The history of the prison is not only connected with the Small Fortress during the Second World War. Already in the 19th century there was a prison for political prisoners. In the years 1914 – 1918, Gavrilo Princip, the assassin of Francis Ferdinand d'Este, was imprisoned here, who died in April 1918 in a military hospital in Terezín as a result of his imprisonment
In June 1940, a prison of the Prague Gestapo was established in the Small Fortress of Terezín. In the five years of its existence, 32,000 prisoners passed through the Small Fortress. Executions, hunger, inhumane treatment and, at the end of the war, an epidemic of typhus claimed the lives of 2,600 prisoners. However, the suffering of those who survived the Terezin hell often did not end. Approximately 5,500 more people perished from the prisoners deported further to the courts, concentration camps, prisons and correctional facilities
However, violence was not only hidden behind the walls of the Small Fortress. : In the city of Terezín, the former Main Fortress, the occupation administration established a ghetto, a collection and transit camp for Jewish prisoners in November 1941. From here people left in mass transports for their final journey to the extermination camps. In less than four years, more than 140,000 Jewish prisoners passed through the Terezin ghetto. In the last days of the war, they were joined by more than 15,000 prisoners who arrived in Terezín in so-called evacuation transports. Out of 35,000 prisoners in Terezín died as a result of stress, hunger and miserable living conditions.