• Search

  • Menu

  • Shop

  • Languages

  • Accessibility
Visiting Info
Opening Hours:

Sunday to Thursday: ‬09:00-17:00

Fridays and Holiday eves: ‬09:00-14:00

Yad Vashem is closed on Saturdays and all Jewish Holidays.

Entrance to the Holocaust History Museum is not permitted for children under the age of 10. Babies in strollers or carriers will not be permitted to enter.

Drive to Yad Vashem:
Navigate to Yad Vashem with waze
Navigate to Yad Vashem with Google
For more Visiting Information
  1. Home
  2. Articles
  3. Academic Articles
  4. The Death Marches of Hungarian Jews Through Austria in the Spring of 1945

The Death Marches of Hungarian Jews Through Austria in the Spring of 1945

Eleonore Lappin

  1. Hilberg gives the figure of 8,142 Jews; Varga 8,225. See Raul Hilberg, The Destruction of the European Jews, Revised and Definitive Edition, vol. 2 (New York: Holmes & Meier Publishers, Ltd., 1985), pp. 832; Lásló Varga, “Ungarn,” in Wolfgang Benz, ed., Dimension des Voelkermords. Die Zahl der Juedischen Opfer des Nationalsozialismus (Munich: Oldenburg, 1991), p. 341.
  2. These “work training camps” were in reality slave labor camps that the Nazis claimed were to train “social misfits” to work.
  3. Szabolcs Szita, “Ungarische Zwangsarbeiter in Niederoesterreich (Niederdonau) 1944- 1945,” in Unsere Heimat. Zeitschrift des Vereines fuer Landeskunde von Niederoesterreich, vol. 63/1 (1992), p. 31. In 1945, the Gestapo official Karl Kuenzel, commandant of the Oberlanzendorf labor camp, stated: “With the commotion over Horthy in Hungary, I got 200 Hungarian Jews that were sent to the camp. These were mainly from industrial and political circles.”; written report by Karl Kuenzel, December 25, 1945, Landesgericht fuer Strafsachen (LG) Wien als Volksgericht (Vg) 1 Vr 4750/46 against Karl Kuenzel, in Archives of the Austrian Resistance (Dokumentationsarchiv des Oesterreichischen Widerstandes, DOW) E21.341/A, vol. I a. Landesgericht für Strafsachen Wien als Volksgericht. After the war special courts, the so-called Volksgerichte (People’s Courts), were installed to try Nazi crimes. They were located with the Landesgerichte (district courts) of the four occupation zones in Austria (Russian zone: Vienna; British zone: Graz; American zone: Linz; and French zone: Innsbruck). On April 25, 1944, fifty-three “members of the Hungarian nobility as well as politicians and industrialists from Budapest” arrived in Mauthausen; see Hans Marsalek, Geschichte des Konzentrationslagers Mauthausen (Vienna: Oesterreichische Lagergemeinschaft Mauthausen, 1980), 2nd ed., p. 126.
  4. Dieter Wisliceny, a key associate of Eichmann’s in Hungary, stated after the war that by July 1944, some 458,000 Hungarian Jews had been deported to Auschwitz, with about 108,000 deployed in slave labor; Randolph L. Braham, The Destruction of Hungarian Jewry. A Documentary Account (New York: World Federation of Hungarian Jewry, 1963), doc. 440, p. 928. According to László Ferenczy’s notes, a total of 434,351 Jews were deported. The Reich Plenipotentiary in Hungary, Edmund Veesenmayer, indicated the number of those deported was 437,402; Randolph L. Braham, The Politics of Genocide. The Holocaust in Hungary (New York: Columbia University Press, 1981), pp. 606 f. László Varga arrives at a figure of 444,152 deportees; Varga, “Ungarn,” p. 344.
  5. Marsalek, Mauthausen, p. 127.
  6. Varga, “Ungarn,” p. 344. Bacska, the present-day Serbian province of Vojvodina, was annexed from Yugoslavia by Hungary in April 1941.
  7. Gau Niederdonau covered the area of present day Niederoesterreich (Lower Austria), Burgenland, parts of Southern Moravia, and the westernmost parts of Slovakia.
