About us
The Terezín Initiative Institute is a non-profit organisation that originates from the Terezín Initiative Foundation (Nadace Terezínská iniciativa) that was founded in 1993 by an international association of former prisoners of the Terezín ghetto - the Terezín Initiative.
The aim of the Institute is to pursue and support research of the history of the “final solution” in Bohemia and Moravia and the history of Terezín ghetto, and to present the results to a broader public. The Institute, along with other organizations, wants to make Terezín a place of encounter and discussion between people of different generations and nationalities, and political, philosophical and religious beliefs.
A short overview of our projects:
- the educational website holocaust.cz
- the Database of Holocaust Victims from the Czech Lands and Europe that had been imprisoned in Terezín ghetto – available on holocaust.cz
- publications focused on Holocaust-Shoa and other topics (Terezín Memorial Books, yearbook Terezín Studies and Documents, etc.)
- a public library focused on Holocaust-Shoa, anti-Semitism and racism
- educational projects and organisation of the educational workshops and conferences for teachers and students
In 2012, we received the accreditation as an educational institution from the Ministry of education, youth and sports.
We cooperate with various other institutions in the Czech Republic, in Europe, the USA, and Israel. Have a look at our list of partners.
You can also visit
On the occasion of the meeting of the International Auschwitz Museum Council, its members paid tribute to the Jewish and Roma victims of the Treblinka labor camp at the site of their mass graves. Pictured are T. Kraus, Colette Avital and Roman Kwiatkowski.
This Sunday 11th May 2025 we attended a commemorative act in Lety u Písku to honor the Roma and Sinti victims from Bohemia and Moravia. 1300 people passed through the camp. Of those 335, mainly children, have died due to the inhumane conditions. After the mass transport in 1943 to the extermination camp in Auschwitz - Birkenau, the buildings of the Lety camp were torn down and burnt.
Thanks to Spielberg's film Schindler's List, the whole world knows the story of the rescue of 1,200 Jewish prisoners at the end of the Second World War. The whole world knows who Oskar Schindler was and why he became a symbol of good in a time of evil. But that same world has no idea where this heartbreaking story actually took place. That could change now.
Yesterday, together with the participants of the seminar and excursion Bergen-Belsen on the Threshold of Freedom, we attended a reception at the British Embassy in Prague on the occasion of the 80th anniversary of the liberation of the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp by the British Army on 15 April 1945.
Anne Frank and thousands of others. We visited the place where the fate of one of the world's most famous stories came to an end, as well as that of countless of others. The Bergen-Belsen camp was burned down after the war, but one can still hear echoes of the past. How can we learn about the horrors that have gone to ashes?
Yesterday, we welcomed Director Denise Quistorp and Sebastian Halbauer from the Austrian Cultural Forum in Prague to our premises at Jáchymova to exchange views on our respective activities and projects. This gave us the opportunity to identify common priorities in our work and to further strengthen Austro-Czech exchange through future cooperation.
This week we received a visit from Ms Krejcova (Foreign Culture of Lower Austria) and Mr Halbauer from the Austrian Cultural Forum Prague, where we were not only able to present the work of the ITI, but also make personal contacts. We were able to discuss many topics that overlap with the work of our three institutions in order to promote Austrian-Czech exchange.