit, the Germans made a propaganda film about the
inmates’ new lives under the patronage of the Third Reich. After
the filming, the majority of the actors, most members of the ghetto
leadership, and almost all the children in the ghetto were sent to
the gas chambers of Auschwitz.
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