  8. See the testimony by Emil Tuchmann in the trial against Siegfried Seidl, LG Wien Vg 1b Vr 770/46, and of Viktor Schwarz in the preliminary investigation against Emil Tuchmann, LG Wien Vg 3e Vr 1955/45. See also Eleonore Lappin, “Der Weg ungarischer Juden nach Theresienstadt,” in Miroslav Kárny, Raimund Kemper and Margarita Kárná, eds., Theresienstaedter Studien und Dokumente 1996 (Prague: Academia Theresienstaedter Initiative, 1996), pp. 52-81; for reports of eyewitnesses and survivors, see pp. 57 f.
  9. Viktor Schwarz testified in 1945 that he had been deported on May 26, 1944, from the Bacska and was deployed in forced labor along with 700 other Jewish prisoners in Lower Austria; testimony by Viktor Schwarz, August 23, 1945, LG Wien Vg 3e Vr 1955/45 against Emil Tuchmann. On June 22, 1944, rural police headquarters in Grosshollenstein reported to the administrative district office in Amstetten regarding the labor deployment of eleven “eastern Hungarian” Jews who had arrived at their workplace on June 8, 1944; DOW E 19.829.
  10. Letter from RSHA Chief Ernst Kaltenbrunner to the mayor of Vienna, SS-Brigadefuehrer Blaschke, June 30, 1944, doc. 3803-PS, in Trial of the Major War Criminals before the International Military Tribunal, vol. 33 (Nuremberg, 1949), pp. 167-169.
  11. On the numbers for those deported to Strasshof, see Szita, “Niederoesterreich,” pp. 34 f. Strasshof an der Nordbahn was a small city and major junction northeast of Vienna on the main rail line north to Brno in Moravia (and on to Prague and Theresienstadt).
  12. See “Report of the Jewish Rescue Committee, Budapest 1942-1945,” presented by Dr. Reszoe Kasztner (Kasztner report), Yad Vashem Archives (YVA), B/7-3; Yehuda Bauer, “The Negotiations between Saly Mayer and the Representatives of the S.S in 1944-1945,” in Rescue Attempts During the Holocaust (Jerusalem Yad Vashem, 1977), pp. 44; idem, Jews for Sale? Nazi-Jewish Negotiations, 1933-1945 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1994); Braham, Politics of Genocide, pp. 932-976; Eleonore Lappin, “Ungarisch- Juedische Zwangsarbeiter in Wien 1944/45,” in Martha Keil and Klaus Lohrmann, eds., Studien zur Geschichte der Juden in Oesterreich, vol. 1 (Vienna: Boehlau Verlag, 1994), pp. 140-165.
  13. Kasztner Report, p. 48.
  14. Since, as will be shown below, the Budapest Jews were not deported, only 15,000 “Jews from the provinces” were sent to Austria.
  15. The release of the deportees in the “Palaestinatransport” into Switzerland took place in two stages. On August 21, 1944, 384 persons crossed the Swiss border; in the early hours of December 7, 1944; they were followed by another 1,368 individuals. See also footnote 12.
  16. Hermann Krumey was the second-ranking functionary of the SEK in Budapest. Siegfried Seidl, Wilhelm Schmidtsiefen and several subordinates in the SEK came together with him to Vienna. Aussenkommando was the term for an outlying subcamp or satellite of a concentration camp or POW camp.
  17. Order on the Employment of Jews, issued by President of the Gau Labor Office and the Reich Trustee for Labor for the Lower Danube Gau Alfred Proksch, June 27, 1944, DOW E 19.829.
  18. Leo Balaban, who had been in charge of the card catalog of deployed Jewish workers located in the SEK central office in Vienna, testified that some 8,000 Hungarian Jews were employed there. An undated list from the Vienna camps indicates just under 6,000 internees; see LG Wien Vg 1 Vr 770, against Siegfried Seidl. The discrepancy in the figures can be explained by the fact that, depending on economic needs, Jewish forced laborers were frequently transferred.
  19. On the organization of labor deployment, see LG Wien Vg 1 Vr 770/46, against Siegfried Seidl; LG Wien Vg 3e Vr 1955/45, against Emil Tuchmann; Kasztner Report, p. 164; Lappin, “Zwangsarbeiter Wien”; idem, “Theresienstadt.”
  20. On March 8, 1945, evacuation transport IV/16 left Vienna with some 1,070 persons, arriving in Theresienstadt that same day; Kasztner Report, p. 164; H. G. Adler, Theresienstadt 1941- 1945. Das Antlitz einer Zwangsgemeinschaft. Geschichte, Soziologie, Psychologie (Mohr Tübingen, 1955), p. 198; letter by H.D. to the author, September 22, 1995; Lappin, “Theresienstadt,” pp. 66 ff.
