title: Object relations theory

text: Fairbairn identified how people who were abused as children internalize that experience; the "moral defense" is the tendency seen in survivors of abuse to take all the bad upon themselves, each yielding the moral evil so the caretaker-object can be regarded as good. This is a use of splitting as a defense to maintain an attachment relationship in an unsafe world. In one particular example of this circumstance, Fairbairn introduced a four-year-old girl who had suffered a broken arm from her mother to a doctor friend of his, who told the little girl that they were going to find her a new parent. The girl, now panicked and unhappy, replied that she wanted her "real mommy", before Fairbairn asked "You mean the mommy that broke your arm?" "I was bad," the girl replied; from this exchange, he theorized that she needed to believe that her love object (mother) was entirely good to firmly believe she would one day receive the love and nurturing she needed—in an attempt to recuperate these needs, she used the moral defense to make "herself" bad in order to preserve her mother's goodness.


title: Object relations theory

text: Klein termed the psychological aspect of instinct unconscious "phantasy" (deliberately spelled with 'ph' to distinguish it from the word 'fantasy'). Phantasy is a given of psychic life which moves outward towards the world. These image-potentials are given a priority with the drives and eventually allow the development of more complex states of mental life. Unconscious phantasy in the infant's emerging mental life is modified by the environment as the infant has contact with reality.


title: Object relations theory

text: From the moment the infant starts interacting with the outer world, he is engaged in testing his phantasies in a reality setting. I want to suggest that the origin of thought lies in this process of testing phantasy against reality; that is, that thought is not only contrasted with phantasy, but based on it and derived from it.


title: Object relations theory

text: The role of unconscious phantasy is essential in the development of a capacity for thinking. In Bion's terms, the phantasy image is a preconception that will not be a thought until experience combines with a realization in the world of experience. The preconception and realization combine to take form as a concept that can be thought. The classic example of this is the infant's observed rooting for the nipple in the first hours of life. The instinctual rooting is the preconception. The provision of the nipple provides the realization in the world of experience, and through time, with repeated experience, the preconception and realization combined to create the concept. Mental capacity builds upon previous experience as the environment and infant interact.


title: Object relations theory

text: The first bodily experiences begin to build up the first memories, and external realities are progressively woven into the texture of phantasy. Before long, the child's phantasies are able to draw upon plastic images as well as sensations—visual, auditory, kinæsthetic, touch, taste, smell images, etc. And these plastic images and dramatic representations of phantasy are progressively elaborated along with articulated perceptions of the external world.


title: Object relations theory

text: With adequate care, the infant is able to tolerate increasing awareness of experience which is underlain by unconscious phantasy and leads to attainment of consecutive developmental achievements, "the positions" in Kleinian theory.


title: Object relations theory

text: As a specific term, projective identification is introduced by Klein in “Notes on some schizoid mechanisms.”


title: Object relations theory

text: [Projection] helps the ego to overcome anxiety by ridding it of danger and badness. Introjection of the good object is also used by the ego as a defense against anxiety. . . .The processes of splitting off parts of the self and projecting them into objects are thus of vital importance for normal development as well as for abnormal object-relation. The effect of introjection on object relations is equally important. The introjection of the good object, first of all the mother’s breast, is a precondition for normal development . . . It comes to form a focal point in the ego and makes for cohesiveness of the ego. . . . I suggest for these processes the term ‘projective identification’.


title: Object relations theory

text: Klein imagined this function as a defense which contributes to the normal development of the infant, including ego structure and the development of object relations. The introjection of the good breast provides a location where one can hide from persecution, an early step in developing a capacity to self-soothe.


title: Object relations theory

text: Ogden identifies four functions that projective identification may serve. As in the traditional Kleinian model, it serves as a defense. Projective identification serves as a mode of communication. It is a form of object relations, and “a pathway for psychological change.” As a form of object relationship, projective identification is a way of relating with others who are not seen as entirely separate from the individual. Instead, this relating takes place “between the stage of the subjective object and that of true object relatedness”.


title: Object relations theory

text: The positions of Kleinian theory, underlain by unconscious phantasy, are stages in the normal development of ego and object relationships, each with its own characteristic defenses and organizational structure. The paranoid-schizoid and depressive positions occur in the pre-oedipal, oral phase of development.


title: Object relations theory

text: In contrast to Fairbairn and later Guntrip, Klein believed that both good and bad objects are introjected by the infant, the internalization of good objects being essential to the development of healthy ego function. Klein conceptualized the depressive position as “the most mature form of psychological organization”, which continues to develop throughout the life span.


title: Object relations theory

text: The depressive position occurs during the second quarter of the first year. Prior to that the infant is in the paranoid-schizoid position, which is characterized by persecutory anxieties and the mechanisms of splitting, projection, introjection, and omnipotence—which includes idealizing and denial—to defend against these anxieties. Depressive and paranoid-schizoid modes of experience continue to intermingle throughout the first few years of childhood.


title: Object relations theory

text: The paranoid-schizoid position is characterized by part object relationships. Part objects are a function of splitting, which takes place in phantasy. At this developmental stage, experience can only be perceived as all good or all bad. As part objects, it is the function that is identified by the experiencing self, rather than whole and autonomous others. The hungry infant desires the good breast who feeds it. Should that breast appear, it is the good breast. If the breast does not appear, the hungry and now frustrated infant, in its distress, has destructive phantasies dominated by oral aggression towards the bad, hallucinated breast.


title: Object relations theory

text: Klein notes that in splitting the object, the ego is also split. The infant who phantasies destruction of the bad breast is not the same infant that takes in the good breast, at least not until obtaining the depressive position, at which point good and bad can be tolerated simultaneously in the same person and the capacity for remorse and reparation ensue.


title: Object relations theory

text: The anxieties of the paranoid schizoid position are of a persecutory nature, fear of the ego's annihilation. Splitting allows good to stay separate from bad. Projection is an attempt to eject the bad in order to control through omnipotent mastery. Splitting is never fully effective, according to Klein, as the ego tends towards integration.


title: Object relations theory

text: Klein saw the depressive position as an important developmental milestone that continues to mature throughout the life span. The splitting and part object relations that characterize the earlier phase are succeeded by the capacity to perceive that the other who frustrates is also the one who gratifies. Schizoid defenses are still in evidence, but feelings of guilt, grief, and the desire for reparation gain dominance in the developing mind.


title: Object relations theory

text: In the depressive position, the infant is able to experience others as whole, which radically alters object relationships from the earlier phase. “Before the depressive position, a good object is not in any way the same thing as a bad object. It is only in the depressive position that polar qualities can be seen as different aspects of the same object.” Increasing nearness of good and bad brings a corresponding integration of ego.


title: Object relations theory

text: In a development which Grotstein terms the "primal split", the infant becomes aware of separateness from the mother. This awareness allows guilt to arise in response to the infant's previous aggressive phantasies when bad was split from good. The mother's temporary absences allow for continuous restoration of her “as an image of representation” in the infant mind. Symbolic thought may now arise, and can only emerge once access to the depressive position has been obtained. With the awareness of the primal split, a space is created in which the symbol, the symbolized, and the experiencing subject coexist. History, subjectivity, interiority, and empathy all become possible.


title: Object relations theory

text: The anxieties characteristic of the depressive position shift from a fear of being destroyed to a fear of destroying others. In fact or phantasy, one now realizes the capacity to harm or drive away a person who one ambivalently loves. The defenses characteristic of the depressive position include the manic defenses, repression and reparation. The manic defenses are the same defenses evidenced in the paranoid-schizoid position, but now mobilized to protect the mind from depressive anxiety. As the depressive position brings about an increasing integration in the ego, earlier defenses change in character, becoming less intense and allowing for an increased awareness of psychic reality.


title: Object relations theory

text: In working through depressive anxiety, projections are withdrawn, allowing the other more autonomy, reality, and a separate existence. The infant, whose destructive phantasies were directed towards the bad mother who frustrated, now begins to realize that bad and good, frustrating and satiating, it is always the same mother. Unconscious guilt for destructive phantasies arises in response to the continuing love and attention provided by caretakers.


title: Object relations theory

text: [As] fears of losing the loved one become active, a very important step is made in the development. These feelings of guilt and distress now enter as a new element into the emotion of love. They become an inherent part of love, and influence it profoundly both in quality and quantity.


title: Object relations theory

text: From this developmental milestone come a capacity for sympathy, responsibility to and concern for others, and an ability to identify with the subjective experience of people one cares about. With the withdrawal of the destructive projections, repression of the aggressive impulses takes place. The child allows caretakers a more separate existence, which facilitates increasing differentiation of inner and outer reality. Omnipotence is lessened, which corresponds to a decrease in guilt and the fear of loss.


title: Object relations theory

text: When all goes well, the developing child is able to comprehend that external others are autonomous people with their own needs and subjectivity.


title: Object relations theory

text: Previously, extended absences of the object (the good breast, the mother) was experienced as persecutory, and, according to the theory of unconscious phantasy, the persecuted infant phantisizes destruction of the bad object. The good object who then arrives is not the object which did not arrive. Likewise, the infant who destroyed the bad object is not the infant who loves the good object.


title: Object relations theory

text: In phantasy, the good internal mother can be psychically destroyed by the aggressive impulses. It is crucial that the real parental figures are around to demonstrate the continuity of their love. In this way, the child perceives that what happens to good objects in phantasy does not happen to them in reality. Psychic reality is allowed to evolve as a place separate from the literalness of the physical world.


title: Object relations theory

text: Through repeated experience with good enough parenting, the internal image that the child has of external others, that is the child's internal object, is modified by experience and the image transforms, merging experiences of good and bad which becomes more similar to the real object (e.g. the mother, who can be both good and bad). In Freudian terms, the pleasure principle is modified by the reality principle.


