fearing that they would be gassed. They were starving and infected with lice and typhoid fever, an epidemic of which soon raged in the ghetto and claimed many lives. A Theresienstadt prisoner described them as "no longer people, they are wild animals". The Red Cross took over administration of the ghetto and removed the SS flag on 2 May 1945; the SS fled on 5–6 May. On 8 May, Red Army troops skirmished with German forces outside the ghetto and liberated it at 9 pm. On 11 May, Soviet medical units arrived to take charge of the ghetto; the next day, Jiří Vogel, a Czech Jewish communist, was appointed elder and served until the ghetto was dissolved. Theresienstadt was the only Nazi ghetto liberated with a significant population of survivors. On 14 May, Soviet authorities imposed a strict quarantine to contain the typhoid epidemic; more than 1,500 prisoners and 43 doctors and nurses died around the time of liberation. After two weeks, the quarantine ended and the administration focused on returning survivors to their countries of origin; repatriation continued until 17 August 1945. Command and control authority Theresienstadt was a hybrid of ghetto and concentration camp, with features of both. It was established by order of the RSHA in 1941 and, unlike other concentration camps, was not administered by the SS Main Economic and Administrative Office. Instead, the SS commandant reported to Hans Günther, the director of the Central Office for Jewish Emigration in Prague, whose superior was Adolf Eichmann. Theresienstadt also fell under the command of SS and Police Leader Karl Hermann Frank, the chief of police in the Protectorate, as it was classified as a SS-and-police-run camp. The SS commandant was in charge of some 28 SS men, 12 civilian employees, the Czech gendarmes who guarded the ghetto, and the Jewish self-administration. The first commandant was Siegfried Seidl, who was replaced by Anton Burger on 3 July 1943. Burger was reassigned and replaced by Karl Rahm in January 1944; Rahm governed the ghetto until the SS fled on 5 May 1945. All of the SS commandants were assigned to Theresienstadt with the rank SS-Obersturmführer. The ghetto was guarded by 150–170 Czech gendarmes at one time. The guards, who often smuggled letters and food in return for bribes, were frequently rotated to avoid contacts developing between guards and prisoners. Fourteen of the guards were imprisoned at the Small Fortress