  21. Josef Neidhart, Strasshofer Heimatbuch (Strasshof: Eigenverlag Herbst, 1989), pp. 213 f.
  22. The death registration rolls of the Jewish Community in Vienna contain the names of fewer than 600 Hungarian Jews who died between the beginning of June 1944 and early May 1945 in the greater Vienna metropolitan area and were buried at the Vienna Central Cemetery, Fourth Gate. According to Braham’s calculations, some 25 percent of those deported to Strasshof (thus, at least 4,000 individuals) lost their lives; see Braham, Politics of Genocide, p. 654.
  23. On the background to this decision, see ibid., pp. 708-716.
  24. Varga, “Ungarn,” pp. 344, 348.
  25. Hilberg, The Destruction of the European Jews, pp. 808 ff.; see also Randolph L. Braham, The Hungarian Labor Service System 1939-1945 (Boulder: East European Quarterly, 1977), pp. 59-139.
  26. “Auschwitz,” in Yisrael Gutman, ed., Encyclopedia of the Holocaust (New York and London: Macmillan, 1990), vol. 1, p.115.
  27. Hilberg, The Destruction of the European Jews, pp. 934-935; see also Ulrich Herbert, A History of Foreign Labor in Germany, 1880-1980 (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1990), pp. 175 ff.
  28. The Southeastern Wall (Suedostwall) was also called the Reich Protective Fortifications (Reichsschutzstellung), or the Eastern Wall.
  29. Leopold Banny, Schild im Osten. Der Suedostwall zwischen Donau und Untersteiermark 1944/45 (Lackenbach: Eigenverlag Leopold Banny, 1985), p. 58.
  30. Report, Rural Police First Lt. Ferenczy, in Varga, “Ungarn,” p. 349.
  31. Telegram from Edmund Veesenmayer to the German Foreign Office, November 21, 1944, in Braham, Destruction of Hungarian Jewry, doc. 242, pp. 532 f. Regarding the forced marches from Budapest to the Reich frontier, see Szabolcs Szita, “Die Todesmaersche der Budapester Juden im November 1944 nach Hegyeshalom-Nickelsdorf,” Zeitgeschichte, vol. 22 (1995), pp. 124-137.
  32. Under interrogation in Nuremberg after the war, Dieter Wisliceny testified that a small number of the first 30,000 workers were immediately sent on from the Austrian frontier to Flossenbuerg and Sachsenhausen; see Braham, Destruction of Hungarian Jewry, doc. 440, p. 928. On November 26, 1944, the Mauthausen concentration camp recorded 495 Jews from Budapest as new arrivals; see Marsalek, Mauthausen, p. 127.
  33. Szabolcs Szita, “The Forced Labor of Hungarian Jews at the Fortification of the Western Border Regions of Hungary, 1944-1945,” in Randolph L. Braham, ed., Studies on the Holocaust in Hungary (New York: Columbia University Press, 1990), pp. 175-193.
  34. The Gau Steiermark (Styria) consisted of what are today Styria and the southern half of Burgenland.
  35. Telegram from Edmund Veesenmayer to the German Foreign Office, November 21, 1944, in Braham, Destruction of Hungarian Jewry, doc. 242, pp. 532 f.
  36. Austrian Interior Ministry, Group State Police Sec. 2C, transcript recorded with Rudolf Stanz on October 22, 1964, in Graz, Austrian State Archives, Archives of the Republic (AdR), Interior Ministry (BuMinI) 54.370-18/70.
  37. Szita, “Forced Labor,” p. 179.
  38. See AdR, Justice Ministry (BuMinJu) 60.942/61, trial against Dr. Siegfried Uiberreither; official recollection, August 8, 1961; AdR BuMinJu 68.306/64, trial against Dr. Siegfried Uiberreither; inquiry 1, files Dept. 10; AdR BuMinI 54.787-18/67, proceedings against Eduard Meissl; Public Record Office London (PRO) War Office (WO) 310/144, statement by Anton Rutte, May 25, 1946; LG Graz Vg 7c Vr 869/45, against Josef Stampfer and others. The Volkssturm was a paramilitary unit set up in October 1944, as one of the last-ditch defenders of the Reich. Virtually all men between sixteen and sixty were conscripted and organized in their local districts.