title: Object relations theory

text: Melanie Klein saw this surfacing from the depressive position as a prerequisite for social life. Moreover, she viewed the establishment of an inside and an outside world as the start of interpersonal relationships.


title: Object relations theory

text: Klein argued that people who never succeed in working through the depressive position in their childhood will, as a result, continue to struggle with this problem in adult life. For example: the cause that a person may maintain suffering from intense guilt feelings over the death of a loved one, may be found in the unworked- through depressive position. The guilt is there because of a lack of differentiation between phantasy and reality. It also functions as a defense mechanism to defend the self against unbearable feelings of sadness and sorrow, and the internal object of the loved one against the unbearable rage of the self, which, it is feared, could destroy the internal object forever.


title: Object relations theory

text: Wilfred Bion articulates the dynamic nature of the positions, a point emphasised by Thomas Ogden, and expanded by John Steiner in terms of '"The equilibrium between the paranoid-schizoid and the depressive positions"'. Ogden and James Grotstein have continued to explore early infantile states of mind, and incorporating the work of Donald Meltzer, Esther Bick and others, postulate a position preceding the paranoid-schizoid. Grotstein, following Bion, also hypothesizes a transcendent position which emerges following attainment of the depressive position. This aspect of both Ogden and Grotstein's work remains controversial for many within classical object relations theory.


title: Object relations theory

text: Sigmund Freud developed the concept object relation to describe or emphasize that bodily drives satisfy their need through a medium, an object, on a specific focus. The central thesis in Melanie Klein's object relations theory was that objects play a decisive role in the development of a subject and can be either part-objects or whole-objects, i.e. a single organ (a mother's breast) or a whole person (a mother). Consequently, both a mother or just the mother's breast can be the focus of satisfaction for a drive. Furthermore, according to traditional psychoanalysis, there are at least two types of drives, the libido (mythical counterpart: Eros), and the death drive, mortido (mythical counterpart: Thanatos). Thus, the objects can be receivers of both love and hate, the affective effects of the libido and the death drive.


title: Object relations theory

text: Fairbairn was impressed with the work of Klein, particularly in her emphasis on internalized objects, but he objected to the notion that internalization of external objects was based on death instinct. The death instinct is a remnant of the Freudian model that was emphasized in Klein's model, and her model assumes that human behavior is motivated by a struggle between the instinctual forces of love and hate. Klein believed that each human being was born with a inborn death instinct which motivated the child to imagine hurting their mother during the schizoid period of development. The child attempts to protect themselves from becoming overwhelmed by hate by internalizing, or taking into themselves, memories of the loving aspects of their parents to counteract the hateful components. Fairbairn's model also emphasized the internalization of external objects, but his view of internalization was not based on instinctual drive, but rather the child's normal desire to understand the world around him.


title: Object relations theory

text: Fairbairn began his theory with his observation of the child's absolute dependency on the good will of its mother. The infant, Fairbairn noted, was dependent on its maternal object (or caretaker) for providing him with all of his physical and psychological needs as noted in the following passage.The outstanding feature of infantile dependence is its unconditional character. The infant is completely dependent upon its object not only for his existence and physical well being, but also for the satisfaction of his psychological needs...In contrast, the very helplessness of the child is sufficient to render him dependent in an unconditional sense...He has no alternative but to accept or reject his object- an alternative that is liable to present itself to him as a choice between life and death (Fairbairn, 1952, 47)


title: Object relations theory

text: When the maternal object provides a sense of safety and warmth, the child's innate "central ego" is able to take in new experiences which allows him to expand his contact with the environment beyond the tight orbit of his mother. This is the beginning of the process of differentiation, or separation from the parent, which eventuates into a new and unique individual. As long as the maternal object continues to provide emotional warmth, support, and a sense of safety, the child will continue to develop throughout childhood. However, if the parent fails to consistently provide these factors, the child's development stops and he regresses and remains undifferentiated from his mother, as the following quote illustrates.The greatest need of a child is to obtain conclusive assurance (a) that he is genuinely loved as a person by his parents, and (b) that his parents genuinely accept his love. It is only in so far as such assurance is forthcoming in a form sufficiently convincing to enable him to depend safely upon his real objects that he is able to gradually renounce infantile dependence without misgiving. In the absence of such assurance his relationship with his objects is fraught with too much "anxiety over separation" to enable him to renounce the attitude of infantile dependence: for such a renunciation would be equivalent in his eyes to forfeiting all hope of ever obtaining the satisfaction of his unsatisfied emotional needs. Frustration of his desire to be loved as a person and have his love accepted is the greatest trauma that a child can experience (Fairbairn, 1952:39-40). This quote illustrates the basis of Fairbairn's model. It is completely interpersonal in that there are no biological drives of inherited instincts. The child is born with a need for love and safety, and when his interpersonal environment fails him, he stops developing psychologically and emotionally. The counterintitutive result of maternal (or paternal, if the father is the primary caregiver) failure is that the child becomes more, rather than less, dependent upon her, because by failing to meet her child's needs the child has to remain dependent in the hope that love and support will be forthcoming in the future. Over time, the failed support of the child's developmental needs leaves him further and further behind his similarly aged peers. The emotionally abandoned child must turn to his own resources for comfort, and turns to his inner world with its readily available fantasies, in an attempt to partially meet his needs for comfort, love and later, for success. Often these fantasies involve others figures who have been self-created. Fairbairn noted that the child's turn toward his inner world protected him from the harsh reality of his family environment, but turned him away from external reality. "All represent "relationships with internalized objects, to which the individual is compelled to turn in default of satisfactory relationships in the outer world" (Fairbairn, 1952, 40 italics in the original).


title: Object relations theory

text: Fairbairn realized that the child's absolute dependence on the good will of his mother made him intolerant of accepting or even acknowledging that he is being abused because that would weaken his necessary attachment to his parent. The child creates a delusion that he in a lives warm cocoon of love, and any information that interferes with this delusion is forcibly expelled from his consciousness, as he cannot face the terror of rejection or abandonment at three, four or five years of age. The defense that children use to maintain their sense of security is dissociation, and they force all memories of parental failures (neglect, indifference or emotional abandonments) into their unconscious. Over time the neglected child develops an ever expanding memory bank of event after event in which he was neglected. These dissociated interpersonal events are always in pairs, a self in relationship to an object. For example, a child who is neglected dissociates a memory of himself as a frightened confused self who has been neglected by a remote and indifferent parent. If these events are repeated again and again, the child's unconscious groups the memories into a view of the self and a view of the parent, both which are too toxic and upsetting to be allow into consciousness. The paired dissociations of self and object that accrued from rejections were called the antilibidinal ego (the child's frightened self) and the rejecting object (the indifferent or absent parent). Thus, in addition to the conscious central ego, which relates to the nurturing and supportive parts of the parent (called the ideal object), the child has a second view of self and object in his unconscious: the antilibidinal ego and the rejecting object.


title: Object relations theory

text: No child can live in a world devoid of hope for the future. Fairbairn had a part time position in an orphanage, where he saw neglected and abused children. He noticed that they created fantasies about the "goodness" of their parents and eagerly looked forward to being reunited with them. He realized that these children had dissociated and repressed the many physical and emotional outrages that they had been subjected to in the family. Once in the orphanage, these same children lived in a fantasy world of hope and expectation, which prevented them from psychological collapse. The fantasy self that the child develops was called the libidinal self (or libidinal ego) and it related to the very best parts of the parents, who may have shown interest or tenderness toward their child at one time or another, which the needy child then enhances with fantasy. The fantasy enhanced view of the parent was called the exciting object by Fairbairn, which was based on the excitement of the child as he spun his fantasy of a reunion with his loving parents. This pair of self and objects is also contained in the child's unconscious, but he may call them into awareness when he is desperate for comfort and support (Fairbairn, 1952, 102-119)


title: Object relations theory

text: Fairbairn's structural model contains three selves that relate to three aspects of the object. The selves do not know or relate to each other, and the process of dissociation and the development of these structures is called the splitting defense, or splitting.


title: Object relations theory

text: The antilibidinal ego relates only to the rejecting object, and these structures contain the child's fear and anger as well as the parent's indifference, neglect or outright abuse.


title: Object relations theory

text: The libidinal ego relates only to the exciting object, and these structures contain the overly hopeful child who relates to the exciting over-promising parent.


title: Object relations theory

text: The Fairbairnian object relations therapist imagines that all interactions between the client and the therapist are occurring in the client's inner object relations world, in one of the three dyads. The Fairbairnian object relations therapist also uses his/her own emotional reactions as therapeutic cues. If the therapist is feeling irritated at the client, or bored, he/she might interpret that as a re-enactment of the Antilibidinal Ego and the Bad Object, with the therapist cast in the role of Bad Object. If the therapist can patiently be an empathic therapist through the client's re-enactment, then the client has a new experience to incorporate into their inner object world, hopefully expanding their inner picture of their Good Object. Cure is seen as the client being able to receive from their inner Good Object often enough to have a more stable peaceful life.


title: Object relations theory

text: Numerous research studies have found that most all models of psychotherapy are equally helpful, the difference mainly being the quality of the individual therapist, not the theory the therapist subscribes to. Object Relations Theory attempts to explain this phenomenon via the theory of the Good Object. If a therapist can be patient and empathic, most clients improve their functioning in their world. The client carries with them a picture of the empathic therapist that helps them cope with the stressors of daily life, regardless of what theory of psychology they subscribe to.


title: Object relations theory

text: Attachment theory, researched by John Bowlby and others, has continued to deepen our understanding of early object relationships. While a different strain of psychoanalytic theory and research, the findings in attachment studies have continued to support the validity of the developmental progressions described in object relations. Recent decades in developmental psychological research, for example on the onset of a "theory of mind" in children, has suggested that the formation of the mental world is enabled by the infant-parent interpersonal interaction which was the main thesis of British object-relations tradition (e.g. Fairbairn, 1952).


