was religious, appointed a team of rabbis to oversee the burial of the dead. The believers, who were largely elderly Jews from Austria and Germany, frequently gathered in makeshift areas to pray on Shabbat. Rabbis and Leo Baeck ministered not just to Jews but to Christian converts and others needing comfort. Theresienstadt's cultural life has been viewed differently by different prisoners and commentators. Adler stresses that an unusually high number of inmates were culturally active; however, cultural activity could lead to a kind of self-deception about reality. Ullmann believed that the activities represented spiritual resistance to Nazism and a "spark of humanity": "By no means did we sit weeping by the rivers of Babylon; our endeavors in the arts were commensurate with our will to live." Propaganda In June 1943, a delegation of the German Red Cross (DRK) visited the ghetto. Despite the fact that the DRK was led by SS doctors who were involved in Nazi human experimentation, the report by accurately described the ghetto's conditions: "dreadful" and "frightfully overcrowded". Hartmann reported that the prisoners were severely undernourished and medical care was completely inadequate. In July, the Vatican requested and was refused permission to send a delegation to the ghetto. The ICRC, having come under increasing pressure from Denmark, Jewish organizations and the Czechoslovak government-in-exile to intervene in favor of Jews, requested to visit Theresienstadt in November 1943. It is unclear to what extent the ICRC valued making an accurate report on Theresienstadt, given that it had access to independent information confirming that prisoners were transported to Auschwitz and murdered there. The Danish government also pressured the Nazis to allow a visit, because of the Danish Jews who had been deported there in late 1943. On a visit to Denmark in November 1943, Eichmann promised the Danish representatives that they would be allowed to visit in the spring of 1944. In late May, Eppstein, Zucker, and other Theresienstadt leaders were allowed to sign SS-dictated letters, which were sent to the Aid and Rescue Committee, a Jewish organization in Budapest. Rudolf Kastner, the leader of the committee, forwarded the letter abroad, causing an unduly positive impression of Theresienstadt to develop outside German-occupied territory. The commission that visited on 23 June 1944, included Maurice Rossel, a representative of the ICRC; E. Juel-Henningsen, the head physician at the Danish Ministry of Health; and Franz Hvass, the top civil servant at the Danish