  39. Geheime Dienstanweisung no. 24, Kreis Fuerstenfeld, March 22, 1945. PRO Foreign Office (FO) 1020/1063.
  40. Transcript of statement by Rudolf Stanz, October 22, 1964, in Graz, AdR BuMinI 54.370- 18/70, regarding Eduard Meissl and others.
  41. LG Wien Vg 11g Vr 190/48, against Stefan Beigelboeck and others.
  42. Statement recorded on May 25, 1946, from Anton Rutte, PRO, WO 310/144.
  43. Investigation Report, Criminal Police Graz, July 5, 1945, PRO WO 310/155; interrogation of Siegfried Uiberreither by Lord Schuster on March 5, 1946, regarding responsibility for the murder of 7,000 Hungarian Jews in April 1945, in Styria, DOW 12.697.
  44. These were members of the Waffen-SS divisions “Handschar,” “Kama” and “Prinz Eugen.” Report of the Head Security Office for Upper Austria to the Zentrale Stelle der Landesjustizverwaltungen in Ludwigsburg, (ZStL) Zl 9AR-Z 85/61, November 6, 1962, Archives of the Republic (AdR) BuMinI 457-13/57.
  45. Interrogation of Siegfried Uiberreither by Lord Schuster on March 5, 1946, regarding responsibility for the murder of 7,000 Hungarian Jews in Styria in April 1945, DOW 12.697; and statement by Franz Ziereis, Mauthausen commandant, May 25, 1945, as quoted in Peter Kammerstaetter, “Der Todesmarsch ungarischer Juden vom KZ Mauthausen nach Gunskirchen, April 1945. Eine Materialsammlung mit Bildern,” unpublished, Linz 1971, p. 8, DOW 6733. Interrogation of the witness Tobias Portschy, February 5, 1960, LG Graz 13 Vr 20/60, against Oskar Reitter; and Kasztner Report, YVA, B/7-3, p. 170.
  46. Transcript of testimony by Alfred Waidmann on March 8, 1947, LG Wien Vg 1a Vr 10/50, against Alfred Waidmann. Bad Deutsch-Altenburg lies east of Vienna on the Danube and was formerly on the steamer line between Vienna , Bratislava and Budapest.
  47. Testimony of Rudolf Kronberger, July 9, 1945, LG Wien Vg 2b Vr 564/45, against Rudolf Kronberger and others. The exact number of these victims was not established; the section head in charge, Alfred Waidmann, claimed he had heard about sixty deaths; LG Wien Vg 1a Vr 10/50 against Alfred Waidmann.
  48. Testimony of Ignaz Blau and Ernoe Honig, recorded on August 15, 1945, LG Wien Vg 1a Vr 1125/45, against Josef Entenfellner and others. The so-called Engerau murder trials occupied the Austrian courts for almost a decade. The first of these trials was in August 1945; the last in July 1954. Nonetheless, it was impossible to establish just who had actually given the murder orders.
  49. Uiberreither stated that the discussion between Himmler and the Gauleiter, as well as the Mauthausen camp commandant, Franz Ziereis, had taken place on March 28, 1945. He claimed to have personally passed on the order for the “orderly” evacuation to the responsible local Kreisleiter; interrogation of Siegfried Uiberreither by Lord Schuster on March 5, 1946, regarding responsibility for the murder of 7,000 Hungarian Jews in Styria in April 1945, DOW 12.697. The marches from the Austrian camps along the Hungarian border started on March 29. The camps in western Hungary had already begun to be evacuated on March 23, 1945.
  50. Ibid.
  51. Orders given to the rural police assigned to the evacuation columns probably came from the Gestapo.
  52. That occurred, for example, on the stretch from Gaberl to Trieben in Styria; AdR BuMinJu 68.763/55, regarding the criminal cases against Albin Grossmann, Viktor Abschner, Valentin Gries, Matthias Mitter and Johann Woehry.
  53. Braham, Politics of Genocide, vol. 1, p. 343; cf. the speech by Pal Bacs before the monument to victims of the Ziegelofen camp, March 23, 1990; copy in Institut fuer Geschichte der Juden in Oesterreich (IGJ). See also LG Wien Vg 1 b Vr 1018/45, against Johann Zemlicka.