title: Object relations theory

text: While object relations theory grew out of psychoanalysis, it has been applied to the general fields of psychiatry and psychotherapy by such authors as N. Gregory Hamilton and Glen O. Gabbard. In making object relations theory more useful as a general psychology N. Gregory Hamilton added the specific ego functions to Otto F. Kernberg's concept of object relations units.


title: Axum

text: Axum, or Aksum (pronounced: ), is a town in the Tigray Region of Ethiopia with a population of 66,900 residents (as of 2015).


title: Axum

text: It is the site of the historic capital of the Aksumite Empire, a naval and trading power that ruled the whole region from about 400 BCE into the 10th century. In 1980, UNESCO added Axum's archaeological sites to its list of World Heritage Sites due to their historic value.


title: Axum

text: Axum is located in the Central Zone of the Tigray Region, near the base of the Adwa mountains. It has an elevation of and is surrounded by La'ilay Maychew, a separately administered woreda of the Tigray region.


title: Axum

text: Axum was the hub of the marine trading power known as the Aksumite Empire, which predated the earliest mentions in Roman-era writings. Around 356 CE, its ruler was converted to an Abyssinian variety of Christianity by Frumentius. Later, under the reign of the Emperor Kaleb, Axum was a quasi-ally of Byzantium against the Sasanian Empire which had adopted Zoroastrianism. The historical record is unclear with ancient church records being the primary contemporary sources.


title: Axum

text: It is believed the empire began a long and slow decline after the 7th century due partly to the Persians and then the Arabs contesting old Red Sea trade routes. Eventually the empire was cut off from its principal markets in Alexandria, Byzantium and Southern Europe and its share of trade captured by Arab traders of the era.


title: Axum

text: The Aksumite Empire was finally destroyed in the 10th century by Empress Gudit, and eventually some of the people of Axum were forced south and their old way of life declined. As the empire's power declined so did the influence of the city, which is believed to have lost population in the decline, similar to Rome and other cities thrust away from the flow of world events. The last known (nominal) emperor to reign was crowned in about the 10th century, but the empire's influence and power had ended long before that.


title: Axum

text: Its decline in population and trade then contributed to the shift of the power hub of the Ethiopian Empire south to the Amhara region as it moved further inland. In this period the city of Axum became the administrative seat of an empire spanning one million square miles. Eventually, the alternative name of Ethiopia was adopted by the central region and then by the modern state that presently exists.


title: Axum

text: "Axum" (or its Greek and Latin equivalents) appears as an important centre on indigenous maps of the northern Horn of Africa in the 15th century.


title: Axum

text: The Aksumite Empire had its own written language, Geʽez, and developed a distinctive architecture exemplified by giant obelisks. The oldest of these, though relatively small, dates from 5000–2000 BCE. The empire was at its height under Emperor Ezana, baptized as Abreha in the 4th century (which was also when the empire officially embraced Christianity).


title: Axum

text: The Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo Church claims that the Church of Our Lady Mary of Zion in Axum houses the Biblical Ark of the Covenant, in which lie the Tablets of Stone upon which the Ten Commandments are inscribed. Ethiopian traditions suggest that it was from Axum that Makeda, the Queen of Sheba, journeyed to visit King Solomon in Jerusalem and that the two had a son, Menelik, who grew up in Ethiopia but travelled to Jerusalem as a young man to visit his father's homeland. He lived several years in Jerusalem before returning to his country with the Ark of the Covenant. According to the Ethiopian Church and Ethiopian tradition, the Ark still exists in Axum. This same church was the site where Ethiopian emperors were crowned for centuries until the reign of Fasilides, then again beginning with Yohannes IV until the end of the empire.


title: Axum

text: Axum is considered to be the holiest city in Ethiopia and is an important destination of pilgrimages. Significant religious festivals are the Timkat festival (known as Epiphany in western Christianity) on 19 January (20 January in leap years) and the Festival of Maryam Zion on 30 November (21 Hidar on the Ethiopian calendar).


title: Axum

text: In 1937, a tall, 1,700-year-old Obelisk of Axum, was broken into five parts by the Italians and shipped to Rome to be erected. The obelisk is widely regarded as one of the finest examples of engineering from the height of the Axumite empire. Despite a 1947 United Nations agreement that the obelisk would be shipped back, Italy balked, resulting in a long-standing diplomatic dispute with the Ethiopian government, which views the obelisk as a symbol of national identity. In April 2005, Italy finally returned the obelisk pieces to Axum amidst much official and public rejoicing; Italy also covered the US$4 million costs of the transfer. UNESCO assumed responsibility for the re-installation of this stele in Axum, and by the end of July 2008 the obelisk had been reinstalled. It was unveiled on 4 September 2008.


title: Axum

text: The Aksumite Empire had a long-standing relationship with Islam. According to ibn Hisham, when Muhammad faced oppression from the Quraysh clan in Mecca, he sent a small group of his original followers, that included his daughter Ruqayya and her husband Uthman, to Axum. The Negus, the Aksumite monarch (known as An-Najashi (النجاشي) in the Islamic tradition), gave them refuge and protection and refused the requests of the Quraish clan to send the refugees back to Arabia. These refugees did not return until the sixth Hijri year (628 C.E.) and even then many remained in Ethiopia, eventually settling at Negash in what is now the Misraqawi Zone.


title: Axum

text: There are different traditions concerning the effect these early Muslims had on the ruler of Axum. The Muslim tradition is that the ruler of Axum was so impressed by these refugees that he became a secret convert. On the other hand, Arabic historians and Ethiopian tradition state that some of the Muslim refugees who lived in Ethiopia during this time converted to Orthodox Christianity. There is also a second Ethiopian tradition that, on the death of Ashama ibn Abjar, Muhammed is reported to have prayed for the king's soul, and told his followers, "Leave the Abyssinians in peace, as long as they do not take the offensive."


title: Axum

text: In February 1893 the British explorers, James Theodore Bent and his wife Mabel Bent, travelled by boat to Massawa on the west coast of the Red Sea. They then made their way overland to excavate at Axum and Yeha, in the hope of researching possible links between early trading networks and cultures on both sides of the Red Sea. They reached Axum by 24 February 1893, but their work was curtailed by the tensions between the Italian occupiers and local warlords, together with the continuing ramifications of the First Italo-Ethiopian War and they had to make a hasty retreat by the end of March to Zula for passage back to England.


title: Axum

text: The Zamani Project documents cultural heritage sites in 3D to create a record for future generations. The documentation is based on terrestrial laser-scanning. The 3D documentation of parts of the Axum Stelae Field was carried out in 2006 and 3D models, plans and images can be viewed here.


title: Axum

text: During the Ethiopian Civil War, on 30 March 1989, Axum was bombed from the air by the Ethiopian National Defence Forces and three people were killed.


title: Axum

text: Thousands of civilians died during the Axum massacre that took place in and around the Maryam Ts'iyon Church in Axum during the Tigray War in December 2020. There was indiscriminate shooting by the Eritrean Defence Forces (EDF) throughout Axumand focussed killings at the Church of Our Lady Mary of Zion ("Maryam Ts'iyon") by the Ethiopian National Defense Force (ENDF) and Amhara militia.


title: Axum

text: The church was also a place where the corpses of civilians killed elsewhere were collected for burial. A tight government communications blackout ensured that news of the massacre (or two separate massacres; reports are still emerging) was only revealed internationally in early January 2021 after survivors escaped to safer locations.


title: Axum

text: The major Aksumite monuments in the town are steles. These obelisks are around 1,700 years old and have become a symbol of the Ethiopian people's identity. The largest number are in the Northern Stelae Park, ranging up to the Great Stele, believed to have fallen and broken during construction. The Obelisk of Axum was removed by the Italian army in 1937, and returned to Ethiopia in 2005 and reinstalled 31 July 2008. The next tallest is the King Ezana's Stele. Three more stelae measure high, high, high. The stelae are believed to mark graves and would have had cast metal discs affixed to their sides, which are also carved with architectural designs. The Gudit Stelae to the west of town, unlike the northern area, are interspersed with mostly 4th century tombs.


title: Axum

text: The other major features of the town are the old and new churches of "Our Lady Mary of Zion". The Church of Our Lady Mary of Zion was built in 1665 by Emperor Fasilides and said to have previously housed the Ark of the Covenant. The original cathedral, said to have been built by Ezana and augmented several times afterwards, was believed to have been massive with an estimated 12 naves. It was burned to the ground by Gudit, rebuilt, and then destroyed again during the Abyssinian–Adal war of the 1500s. It was again rebuilt by Emperor Gelawdewos (completed by his brother and successor Emperor Minas) and Emperor Fasilides replaced that structure with the present one. Only men are permitted entry into the Old St. Mary's Cathedral (some say as a result of the destruction of the original church by Gudit). The New Cathedral of St. Mary of Zion stands next to the old one, and was built to fulfil a pledge by Emperor Haile Selassie to Our Lady of Zion for the liberation of Ethiopia from the Fascist occupation. Built in a neo-Byzantine style, work on the new cathedral began in 1955, and allows entry to women. Emperor Haile Selassie interrupted the state visit of Queen Elizabeth II to travel to Axum to attend the dedication of the new cathedral and pay personal homage, showing the importance of this church in the Ethiopian Empire. Queen Elizabeth visited the Cathedral a few days later. Between the two cathedrals is a small chapel known as The Chapel of the Tablet built at the same time as the new cathedral, and which is believed to house the Ark of the Covenant. Emperor Haile Selassie's consort, Empress Menen Asfaw, paid for its construction from her private funds. Admittance to the chapel is closed to all but the guardian monk who resides there. Entrance is even forbidden to the Patriarch of the Orthodox Church, and to the Emperor of Ethiopia during the monarchy. The two cathedrals and the chapel of the Ark are the focus of pilgrimage and considered the holiest sites in Ethiopia to members of its Orthodox Church.


