page_title: Beit Terezin
section_title: Buildings
hierarchical_section_title: Beit Terezin / Buildings
caption_attribution_description: עברית: מבט על תערוכת הקבע טרזיינשטט 1941-1945
context_page_description: Beit Terezin or Beit Theresienstadt is a research and educational institution that opened in 1975 in Kibbutz Givat Haim, a museum and a place of remembrance of the victims of Nazi Germany persecution at the Theresienstadt concentration camp.
context_section_description: Beit Terezin's planning had to take into account the limited financial means of the association in memory of the martyrs of Theresienstadt. The design of the complex was developed by the architect Albin Glaser, himself a survivor of the Theresienstadt concentration camp. His design is an interior in simple architecture, the rooms of which can be used for a variety of purposes. The central element is the twelve-sided rotunda made of reddish-brown bricks, whose ground plan and material are intended to remind us of the Theresienstadt fortress, which originally served as a memorial hall and place of remembrance. Today it is the main room of the Beit Theresienstadt Museum and the core of Beit Terezin with its permanent exhibition.
  For use by the Kibbutz, a library with a reading room and a small hall for lectures and cultural events were built. For Beit Terezin itself, the complex includes an archive, a reading room and a lecture hall.
  Glaser's original planning included a building to house the documents about the Theresienstadt concentration camp that Zeev Shek had compiled in Prague immediately after the Second World War on behalf of the Jewish Agency for Israel and brought to Israel. These documents were initially housed for years at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and were to form the basis of the Beit Terezin archive. At the instigation of the then Israeli Foreign Minister Moshe Scharet, whose secretary was Zeev Shek at the time, the documents on the Holocaust were not to be distributed among many small institutions, but stored centrally. Therefore, Shek handed the documents over to Yad Vashem. The resulting renunciation of a documentation and study center led to a dispute within the association. In the end, smaller premises were created to house the archive, without competing in any way with Yad Vashem or other large institutions.
  A second conflict over the design of Beit Terezin concerned the floor mosaic of the rotunda planned by Glaser. The design depicted the path network and the buildings of the Theresienstadt ghetto and its realisation cost 100,000 Israeli pounds. Within the association the costs were criticized, some members saw the amount better invested in education and research. In addition to the financial aspect, it was argued that the visual representation would be understood only by the survivors of the ghetto, while other members were convinced that the detailed representation of the ghetto's streets, paths, and buildings would preserve the atmosphere of oppression for future generations. Finally, the mosaics were made according to Glaser's design in Kibbutz Givat HaShlosha, and the design is generally accepted.
caption: Interior view of the Rotunda
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