  54. LG Wien 1a Vr 1010/45, against Johann Hoelzl; and LG Wien 1 b Vr 1018/45, against Johann Zemlicka.
  55. Kloech School Report 1944/45; copy in IGJ.
  56. Investigations regarding murders of Jews in the Kloech area, PRO WO 310/167; testimony by Anton Rutte, May 25, 1946, PRO WO 310/144; LG Graz 13 Vr 2924/60, against Anton Rutte and others. Those found guilty of shooting the twenty-six sick prisoners were sentenced by a British military court in Graz in November 1947. The murders by the SS of sick laborers who had been left behind were never clarified.
  57. Testimony of Simon Sacharia and Avraham Blechner to the Israeli police, First Interim Report, January 1, 1970, to the Zentrale Stelle, Ludwigsburg, ZStL, 502 Ar-Z 108/1967, against person or persons unknown, submitted to the State Prosecutor’s Office Stuttgart (StA), Stuttgart 16 Js 209/67, in AdR BuMinI 55.086-18/70.
  58. Testimony of Josef Zwickel, July 11, 1967, ibid.
  59. The murders in Praebichl were investigated and dealt with in minute detail in three criminal proceedings before the General British Military Courts in April and October 1946. For a summary of events at Praebichl, see Advice on Evidence of Theodore Turner, February 20, 1946, p. 3, PRO FO 1020/2056. Cf. also PRO FO 1020/2034. The Praebichl Pass (1227 meters) south of Eisenerz is the main pass between Leoben and Hieflau in the Eisenerz Alps in Upper Styria, and is located about 40 km. northwest of Bruck an der Mur.
  60. LG Wien Vg 3c Vr 2488/45, against person or persons unknown.
  61. On Goestling, see LG Wien Vg 1 b Vr 2092/45, against Ernst Burian and others; KlausDieter Mulley, “Nationalsozialismus im politischen Bezirk Scheibbs 1930 bis 1945. Versuch einer Regionalgeschichte,” diss., Vienna, 1981, pp. 299-304; on Weissenbach an derTriesting, see Neues Oesterreich, September 7, 1947; LG Wien Vg 5d 6267/47, against person or persons unknown.
  62. Exhumation report of the rural police office in Nestelbach to the LG Graz, March 23, 1946, LG Graz Vg 1 Vr 821/46, against Jakob Rappold and Johann Grobbauer.
  63. Interrogation of the witness Dr. Tobias Portschy, February 5, 1960, LG Graz 13 Vr 20/60 against Oskar Reitter. Reitter was acquitted because witnesses for the prosecution had a remarkably poor recollection in 1960 of the events of April 1945.
  64. See PRO WO 310/144; and PRO WO 310/167.
  65. Andreas Veith and Karl Kohn were conscripted into the labor service in October 1942, serving in Bistrica, Szombathely, and Papa. They were sent to a camp in Sopron in January 1945. In February 1945, they were transported in cattle cars to Windisch Minihof, in the Gau of Styria, where they cut wood for the construction of the Southeastern Wall. At the beginning of April, the death march began for them, leading through Styria to Mauthausen and Gunskirchen. See testimony recorded from Andreas Veith, n. d., PRO WO 310/143. See also the testimony of M. Kolar on the death march (part by rail) from Fertoerakos in late January 1945, via Loretto and Enns, to Mauthausen, recorded in Bet Dagan, Israel, October 17, 1969, ZStL, II Ar-Z 347/77, Mauthausen-Gunskirchen. In contrast, Mordechai Levay and Shlomo Tal-Or, who had been brought about that same time to Fertoerakos, were not sent to Mauthausen by train until the beginning of April; ZStL, 502 Ar-Z 108/1967, against person or persons unknown, submitted to StA Stuttgart 16 Js 209/67, in AdR BuMinI 55.086-18/70.
  66. Final report, ibid.
  67. Szita, “Forced Labor,” p. 6.
  68. On Koeszeg, see interview with Judith Hruza, MD, Zuzanek collection, copy in IGJ; testimony by Naftali Berkowits, April 12, 1947, Friedmann collection, copy in IGJ. On Bucsu, see testimony of Wolf Gancz in preliminary investigations on the Eisenerz murder trial, June 22, 1946, PRO FO 1020/2056. According to Gancz, 3,500 Jewish workers came in from Buscu and were added to the evacuation column that was marched via Graz, the Praebichl, and the Enns valley to Mauthausen. On Bucsu, see, further, the statement of the camp committee of the DP camp Bad Gastein, as recorded with testimony by Otto Ickowitz, April 20, 1947, Friedmann collection, copy in IGJ; interview with Zvi Bar-Niv, January 1992, Zuzanek collection, copy in IGJ.