title: Axum

text: Other attractions in Axum include archaeological and ethnographic museums, the Ezana Stone written in Sabaean, Geʽez and Ancient Greek in a similar manner to the Rosetta Stone, King Bazen's Tomb (a megalith considered to be one of the earliest structures), the so-called Queen of Sheba's Bath (actually a reservoir), the 4th-century Ta'akha Maryam and 6th-century Dungur palaces, Pentalewon Monastery and Abba Liqanos and about west is the rock art called the Lioness of Gobedra.


title: Axum

text: The Köppen-Geiger climate classification system classifies its climate as subtropical highland (Cwb).


title: Axum

text: According to the Central Statistical Agency of Ethiopia (CSA), the town of Axum's estimated population was 56,576. The census indicated that 30,293 of the population were females and 26,283 were males.


title: Axum

text: The 2007 national census showed that the town population was 44,647, of whom 20,741 were males and 23,906 females). The majority of the inhabitants said they practised Ethiopian Orthodox Christianity, with 88.03% reporting that as their religion, while 10.89% of the population were Ethiopian Muslim.


title: Axum

text: The 1994 national census reported the population for the city as 27,148, of whom 12,536 were men and 14,612 were women. The largest ethnic group reported was Tigrayans with 98.54% and Tigrinya was spoken as a first language by 98.68%. The majority of the population practised Ethiopian Orthodox Christianity with 85.08% reported as embracing that religion, while 14.81% were Muslim.


title: Axum

text: Aksum University was established in May 2006 on a greenfield site, from Axum's central area. The inauguration ceremony was held on 16 February 2007 and the current area of the campus is , with ample room for expansion. The establishment of a university in Axum is expected to contribute much to the ongoing development of the country in general and of the region in particular.


title: User experience

text: The user experience (UX) is how a user interacts with and experiences a product, system or service. It includes a person's perceptions of utility, ease of use, and efficiency. Improving user experience is important to most companies, designers, and creators when creating and refining products because negative user experience can diminish the use of the product and, therefore, any desired positive impacts; conversely, designing toward profitability often conflicts with ethical user experience objectives and even causes harm. User experience is subjective. However, the attributes that make up the user experience are objective.


title: User experience

text: According to Nielsen Norman Group, 'user experience' includes all the aspects of the interaction between the end-user with the company, its services, and its products.


title: User experience

text: The international standard on "ergonomics of human-system interaction", ISO 9241, defines user experience as a "user’s perceptions and responses that result from the use and/or anticipated use of a system, product or service". According to the ISO definition, user experience includes all the users' emotions, beliefs, preferences, perceptions, physical and psychological responses, behaviors and accomplishments that occur before, during, and after use. The ISO also lists three factors that influence user experience: the system, the user, and the context of use.


title: User experience

text: Note 3 of the standard hints that usability addresses aspects of user experience, e.g. "usability criteria can be used to assess aspects of user experience". The standard does not go further in clarifying the relation between user experience and usability. Clearly, the two are overlapping concepts, with usability including pragmatic aspects (getting a task done) and user experience focusing on users' feelings stemming both from pragmatic and hedonic aspects of the system. Many practitioners use the terms interchangeably. The term "usability" pre-dates the term "user experience". Part of the reason the terms are often used interchangeably is that, as a practical matter, a user will, at a minimum, require sufficient usability to accomplish a task while the feelings of the user may be less important, even to the user themselves. Since usability is about getting a task done, aspects of user experience like information architecture and user interface can help or hinder a user's experience. If a website has "bad" information architecture and a user has a difficult time finding what they are looking for, then a user will not have an effective, efficient, and satisfying search.


title: User experience

text: In addition to the ISO standard, there exist several other definitions for user experience. Some of them have been studied by Law et al.


title: User experience

text: Early developments in user experience can be traced back to the Machine Age that includes the 19th and early 20th centuries. Inspired by the machine age intellectual framework, a quest for improving assembly processes to increase production efficiency and output led to the development of major technological advancements, such as mass production of high-volume goods on moving assembly lines, high-speed printing press, large hydroelectric power production plants, and radio technology to name a few.


title: User experience

text: Frederick Winslow Taylor and Henry Ford were in the forefront of exploring new ways to make human labor more efficient and productive. Taylor's pioneering research into the efficiency of interactions between workers and their tools is the earliest example that resembles today's user experience fundamentals.


title: User experience

text: The term "user experience" was brought to wider knowledge by Donald Norman in the mid-1990s. He never intended the term "user experience" to be applied only to the affective aspects of usage. A review of his earlier work suggests that the term "user experience" was used to signal a shift to include affective factors, along with the pre-requisite behavioral concerns, which had been traditionally considered in the field. Many usability practitioners continue to research and attend to affective factors associated with end-users, and have been doing so for years, long before the term "user experience" was introduced in the mid-1990s. In an interview in 2007, Norman discusses the widespread use of the term "user experience" and its imprecise meaning as a consequence thereof.


title: User experience

text: The field of user experience represents an expansion and extension of the field of usability, to include the holistic perspective of how a person feels about using a system. The focus is on pleasure and value as well as on performance. The exact definition, framework, and elements of user experience are still evolving.


title: User experience

text: User experience of an interactive product or a website is usually measured by a number of methods, including questionnaires, focus groups, observed usability tests and other methods. A freely available questionnaire (available in several languages) is the User Experience Questionnaire (UEQ). The development and validation of this questionnaire is described in a computer science essay published in 2008.


title: User experience

text: Higher levels of user experience have been linked to increased effectiveness of digital health interventions targeting improvements in physical activity, nutrition, mental health and smoking.


title: User experience

text: Google Ngram Viewer shows wide use of the term starting in the 1930s. "He suggested that more follow-up in the field would be welcomed by the user, and would be a means of incorporating the results of user's experience into the design of new machines." Use of the term in relation to computer software also pre-dates Norman.


title: User experience

text: Many factors can influence a user's experience with a system. To address the variety, factors influencing user experience have been classified into three main categories: user's state and previous experience, system properties, and the usage context (situation). Understanding representative users, working environments, interactions and emotional reactions help in designing the system during User experience design.


title: User experience

text: Single experiences influence the overall user experience: the experience of a key click affects the experience of typing a text message, the experience of typing a message affects the experience of text messaging, and the experience of text messaging affects the overall user experience with the phone. The overall user experience is not simply a sum of smaller interaction experiences, because some experiences are more salient than others. Overall user experience is also influenced by factors outside the actual interaction episode: brand, pricing, friends' opinions, reports in media, etc.


title: User experience

text: One branch in user experience research focuses on emotions. This includes momentary experiences during interaction: designing affective interaction and evaluating emotions. Another branch is interested in understanding the long-term relation between user experience and product appreciation. The industry sees good overall user experience with a company's products as critical for securing brand loyalty and enhancing the growth of the customer base. All temporal levels of user experience (momentary, episodic, and long-term) are important, but the methods to design and evaluate these levels can be very different.


title: User experience

text: Developer experience (DX) is a user experience from a developer's point of view. It is defined by the tools, processes, and software that a developer uses when interacting with a product or system while in the process of production of another one, such as in software development. DX has had increased attention paid to it especially in businesses who primarily offer software as a service to other businesses where ease of use is a key differentiator in the market.


title: Moment (physics)

text: In physics, a moment is a mathematical expression involving the product of a distance and physical quantity. Moments are usually defined with respect to a fixed reference point and refer to physical quantities located some distance from the reference point. In this way, the moment accounts for the quantity's location or arrangement. For example, the moment of force, often called torque, is the product of a force on an object and the distance from the reference point to the object. In principle, any physical quantity can be multiplied by a distance to produce a moment. Commonly used quantities include forces, masses, and electric charge distributions.


title: Moment (physics)

text: In its most basic form, a moment is the product of the distance to a point, raised to a power, and a physical quantity


title: Moment (physics)

text: where formula_2 is the physical quantity such as a force applied at a point, or a point charge, or a point mass, etc. If the quantity is not concentrated solely at a single point, the moment is the integral of that quantity's density over space:


title: Moment (physics)

text: where formula_4 is the distribution of the density of charge, mass, or whatever quantity is being considered.


title: Moment (physics)

text: More complex forms take into account the angular relationships between the distance and the physical quantity, but the above equations capture the essential feature of a moment, namely the existence of an underlying formula_5 or equivalent term. This implies that there are multiple moments (one for each value of "n") and that the moment generally depends on the reference point from which the distance formula_6 is measured, although for certain moments (technically, the lowest non-zero moment) this dependence vanishes and the moment becomes independent of the reference point.


title: Moment (physics)

text: Each value of "n" corresponds to a different moment: the 1st moment corresponds to "n" = 1; the 2nd moment to "n" = 2, etc. The 0th moment ("n" = 0) is sometimes called the "monopole moment"; the 1st moment ("n" = 1) is sometimes called the "dipole moment", and the 2nd moment ("n" = 2) is sometimes called the "quadrupole moment", especially in the context of electric charge distributions.


title: Moment (physics)

text: Assuming a density function that is finite and localized to a particular region, outside that region a 1/"r" potential may be expressed as a series of spherical harmonics:


title: Moment (physics)

text: where formula_23 expressed in spherical coordinates formula_24 is a variable of integration. A more complete treatment may be found in pages describing multipole expansion or spherical multipole moments. (Note: the convention in the above equations was taken from Jackson – the conventions used in the referenced pages may be slightly different.)


title: Moment (physics)

text: When formula_4 represents an electric charge density, the formula_26 are, in a sense, projections of the moments of electric charge: formula_27 is the monopole moment; the formula_28 are projections of the dipole moment, the formula_29 are projections of the quadrupole moment, etc.


