Courtyard IV
Though the Nazis originally chose the Small Fortress because it was well suited for a prison, by 1943 it was running out of room for additional prisoners.
Between the period of 1940 to 1945, the number of prisoners housed in the Small Fortress increased substantially. In 1940, there were an average of 150 prisoners housed in the Small Fortress. By 1941, this had increased to 600; by 1942 to 1,200; by 1943 and 1944 to approximately 2,000; and by 1945 to 5,500 prisoners.*
To house the additional prisoners, the SS added a fourth Courtyard (Courtyard IV). Though construction was begun in 1943, the first prisoners were not moved here until the Fall of 1944.
Courtyard IV consists of several large mass cells which held between 400 and 600 prisoners each (on the left) as well as small cells for solitary confinement (on the right). But with the extra increases of prisoners in 1945, the crowding was so extreme that even the solitary confinement cells were used as mass cells. At the end of the war, 3,000 inmates lived in just this Courtyard.
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* Miroslava Benesova, Vojtech Blodig, and Marek Poloncarz, The Small Fortress: Terezin, 1940-1945 (Terezin Memorial, 1996) 18.