  69. Fertoerakos, Agfalva, Sopron, Sopronbanfalva, Balf, Harka (present-day Magyarfalva), Kophaza, Nagycenk, Hildegseg, and Ilonamajor.
  70. On Donnerskirchen, see testimony of Andort Frankfurt recorded on August 9, 1945, LG Wien Vg 8e Vr 1322/49, against Nikolaus Schorn. On Schattendorf, see statement by Avraham Mayer to the Israeli police, November 2, 1969, ZStL, 19 AR-Z 347/77.
  71. Szita, “Forced Labor,” p. 32.
  72. Hugo Gold, Geschichte der Juden in Burgenland (Tel Aviv: Olamenu, 1970), p. 45.
  73. LG Wien Vg 11 Vr 3117/45, against Karl Unger and others.
  74. Statement of Mendel Fruchter to the Israeli police, First Interim Report, January 1, 1970, to ZStL, 502 Ar-Z 108/1967, person or persons unknown, submitted to StA Stuttgart 16 Js 209/67, in AdR BuMinI 55.086-18/70. Neither in Szita “Forced Labor,” p. 32, nor in this statement is it possible to determine whether the perpetrators were members of the general SS or the Waffen-SS.
  75. Statement by Avraham Mayer, November 2, 1969, ZStL, 19 AR-Z 347/77, and testimony of survivors to the Israeli police, Third Interim Report, June 14, 1970, ZStL, 502 AR-Z 108/1967, against person or persons unknown, submitted to StA Stuttgart 16 Js 209/67, in AdR BuMinI 55.086-18/70.
  76. See testimony of Andort Frankfurt, recorded on August 9, 1945, LG Wien Vg 8e Vr 1322/49, against Nikolaus Schorn; statement of Mendel Fruchter to the Israeli police, First Interim Report, January 1, 1970, to ZStL, 502 Ar-Z 108/1967, person or persons unknown, submitted to StA Stuttgart 16 Js 209/67, in AdR BuMinI 55.086-18/70; and statement by Susanne Wenzel, October 11, 1968, ibid.
  77. Statement by Josef Klein, May 6, 1946, PRO FO 1020/2059; Klein had likewise been interned in the Eberau camp.
  78. Statement by Wolf Gancz, June 22, 1946, PRO FO 1020/2056.
  79. Gancz indicated the following route: Eberau, Heiligenkreuz, Fuerstenfeld, Gleisdorf, Graz. In the Secret Order of March 22, 1945, another route was planned for the first two days of evacuation from the Eberau camp: Eberau, Strem, Guessing, Sulz, Rehgraben, Neusiedl, Deutsch Kaltenbrunn, and Bierbaum (see footnote 36). The fact that we have no evidence for an evacuation column passing through Fuerstenfeld also tends to speak against the picture sketched by Gancz (according to information from Dr. Franz Timischl, Fuerstenfeld).
  80. Strem, 5,000; Feldbach, 400; Heiligenkreuz, 400; Jennersdorf, 200; Fehring, 150; Schachendorf, 600; Neumarkt an der Raab, 300; Bucsu, 3,500; and St. Anna am Aigen, 200; statement by Wolf Gancz, June 22, 1946, PRO FO 1020/2056. Another witness gave the figure of 2,000 for the number of workers that left Bucsu; statement of Otto Ickowitz, April 20, 1947, Friedmann collection, copy in IGJ.
  81. Ibid. Eberau in eastern Burgenland is on the Austrian-Hungarian border, a distance of some 100 km. from Graz.
  82. Szita, “Forced Labor,” p. 6.
  83. Statement by Wolf Gancz, June 22, 1946, PRO FO 1020/2056.
  84. Braham, Politics of Genocide, vol. 1, p. 343; cf. the speech by Pal Bacs before the monument to victims of the Ziegelofen camp, March 23, 1990, copy in IGJ, and LG Wien Vg 1 b Vr 1018/45, against Johann Zemlicka.
  85. LG Wien Vg ad Vr 2059/45, against Eduard Nicka and LG Wien Vg 2f Vr 2832/45, against Franz Podezin and others.
  86. Statement of Otto Ickowitz, April 20, 1947, Friedmann collection, copy in IGJ.
  87. LG Graz Vg 1a Vr 6401/46, against Johann Schiller and others.
  88. LG Wien Vg 2d Vr 2059/45, against Franz Dobesberger and others, and LG Wien Vg 8e Vr 661/55 and LG Wien 20a Vr 661/55, against Alfred Weber. The grave in Deutsch-Schuetzen was not rediscovered until August 1995, and was then marked as such and fenced in; Der Standard, August 25, 1995, and August 26-27, 1995.