title: Moment (physics)

text: The multipole expansion applies to 1/"r" scalar potentials, examples of which include the electric potential and the gravitational potential. For these potentials, the expression can be used to approximate the strength of a field produced by a localized distribution of charges (or mass) by calculating the first few moments. For sufficiently large "r", a reasonable approximation can be obtained from just the monopole and dipole moments. Higher fidelity can be achieved by calculating higher order moments. Extensions of the technique can be used to calculate interaction energies and intermolecular forces.


title: Moment (physics)

text: The technique can also be used to determine the properties of an unknown distribution formula_4. Measurements pertaining to multipole moments may be taken and used to infer properties of the underlying distribution. This technique applies to small objects such as molecules,


title: Moment (physics)

text: but has also been applied to the universe itself, being for example the technique employed by the WMAP and Planck experiments to analyze the cosmic microwave background radiation.


title: Moment (physics)

text: In works believed to stem from Ancient Greece, the concept of a moment is alluded to by the word ῥοπή ("rhopḗ", "inclination") and composites like ἰσόρροπα ("isorropa", "of equal inclinations"). The context of these works is mechanics and geometry involving the lever. In particular, in extant works attributed to Archimedes, the moment is pointed out in phrasings like:


title: Moment (physics)

text: Moreover, in extant texts such as "The Method of Mechanical Theorems", moments are used to infer the center of gravity, area, and volume of geometric figures.


title: Moment (physics)

text: In 1269, William of Moerbeke translates various works of Archimedes and Eutocious into Latin. The term ῥοπή is transliterated into "ropen".


title: Moment (physics)

text: Around 1450, Jacobus Cremonensis translates ῥοπή in similar texts into the Latin term "momentum" ( "movement"). The same term is kept in a 1501 translation by Giorgio Valla, and subsequently by Francesco Maurolico, Federico Commandino, Guidobaldo del Monte, Adriaan van Roomen, Florence Rivault, Francesco Buonamici, Marin Mersenne, and Galileo Galilei. That said, why was the word "momentum" chosen for the translation? One clue, according to Treccani, is that "momento" in Medieval Italy, the place the early translators lived, in a transferred sense meant both a "moment of time" and a "moment of weight" (a small amount of weight that turns the scale).


title: Moment (physics)

text: In 1554, Francesco Maurolico clarifies the Latin term "momentum" in the work "Prologi sive sermones". Here is a Latin to English translation as given by Marshall Clagett:


title: Moment (physics)

text: "[...] equal weights at unequal distances do not weigh equally, but unequal weights [at these unequal distances may] weigh equally. For a weight suspended at a greater distance is heavier, as is obvious in a balance. Therefore, there exists a certain third kind of power or third difference of magnitude—one that differs from both body and weight—and this they call moment. Therefore, a body acquires weight from both quantity [i.e., size] and quality [i.e., material], but a weight receives its moment from the distance at which it is suspended. Therefore, when distances are reciprocally proportional to weights, the moments [of the weights] are equal, as Archimedes demonstrated in "The Book on Equal Moments". Therefore, weights or [rather] moments like other continuous quantities, are joined at some common terminus, that is, at something common to both of them like the center of weight, or at a point of equilibrium. Now the center of gravity in any weight is that point which, no matter how often or whenever the body is suspended, always inclines perpendicularly toward the universal center.


title: Moment (physics)

text: In addition to body, weight, and moment, there is a certain fourth power, which can be called impetus or force. Aristotle investigates it in "On Mechanical Questions", and it is completely different from [the] three aforesaid [powers or magnitudes]. [...]"


title: Moment (physics)

text: in 1586, Simon Stevin uses the Dutch term "staltwicht" ("parked weight") for momentum in "De Beghinselen Der Weeghconst".


title: Moment (physics)

text: In 1632, Galileo Galilei publishes "Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems" and uses the Italian "momento" with many meanings, including the one of his predecessors.


title: Moment (physics)

text: In 1643, Thomas Salusbury translates some of Galilei's works into English. Salusbury translates Latin "momentum" and Italian "momento" into the English term "moment".


title: Moment (physics)

text: In 1765, the Latin term "momentum inertiae" (English: "moment of inertia") is used by Leonhard Euler to refer to one of Christiaan Huygens's quantities in "Horologium Oscillatorium". Huygens 1673 work involving finding the center of oscillation had been stimulated by Marin Mersenne, who suggested it to him in 1646.


title: Moment (physics)

text: In 1811, the French term "moment d'une force" (English: "moment of force") with respect to a point and plane is used by Siméon Denis Poisson in "Traité de mécanique". An English translation appears in 1842.


title: Moment (physics)

text: In 1884, the term "torque" is suggested by James Thomson in the context of measuring rotational forces of machines (with propellers and rotors). Today, a dynamometer is used to measure the torque of machines.


title: Moment (physics)

text: In 1893, Karl Pearson uses the term "n-th moment" and formula_31 in the context of curve-fitting scientific measurements. Pearson wrote in response to John Venn, who, some years earlier, observed a peculiar pattern involving meteorological data and asked for an explanation of its cause. In Pearson's response, this analogy is used: the mechanical "center of gravity" is the mean and the "distance" is the deviation from the mean. This later evolved into moments in mathematics. The analogy between the mechanical concept of a moment and the statistical function involving the sum of the th powers of deviations was noticed by several earlier, including Laplace, Kramp, Gauss, Encke, Czuber, Quetelet, and De Forest.


title: Whooping crane

text: The whooping crane (Grus americana) is the tallest North American bird, named for its whooping sound. It is an endangered crane species. Along with the sandhill crane ("Antigone canadensis"), it is one of only two crane species native to North America. The whooping crane's lifespan is estimated to be 22 to 24 years in the wild. After being pushed to the brink of extinction by unregulated hunting and loss of habitat to just 21 wild and two captive whooping cranes by 1941, conservation efforts have led to a limited recovery. The total number of cranes in the surviving migratory population, plus three reintroduced flocks and in captivity, now exceeds 800 birds.


title: Whooping crane

text: An adult whooping crane is white with a red crown and a long, dark, pointed bill. However, immature whooping cranes are cinnamon brown. While in flight, their long necks are kept straight and their long dark legs trail behind. Adult whooping cranes' black wing tips are visible during flight.


title: Whooping crane

text: On average, the whooping crane is the fifth largest extant species of crane in the world. Whooping cranes are the tallest bird native to North America, and are anywhere from the third to the fifth heaviest species on the continent, depending on which figures are used. The species can reportedly stand anywhere from in height. Wingspan, at least typically, is from . Widely reported averages put males at a mean mass of , while females weigh on average (Erickson, 1976). However, one small sample of unsexed whooping cranes weighed on average. Typical weights of adults seem to be between . The body length, from the tip of the bill to the end of the tail, averages about . The standard linear measurements of the whooping cranes are a wing chord length of , an exposed culmen length of and a tarsus of . The only other very large, long-legged white birds in North America are: the great egret, which is over a foot (30 cm) shorter and one-seventh the weight of this crane; the great white heron, which is a morph of the great blue heron in Florida; and the wood stork. All three other birds are at least 30% smaller than the whooping crane. Herons and storks are also quite different in structure from the crane. Larger individuals (especially males of the larger races) of sandhill crane can overlap in size with adult whooping cranes but are obviously distinct at once for their gray rather than white color.


title: Whooping crane

text: Their calls are loud and can carry several kilometers. They express "guard calls", apparently to warn their partner about any potential danger. The crane pair will jointly call rhythmically ("unison call") after waking in the early morning, after courtship and when defending their territory. The first unison call ever recorded in the wild was taken in the whooping cranes' wintering area of the Aransas National Wildlife Refuge during December 1999.


title: Whooping crane

text: At one time, the range for the whooping crane extended throughout midwestern North America, as well as southwards to Mexico. By the mid-20th century, the muskeg of the taiga in Wood Buffalo National Park, Alberta and Northwest Territories, Canada, and the surrounding area had become the last remnant of the former nesting habitat of the Whooping Crane Summer Range. However, with the recent Whooping Crane Eastern Partnership Reintroduction Project, whooping cranes nested naturally for the first time in 100 years in the Necedah National Wildlife Refuge in central Wisconsin, United States, and these have subsequently expanded their summer range in Wisconsin and surrounding states, while reintroduced experimental non-migratory populations have nested in Florida and Louisiana.


title: Whooping crane

text: Whooping cranes nest on the ground, usually on a raised area in a marsh. The female lays 1 or 2 eggs, usually in late-April to mid-May. The blotchy, olive-coloured eggs average 2½ inches in breadth and 4 inches in length (60 by 100 mm), and weigh about . The incubation period is 29–31 days. Both parents brood the young, although the female is more likely to directly tend to the young. Usually no more than one young bird survives in a season. The parents often feed the young for 6–8 months after birth and the terminus of the offspring-parent relationship occurs after about 1 year.


title: Whooping crane

text: Breeding populations winter along the Gulf coast of Texas, United States, near Rockport on the Aransas National Wildlife Refuge and along Sunset Lake in Portland, Matagorda Island, Isla San Jose, and portions of the Lamar Peninsula and Welder Point, which is on the east side of San Antonio Bay.


title: Whooping crane

text: The Salt Plains National Wildlife Refuge in Oklahoma is a major migratory stopover for the crane population hosting over 75% of the species annually.


title: Whooping crane

text: As many as nine whooping cranes were observed at various times on Granger Lake in Central TX in the 2011/2012 winter season. Drought conditions in 2011 exposed much of the lake bed, creating ample feeding grounds for these cranes just as they were taking their autumn migration through Texas.


