The history of the prison is connected not only with the Small Fortress during World War II. There was a prison for political prisoners here as early as the 19th century. In the years 1914 - 1918 Gavrilo Princip, the assassin of Francis Ferdinand d'Este, was imprisoned here, who died in April 1918 in the military hospital in Theresienstadt as a result of his imprisonment
In June 1940, the Prague Gestapo prison was set up in the Small Fortress Theresienstadt. In the five years of its existence, 32,000 prisoners passed through the Small Fortress, executions, starvation, inhumane treatment and at the end of the war a typhus epidemic cost the lives of 2,600 prisoners. However, the suffering of those who survived the hell of Theresienstadt often did not end. About 5,500 other people died as a result of the inmates being deported to the courts, concentration camps, prisons and correctional facilities
But violence was not only hidden behind the walls of the Small Fortress. : In November 1941, in the city of Theresienstadt, the former main fortress, the occupation administration set up a ghetto, a collection and transit camp for Jewish prisoners. From here people set out in mass transports on their final journey to the extermination camps. In less than four years, more than 140,000 Jewish prisoners passed through the Theresienstadt ghetto. In the final days of the war, more than 15,000 prisoners came to Theresienstadt on so-called evacuation transports. 35,000 prisoners in Theresienstadt died as a result of stress, hunger and miserable living conditions.