The Leonard Mellman Distinguished Lecture: Jonathan Zatlin, Boston University

Beginning in June 1942, elderly Jews still residing in Germany were forced to sign so-called Heimeinkaufsverträge, or retirement home contracts, and move to Theresienstadt, a small garrison town between Berlin and Prague. In fact, however, the retirement contracts were merely a ruse employed by Adolf Eichmann to obscure the regime’s genocidal intentions. By exempting the aged from deportations and resettling them instead in Bad Theresien, as the camp was initially known, Eichmann hoped to reassure German Jews, young and old, about the fate awaiting them – and thereby facilitate that very fate. But Eichmann also used the contracts to seize the property of his victims. By plundering elderly Jews, Eichmann hoped to free the most ruthless of Nazi agencies, the Gestapo, from budgetary supervision and political oversight.