title: Whooping crane

text: Their many potential nest and brood predators include American black bear, wolverine, gray wolf, cougar, red fox, Canada lynx, bald eagle, and common raven. Golden eagles have killed some young whooping cranes and fledglings. Due to their large size, adult birds in the wild have few predators. However, the bobcat has killed many captive-raised whooping cranes in Florida and Texas. In Florida, bobcats have caused the great majority of natural mortalities among whooping cranes, including several ambushed adults and the first chick documented to be born in the wild in 60 years. Adult cranes can usually deter or avoid attacks by medium-sized predators when aware of a predators presence (they are capable of repelling predators as large as wolves in a head-on attack on the breeding grounds) but the cat is a superior stealth stalker which makes them effective. As they are less experienced, juvenile cranes may be notably more vulnerable to ambushes by bobcats. Patuxent Wildlife Research Center scientists believe that this is due to an overpopulation of bobcats caused by the absence or decrease in larger predators (the endangered Florida panther and the extirpated red wolf) that formerly preyed on bobcats. At least 12 bobcats have been trapped and relocated in an attempt to save the cranes. American alligators have taken a few whooping cranes in Florida.


title: Whooping crane

text: These birds forage while walking in shallow water or in fields, sometimes probing with their bills. They are omnivorous but tend to be more inclined to animal material than most other cranes. Only the red-crowned crane may have a more carnivorous diet among living cranes. In their Texas wintering grounds, this species feeds on various crustaceans, mollusks, fish (such as eel), small reptiles and aquatic plants. Potential foods of breeding birds in summer include frogs, small rodents, small birds, fish, aquatic insects, crayfish, clams, snails, aquatic tubers, and berries. Six studies from 1946 to 2005 have reported that blue crabs are a significant food source for whooping cranes wintering at Aransas National Wildlife Refuge, constituting up to 90 percent of their energy intake in two winters; 1992–93 and 1993–94.


title: Whooping crane

text: Waste grain, including wheat, barley, and corn, is an important food for migrating whooping cranes, but whooping cranes don't swallow gizzard stones and digest grains less efficiently than sandhill cranes.


title: Whooping crane

text: In earlier years, whooping crane chicks had been caught and banded (in the breeding areas of Wood Buffalo National Park), which has delivered valuable insight into individual life history and behaviour of the cranes. This technique, however, has been abandoned due to imminent danger for the cranes and the people performing the catching and banding activities.


title: Whooping crane

text: By recording guard and unison calls followed by frequency analysis of the recording, a "voiceprint" of the individual crane (and of pairs) can be generated and compared over time. This technique was developed by B. Wessling and applied in the wintering refuge in Aransas and also partially in the breeding grounds in Canada over 5 years. It delivered interesting results, i.e. that besides a certain fraction of stable pairs with strong affinity to their territories, there is a big fraction of cranes who change partners and territories. Only one of the exciting results was to identify the "Lobstick" male when he still had his band; he later lost his band and was recognized by frequency analysis of his voice and then was confirmed to be over 26 years old, and still productive.


title: Whooping crane

text: Whooping cranes are believed to have been naturally rare, and major population declines caused by habitat destruction and overhunting led them to them become critically endangered. Even with hunting bans, illegal hunting has continued in spite of potential substantial financial penalties and possible prison time. The population went from an estimated 10,000+ birds before the settling of Europeans on the continent to 1,300-1,400 birds by 1870. By 1938 there were just 15 adults in a single migratory flock, plus about thirteen additional birds living in a non-migratory population in Louisiana, but the latter were scattered by a 1940 hurricane that killed half of them, while the survivors never again reproduced in the wild.


title: Whooping crane

text: In the early 1960s, Robert Porter Allen, an ornithologist with the National Audubon Society, appeared as a guest challenger on the network television show "To Tell The Truth", which gave the Conservation movement some opportunity to update the public on their efforts to save the whooping crane from extinction. His initial efforts focused on public education, particularly among farmers and hunters. Beginning in 1961, the Whooping Crane Conservation Association (WCCA), was established to improve the status of the whooping cranes. This non-profit organization functioned largely by influencing federal, state and provincial political decisions and educating the general public about the critical status of the bird. The whooping crane was declared endangered in 1967.


title: Whooping crane

text: Allen had begun an effort at captive breeding with a female crane named 'Josephine', the sole survivor of the Louisiana population, injured and taken into captivity in 1940, and two successive injured birds from the migratory population, 'Pete' and 'Crip', at the Audubon Zoo and the Aransas refuge. Josephine and Crip produced the first whooping crane born in captivity in 1950, but this chick only lived four days, and though decades of further efforts produced more than 50 eggs before Josephine's death in 1965, only four chicks survived to adulthood and none of them bred. At the same time, the wild population was not thriving. In spite of the efforts of conservationists, hunting bans and educational programs, the aging wild population would gain only 10 birds in the first 25 years of monitoring, with entire years passing without a single new juvenile joining those that returned to the Texas wintering grounds. This led to a renewed tension between those who favored efforts to preserve the wild population and others seeing a captive breeding program as the only hope for whooping crane survival, even though it must depend on individuals withdrawn from the extremely-vulnerable wild population.


title: Whooping crane

text: Identification of the location of the summer breeding grounds of the whooping cranes at Wood Buffalo National Park in 1954 allowed more detailed study of their reproductive habits in the wild, and led to the observation that while many breeding pairs laid two eggs, rearing efforts seemed to favor a single chick, and both chicks would almost never survive to fledge. It was concluded that the removal of a single egg from a two-egg clutch should still leave a single hatchling most likely to survive, while providing an individual for captive breeding. Such removals in alternating years showed no decline in the reproductive success of the wild cranes. The withdrawn eggs were transferred to the Patuxent Wildlife Research Center in Maryland, where approaches for hatching and rearing crane chicks in captivity had already been optimized using the more-numerous sandhill cranes. Initial challenges getting the resultant birds to reproduce, even using artificial insemination approaches, would give impetus to the first, unsuccessful attempt at reintroduction, by swapping whooping crane eggs into the nests of the more numerous sandhill cranes as a way to establish a backup population.


title: Whooping crane

text: In 1976, with the wild population numbering only 60 birds and having increased at an average of only one bird per year over the past decades, ornithologist George W. Archibald, co-founder of the International Crane Foundation in Baraboo, Wisconsin, began working with 'Tex', a female whooping crane hatched at the San Antonio Zoo in 1967 to Crip and his new mate, the wild-captured 'Rosie', to get her to lay a fertile egg through artificial insemination. Archibald pioneered several techniques to rear cranes in captivity, including the use of crane costumes by human handlers. Archibald spent three years with Tex, acting as a male crane – walking, calling, dancing – to shift her into reproductive condition. As Archibald recounted the tale on "The Tonight Show" in 1982, he stunned the audience and host Johnny Carson with the sad end of the story – the death of Tex shortly after the hatching of her one and only chick, named 'Gee Whiz'. Gee Whiz was successfully raised and mated with female whooping cranes. The techniques pioneered at Patuxent, the International Crane Foundation and a program at the Calgary Zoo would give rise to a robust multi-institutional captive breeding program that would supply the cranes used in several additional captive breeding and reintroduction programs. A single male crane, 'Canus', rescued in 1964 as an injured wild chick and taken to Patuxent in 1966, would by the time of his 2003 death be the sire, grandsire or great-grandsire of 186 captive-bred whooping cranes. In 2017, the decision was made for the Patuxent Wildlife Research Center to end its 51-year effort to breed and train whooping cranes for release, due to changing priorities and in the face of budget cuts by the Trump administration. Their flock of 75 birds was moved in 2018 to join captive breeding programs at zoos or private foundations, including the Calgary Zoo, the International Crane Foundation, the Audubon Species Survival Center in Louisiana, and other sites in Florida, Nebraska, Oklahoma and Texas. This relocation is expected to negatively impact the reproductive success of the captive cranes, at least in the short term, and concerns were raised over its impact on the reintroduction efforts for which the Patuxent program had been providing birds.


title: Whooping crane

text: Meanwhile, the wild crane population began a steady increase, such that in 2007 the Canadian Wildlife Service counted 266 birds at Wood Buffalo National Park, with 73 mating pairs that produced 80 chicks, 39 of which completed the fall migration, while a United States Fish and Wildlife Service count in early 2017 estimated that 505 whooping cranes, including 49 juveniles, had arrived at Aransas National Wildlife Refuge that season. As of 2020, there were a estimated 677 birds living in the wild, in the remnant original migratory population as well as three reintroduced populations, while 177 birds were at the time held in captivity at 17 institutions in Canada and the United States, putting the total current population at over 800.


title: Whooping crane

text: The wild cranes winter in marshy areas along the Gulf Coast in and surrounding the Aransas National Wildlife Refuge. An environmental group, The Aransas Project, has sued the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality (TCEQ), maintaining that the agency violated the Endangered Species Act by failing to ensure adequate water supplies for the birds' range. The group attributes the deaths of nearly two dozen whooping cranes in the winter of 2008 and 2009 to inadequate flows from the San Antonio and Guadalupe rivers. In March 2013 during continuing drought conditions, a federal court ordered TCEQ to develop a habitat protection plan for the crane and to cease issuing permits for waters from the San Antonio and Guadalupe rivers. A judge amended the ruling to allow TCEQ to continue issuing permits necessary to protect the public's health and safety. An appeals court eventually granted a stay in the order during the appeals process. The Guadalupe-Blanco and San Antonio river authorities joined TCEQ in the lawsuit, warning that restricting the use of their waters would have serious effects on the cities of New Braunfels and San Marcos as well as major industrial users along the coast. To address the potential of future crowding that may result from the increasing migratory population, in 2012 and following years, purchases of small plots of land and acquisition of conservation easements covering larger areas has led to the protection of tens of thousands of additional acres of potential coastal habitat near the Aransas reserve. A large purchase of over 17,000 acres in 2014 was paid for with $35 million made available from the settlement over the "Deepwater Horizon" oil spill and an additional $15 million raised by a Texas parks non-profit.


