Flower vase, painting by Arno Neumann. Theresienstadt, 1944.
Ink and watercolor on thin card. Signed and dated: "Arno Neumann / Terezin 1944". Enclosed is a card mount to which the work was formerly pasted; inked stamp on verso: "Jüdische Selbstverwaltung Theresienstadt" [Jewish self-government, Theresienstadt], and a suspension loop.

8.5X11.5 cm. Good condition. Minor stains. Pinholes to enclosed mount; strips of paper to margins (torn).

The Theresienstadt Ghetto was established in the town of Terezín, north-west Bohemia (today in the Czech Republic), within a former military fortress, dating to the 18th century. The overcrowded ghetto was mainly inhabited by Jewish deportees from central and northern Europe. Many of them were so called "prominent Jews" – artists, authors, composers, performers, and renowned intellectuals; approximately 160,000 Jews passed through the ghetto during WWII, tens of thousands had perished there, and some 88,000 were deported to extermination camps in the east.
Despite the harsh conditions, the ghetto's cultural life thrived. There were theatre performances, cabarets, concerts, lectures, schools for children (which were forbidden by the Nazis) and adult education programs, sport events, and more. Painters, writers, poets and various researchers and thinkers were active in the ghetto.
As a rule, those interned in the ghetto were subjected to forced labor – some in nearby mines and others in workshops within the ghetto, which produced toys, jewelry, bookmarks, various parchment products and paintings. The printing workshops in the ghetto produces a variety of learning materials and printed items required in the ghetto, as well as Nazi propaganda materials.
The Theresienstadt Ghetto played a pivotal part in the broad deception scheme designed by the Nazis to hide the existence of death camps in Poland. The creation of the "model ghetto", which was presented as a town under Jewish self-government, whose inhabitants seemingly lead comfortable, respectable lives, enjoying freedom and material abundance, was meant to serve one purpose: hiding the destruction of European Jewry from the international community, and from the Jews themselves, thus, facilitating their annihilation.