The Small Fortress, part of Terezin's fortification system built between 1780 and 1790, served as a prison and penitentiary for army and political prisoners already at the time of the Habsburg monarchy. The most tragic chapter in its history came during the occupation of the Czech lands by Nazi Germany in 1939. The Gestapo Police Prison was estabilished in Terezin as a key link in the repressive system of the Nazi occupation authorities.
The National Cemetery, set up shortly after the country's liberation in 1945, stands in the foreground of the Small Fortress. The bodies of the victims of the Gestapo Police Prison, the Terezin Ghetto, the Litoměřice concentration camp, and the death transports from Lovosice were buried in Individual and later mass graves here