title: Whooping crane

text: Concerns have been raised over the effects of climate change on the migratory cycle of the surviving wild population. The cranes arrive on their nesting grounds in April and May to breed and begin their nesting. When young whooping cranes are ready to leave the nest, they depart in September and follow the migratory trail through Texas.


title: Whooping crane

text: A major hurdle with some of these reintroduced populations has been deaths to illegal hunting. Over a period of two years, five of the approximately 100 whooping cranes in the Eastern Migratory Population were illegally shot and killed. One of the dead cranes was the female known as "First Mom". In 2006, she and her mate were the first eastern captive raised and released pair to successfully raise a chick to adulthood in the wild. This was a particular blow to that population because whooping cranes do not yet have an established successful breeding situation in the East. On March 30, 2011, Wade Bennett, 18, of Cayuga, Indiana and an unnamed juvenile pleaded guilty to killing First Mom. After killing the crane, the juvenile had posed holding up her body. Bennett and the juvenile were sentenced to a $1 fine, probation, and court fees of about $500, a penalty which was denounced by various conservation organizations as being too light. The prosecuting attorney has estimated that the cost of raising and introducing to the wild one whooping crane could be as much as $100,000. Overall, the International Crane Foundation estimates that the nearly 20% of deaths among the reintroduced cranes in the Eastern Migratory Population are due to shootings.


title: Whooping crane

text: Illegal shootings have accounted for an even larger proportion of mortality among the birds introduced into the Louisiana population, with about 10% of the first 147 released cranes being shot and killed. Two juveniles were apprehended for a 2011 incident, a Louisiana man was sentenced to 45 days imprisonment and a $2500 fine after pleading guilty to a killing in November 2014, and a Texas man was fined $25,000 for a January 2016 shooting and barred from possessing firearms during a 5-year probation period, on subsequent violation of which he was given an 11-month custodial sentence. On the other hand, a Louisiana man cited for a July 2018 shooting received probation, community service and hunting and fishing restrictions but no fine or firearms restriction. Two Louisiana juveniles were cited in 2018 for a May 2016 incident.


title: Theresienstadt Ghetto

text: Theresienstadt Ghetto was established by the SS during World War II in the fortress town of Terezín, in the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia (German-occupied Czechoslovakia). Theresienstadt served as a waystation to the extermination camps. Its conditions were deliberately engineered to hasten the death of its prisoners, and the ghetto also served a propaganda role. Unlike other ghettos, the exploitation of forced labor was not economically significant.


title: Theresienstadt Ghetto

text: The ghetto was established by the transportation of Czech Jews in November 1941. The first German and Austrian Jews arrived in June 1942; Dutch and Danish Jews came at the beginning in 1943, and prisoners of a wide variety of nationalities were sent to Theresienstadt in the last months of the war. About 33,000 people died at Theresienstadt, mostly from malnutrition and disease. More than 88,000 people were held there for months or years before being deported to extermination camps and other killing sites; the Jewish Council's ("Judenrat") role in choosing those to be deported has attracted significant controversy. Including 4,000 of the deportees who survived, the total number of survivors was around 23,000.


title: Theresienstadt Ghetto

text: Theresienstadt was known for its relatively rich cultural life, including concerts, lectures, and clandestine education for children. The fact that it was governed by a Jewish self-administration as well as the large number of "prominent" Jews imprisoned there facilitated the flourishing of cultural life. This spiritual legacy has attracted the attention of scholars and sparked interest in the ghetto. In the postwar period, a few of the SS perpetrators and Czech guards were put on trial, but the ghetto was generally forgotten by the Soviet authorities. The Terezín Ghetto Museum is visited by 250,000 people each year.


title: Theresienstadt Ghetto

text: The fortress town of Theresienstadt () is located in the north-west region of Bohemia, across the river from the city of Leitmeritz () and about north of Prague. Founded on 22 September 1784 on the orders of the Habsburg monarch Joseph II, it was named Theresienstadt, after his mother Maria Theresa of Austria. Theresienstadt was used as a military base by Austria-Hungary and later by the First Czechoslovak Republic after 1918, while the "Small Fortress" across the river was a prison. Ironically Theresienstadt had been the place of imprisonment for Franz Ferdinand murderer Gavrilo Princip, who had (albeit inadverently) set off an extremely unlikely butterfly effect that would ultimate lead to World War II and the Holocaust. Following the Munich Agreement in September 1938, Germany annexed the Sudetenland (German-speaking region of Czechoslovakia). Although Leitmeritz was ceded to Germany, Theresienstadt remained in the Czechoslovak rump state until the German invasion of the Czech lands on 15 March 1939. The Small Fortress became a Gestapo prison in 1940 and the fortress town became a Wehrmacht military base, with about 3,500 soldiers and 3,700 civilians, largely employed by the army, living there in 1941.


title: Theresienstadt Ghetto

text: In October 1941, as the Reich Security Main Office (RSHA) was planning transports of Jews from Germany, Austria, and the Protectorate to the ghettos in Nazi-occupied Eastern Europe, a meeting was held in which it was decided to convert Theresienstadt into a transit center for Czech Jews. Those present included Adolf Eichmann, leader of the RSHA section IV B 4 (Jewish affairs) and Hans Günther, the director of the Central Office for Jewish Emigration in Prague. Reinhard Heydrich, the RSHA chief, approved of Theresienstadt as a location for the ghetto. At the Wannsee Conference on 20 January 1942, Heydrich announced that Theresienstadt would be used to house Jews over the age of 65 from the Reich, as well as those who had been severely wounded fighting for the Central Powers in World War I or won the Iron Cross 1st Class or a higher decoration during that war. These Jews could not plausibly perform forced labor, and therefore Theresienstadt helped conceal the true nature of deportation to the East. Later, Theresienstadt also came to house "prominent" Jews whose disappearance in an extermination camp could have drawn attention from abroad. To lull victims into a false sense of security, the SS advertised Theresienstadt as a "spa town" where Jews could retire, and encouraged them to sign fraudulent home purchase contracts, pay "deposits" for rent and board, and surrender life insurance policies and other assets.


title: Theresienstadt Ghetto

text: On 24 November 1941, the first trainload of deportees arrived at the Sudeten barracks in Theresienstadt; they were 342 young Jewish men whose task was to prepare the town for the arrival of thousands of other Jews beginning 30 November. Another transport of 1,000 men arrived on 4 December; this included Jakob Edelstein and the original members of the Council of Elders. Deportees to the ghetto had to surrender all possessions except for of luggage, which they had to carry with them from the railway station at Bauschowitz (Bohušovice), away; the walk was difficult for elderly and ill Jews, many of whom died on the journey. After arriving, prisoners were sent to the (), where they were registered and deprived of their remaining possessions.


title: Theresienstadt Ghetto

text: The 24 November and 4 December transports, consisting mostly of Jewish craftsmen, engineers, and other skilled workers of Zionist sympathies, were known as the "Aufbaukommando" (Work Detail) and their members were exempt from deportation until September 1943. The members of the "Aufbaukommando" used creative methods to improve the infrastructure of the ghetto and prepare it to house an average of 40,000 people during its existence. The construction project was funded by stolen Jewish property. When the first transport arrived, there was only one vat for coffee with a capacity of ; by the next year, there were sufficient kettles to make 50,000 cups of ersatz coffee in two hours. The waterworks often broke down during the first months due to inadequate capacity. To improve potable water supply, and so everyone could wash daily, workers drilled wells and overhauled the pipe system. The Germans provided the materials for these improvements, largely to reduce the chance of communicable disease spreading beyond the ghetto, but Jewish engineers directed the projects.


title: Theresienstadt Ghetto

text: Jews lived in the eleven barracks in the fortress, while civilians continued to inhabit the 218 civilian houses. Segregation between the two groups was strictly enforced and resulted in harsh punishments on Jews who left their barracks. By the end of the year, 7,365 people had been deported to the ghetto, of whom 2,000 were from Brno and the rest from Prague.


title: Theresienstadt Ghetto

text: The first transport from Theresienstadt left on 9 January 1942 for the Riga Ghetto. It was the only transport whose destination was known to the deportees; other transports simply departed for "the East". The next day, the SS publicly hanged nine men for smuggling letters out of the ghetto, an event that caused widespread outrage and disquiet. The first transports targeted mostly able-bodied people. If one person in a family were selected for a transport, family members would typically volunteer to accompany them, which has been analyzed as an example of family solidarity or social expectations. From June 1942, the SS interned elderly and "prominent" Jews from the Reich at Theresienstadt. Due to the need to accommodate these Jews, the non-Jewish Czechs living in Theresienstadt were expelled, and the town was closed off by the end of June. In May, the self-administration had reduced rations for the elderly in order to increase the food available to hard laborers, as part of its strategy to save as many children and young people as possible to emigrate to Palestine after the war.


title: Theresienstadt Ghetto

text: 101,761 prisoners arrived at Theresienstadt in 1942, causing the population to peak, on 18 September 1942, at 58,491. The death rate also peaked that month with 3,941 deaths. Corpses remained unburied for days and gravediggers carrying coffins through the streets were a regular sight. To alleviate overcrowding, the Germans deported 18,000 mostly elderly people in nine transports in the autumn of 1942. Most of the people deported from Theresienstadt in 1942 were killed immediately, either in the Operation Reinhard death camps or at mass execution sites in the Baltic States and Belarus, such as Kalevi-Liiva and Maly Trostenets. Many transports have no known survivors. The Germans selected a small number of healthy young people for forced labor. In all, 42,000 people, mostly Czech Jews, were deported from Theresienstadt in 1942, of whom only 356 survivors are known.


title: Theresienstadt Ghetto

text: In January, seven thousand people were deported to Auschwitz concentration camp. During the same month, the Jewish community leaders from Berlin and Vienna arrived, and the leadership was reorganized to include Paul Eppstein, a German Zionist, and Benjamin Murmelstein, an Austrian rabbi; Edelstein was forced to act as Eppstein's deputy. At the beginning of February, Ernst Kaltenbrunner, head of the RSHA, proposed the deportation of an additional five thousand elderly Jews. SS chief Heinrich Himmler refused, due to the increasing need for Theresienstadt as an alibi to conceal information on the Holocaust reaching the Western Allies. There were no more transports from Theresienstadt until the deportation of 5,000 Jews to the Theresienstadt family camp at Auschwitz in September.


title: Theresienstadt Ghetto

text: The inmates were also allowed slightly more privileges, including postal correspondence and the right to receive food parcels. On 24 August 1943, 1,200 Jewish children from the Białystok Ghetto in Poland arrived at Theresienstadt. They refused to be disinfected due to their fear that the showers were gas chambers. This incident was one of the only clues as to what happened to those deported from Theresienstadt. The children were held in strict isolation for six weeks before deportation to Auschwitz; none survived. On 9 November 1943, Edelstein and other ghetto administrators were arrested, accused of covering up the escape of fifty-five prisoners. Two days later, commandant Anton Burger ordered a census of the entire ghetto population, approximately 36,000 people at that time. All inmates, regardless of age, were required to stand outside in freezing weather from 7 am to 11 pm; 300 people died on the field from exhaustion. Five thousand prisoners, including Edelstein and the other arrested leaders, were sent to the family camp at Auschwitz on 15 and 18 December.


title: Theresienstadt Ghetto

text: 293 Jews arrived at Theresienstadt from Westerbork (in the Netherlands) in April 1943, but the rest of the 4,894 Jews eventually deported from Westerbork to Theresienstadt arrived during 1944. 450 Jews from Denmark—the few who had not escaped to Sweden—arrived in October 1943. The Danish government's inquiries after them prevented their deportation, and eventually the SS authorized representatives of the Danish Red Cross and the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) to visit Theresienstadt. The RSHA archives were transported to Theresienstadt in July 1943, reducing the space for prisoners, and stored in the Sudeten barracks until they were burned on 17 April 1945 on SS orders.


title: Theresienstadt Ghetto

text: In February 1944, the SS embarked on a "beautification" () campaign to prepare the ghetto for the Red Cross visit. Many "prominent" prisoners and Danish Jews were re-housed in private, superior quarters. The streets were renamed and cleaned; sham shops and a school were set up; the SS encouraged the prisoners to perform an increasing number of cultural activities, which exceeded that of an ordinary town in peacetime. As part of the preparations, 7,503 people were sent to the family camp at Auschwitz in May; the transports targeted sick, elderly, and disabled people who had no place in the ideal Jewish settlement.


title: Theresienstadt Ghetto

text: For the remaining prisoners conditions improved somewhat: according to one survivor, "The summer of 1944 was the best time we had in Terezín. Nobody thought of new transports." On 23 June 1944, the visitors were led on a tour through the "Potemkin village"; they did not notice anything amiss and the ICRC representative, Maurice Rossel, reported that no one was deported from Theresienstadt. Rabbi Leo Baeck, a spiritual leader at Theresienstadt, stated that "The effect on our morale was devastating. We felt forgotten and forsaken." In August and September, a propaganda film that became known as "Der Führer schenkt den Juden eine Stadt" ("The Führer Gives a City to the Jews"), was shot, but it was never distributed.


title: Theresienstadt Ghetto

text: On 23 September, Eppstein, Zucker, and Murmelstein were told that Theresienstadt's war production was inadequate and as a consequence 5,000 Jews would be deported to a new labor camp run by Zucker. On 27 September, Eppstein was arrested and shot at the Small Fortress for alleged breaches of the law. Murmelstein became Jewish elder and retained the post until the end of the war. The deportation of the majority of the remaining population to Auschwitz—18,401 people in eleven transports—commenced the next day and lasted until 28 October.


title: Theresienstadt Ghetto

text: Previously, the self-administration had chosen the people to be deported but now the SS made the selections, ensuring that many members of the Jewish Council, "Aufbaukommando" workers, and cultural figures were deported and murdered at Auschwitz. The first two transports removed all former Czechoslovak Army officers, who were thought to be a threat for causing an uprising at Theresienstadt. By November, only 11,000 people were left at Theresienstadt, most of them elderly; 70% were female. That month, the ashes of deceased prisoners were removed by women and children. The remains of 17,000 people were dumped in the Eger River and the remainder of the ashes were buried in pits near Leitmeritz.


title: Theresienstadt Ghetto

text: Theresienstadt became the destination of transports as the Nazi concentration camps were evacuated. After transports to Auschwitz had ceased, 416 Slovak Jews were sent from Sereď to Theresienstadt on 23 December 1944; additional transports in 1945 brought the total to 1,447. The Slovak Jews told the Theresienstädters about the fate of those deported to the East, but many refused to believe it. 1,150 Hungarian Jews who had survived a death march to Vienna arrived in March. In 1945, 5,200 Jews living in mixed marriages with "Aryans", who had been previously protected, were deported to Theresienstadt.


title: Theresienstadt Ghetto

text: On 5 February 1945, after negotiations with Swiss politician Jean-Marie Musy, Himmler released a transport of 1,200 Jews (mostly from Germany and Holland) from Theresienstadt to neutral Switzerland; Jews on this transport traveled in Pullman passenger cars, were provided with various luxuries, and had to remove their Star of David badges. Jewish organisations deposited a ransom of 5 million Swiss francs in escrowed accounts. The Danish king Christian X secured the release of the Danish internees from Theresienstadt on 15 April 1945. The White Buses, organised in cooperation with the Swedish Red Cross, repatriated the 423 surviving Danish Jews.


title: Theresienstadt Ghetto

text: Starting on 20 April, between 13,500 and 15,000 concentration camp prisoners, mostly Jews, arrived at Theresienstadt after surviving death marches from camps about to be liberated by the Allies. The prisoners were in very poor physical and mental shape, and, like the Białystok children, refused disinfection fearing that they would be gassed. They were starving and infected with lice and typhoid fever, an epidemic of which soon raged in the ghetto and claimed many lives. A Theresienstadt prisoner described them as "no longer people, they are wild animals".


title: Theresienstadt Ghetto

text: The Red Cross took over administration of the ghetto and removed the SS flag on 2 May 1945; the SS fled on 5–6 May. On 8 May, Red Army troops skirmished with German forces outside the ghetto and liberated it at 9 pm. On 11 May, Soviet medical units arrived to take charge of the ghetto; the next day, Jiří Vogel, a Czech Jewish communist, was appointed elder and served until the ghetto was dissolved. Theresienstadt was the only Nazi ghetto liberated with a significant population of survivors. On 14 May, Soviet authorities imposed a strict quarantine to contain the typhoid epidemic; more than 1,500 prisoners and 43 doctors and nurses died around the time of liberation. After two weeks, the quarantine ended and the administration focused on returning survivors to their countries of origin; repatriation continued until 17 August 1945.


title: Theresienstadt Ghetto

text: Theresienstadt was a hybrid of ghetto and concentration camp, with features of both. It was established by order of the RSHA in 1941 and, unlike other concentration camps, was not administered by the SS Main Economic and Administrative Office. Instead, the SS commandant reported to Hans Günther, the director of the Central Office for Jewish Emigration in Prague, whose superior was Adolf Eichmann. Theresienstadt also fell under the command of SS and Police Leader Karl Hermann Frank, the chief of police in the Protectorate, as it was classified as a SS-and-police-run camp. The SS commandant was in charge of some 28 SS men, 12 civilian employees, the Czech gendarmes who guarded the ghetto, and the Jewish self-administration. The first commandant was Siegfried Seidl, who was replaced by Anton Burger on 3 July 1943. Burger was reassigned and replaced by Karl Rahm in January 1944; Rahm governed the ghetto until the SS fled on 5 May 1945. All of the SS commandants were assigned to Theresienstadt with the rank SS-"Obersturmführer".


title: Theresienstadt Ghetto

text: The ghetto was guarded by 150–170 Czech gendarmes at one time. The guards, who often smuggled letters and food in return for bribes, were frequently rotated to avoid contacts developing between guards and prisoners. Fourteen of the guards were imprisoned at the Small Fortress for helping or contacting Jews; two died as a result of their imprisonment. The first gendarme commander, Theodor Janeček, was a "rabid antisemite" whose behavior "sometimes surpass[ed] the SS in cruelty", according to Israeli historian Livia Rothkirchen. Janeček was replaced by Miroslaus Hasenkopf on 1 September 1943. The Ghetto Guard, a police force made up of Jewish prisoners, was formed on 6 December 1941 and reported to the Jewish self-administration. It was reconstituted several times and comprised 420 men at its peak in February 1943.


title: Theresienstadt Ghetto

text: The Jewish self-administration or self-government () nominally governed the ghetto. The self-administration included the Jewish elder (), a deputy, and the Council of Elders () and a Central Secretariat beneath which various departments administered life in the ghetto. The first of the Jewish elders of Theresienstadt was Jakob Edelstein, a Zionist leader. Edelstein and his deputy, Otto Zucker, initially planned to convert Theresienstadt into a productive economic center and thereby avoid deportations; they were unaware that the Nazis already planned to deport all the Jews and convert Theresienstadt into a German settlement. Theresienstadt was the only Jewish community in Nazi-occupied Europe that was led by Zionists.


title: Theresienstadt Ghetto

text: The self-administration was characterized by excessive bureaucracy. In his landmark study "Theresienstadt 1941–45", H. G. Adler's list of all of the departments and sub-departments was 22 pages long. In 1943, when representatives of the Austrian and German Jewish community arrived at the ghetto, the administration was reorganized to include Austrian and German Jews. Paul Eppstein, from Berlin, was appointed as the liaison with the SS command, while Edelstein was obliged to act as his deputy. The SS used the national divisions to sow intrigue and disunity.