  89. LG Graz Vg 11 Vr 3434/46, against Franz Peischl.
  90. Neue steirische Zeitung, July 7, 1945.
  91. Statement by Naftali Berkowits, April 12, 1947, Friedmann collection, copy in IGJ.
  92. Communication from Alois Grauper to the IKG Vienna, August 30, 1989, DÖW E 21.224.
  93. LG Graz Vg 13 Vr 4566/46, against Gerhard Rach and comrades.
  94. LG Graz 1 Vr 9122/47, against Isidor Fellner and others.
  95. Franz Timischl, Fuerstenfeld und Umgebung von 1930-1950. Ein zeitgeschichtliches Forschungsprojekt der Volkshochschule Fuerstenfeld (Fuerstenfeld: Landesverband der steirischen Volkshochschulen, 1994), p. 202.
  96. LG Graz Vg 1 Vr 900/45, against Paul Schmidt and others. See also Eleonore Lappin, “Rechnitz gedenkt der Opfer der NS-Herrschaft,” in Jahrbuch des Dokumentationsarchivs des oesterreichischen Widerstandes (1992), pp. 50-70.
  97. PRO FO 1020/2063.
  98. Report on the Eisenerz March, War Crimes Investigators, Graz, to ADJAG, BTA, February 23, 1946, PRO WO 310/143; police post chronicle, St. Stefan im Rosental, DOW 13.114 a; letter from IKG Graz to the Jewish Concentration Camp and Gravesites Investigation Committee, November 12, 1948, YVA, 05/13; interview with Anna Hinterholzer, Kloech no. 25, Franz Josef Schober collection.
  99. There were five camps for forced laborers in Graz: Graz-Liebenau, Graz-Andritz, GrazSteinfeld, Graz-Wetzelsdorf, and Graz- Sued. It is likely that all of these served as transit camps for the evacuation columns of Hungarian-Jewish forced laborers.
  100. A survivor stated that his column only spent the night in Graz before being marched on toward the Praebichl; see statement by Naftali Reich, April 12, 1947, Friedmann collection, copy in IGJ. Wolf Gancz testified that he remained in Graz two days; statement, June 22, 1946, PRO FO 1020/2056.
  101. Investigative report of the Graz Criminal Police, July 5, 1945, PRO WO 310/155.
  102. Ibid.
  103. Report, Rural Police Post Gratwein to the State Rural Police Office for Styria, July 19, 1945, PRO WO 310/155; and Report, “A” Detachment 22, Section SIB, C.M. Police, BTA, to DAPM, 77 Section SIB, C.M. Police, BTA, September 9, 1945, PRO WO 310/155.
  104. Report, Officer IC War Crimes Section, JAG Branch, HQ BTA, CMF, February 12, 1946, PRO WO 310/143.
  105. On July 3, 1945, on the slope of Mt. Eggenfeld, the remains of eleven bodies were removed from a mass grave; another was exhumed from a single grave, the last prisoner shot trying to escape. Another mass grave, with “four to six bodies, located at the peak of Mt. Eggenfeld and in accordance with sanitary requirements, was not opened due to the difficulties of transport and recovery that entailed”; evidence at the scene of the crime, Graz Criminal Police, July 3, 1945, PRO WO 310/155, and Investigative Report of the Graz Criminal Police, July 5, 1945, PRO WO 310/155.
  106. DOW 13.114a.
  107. Wahrheit, April 19, 1946.
  108. Testimony of Tiberiusz Glass, UNRRA DP camp Admont, April 4, 1947; testimony of Zoltan Koffler, UNRRA DP camp Admont, April 7, 1947; and testimony of Elias Kohn UNRRA DP camp Admont, April 8, 1947; Friedmann collection, copy in IGJ.
  109. Waltraud Neuhauser-Pfeiffer and Karl Ramsmaier, Vergessene Spuren. Die Geschichte der Juden in Steyr (Linz: Edition Sandkorn, 1993), p. 131.
  110. LG Linz Vg 6 Vr 541/46, against Josef Bruckner and others. The defendant Josef Deutsch mentioned four evacuation columns that were escorted along this segment of the route by rural police from the post at Weyer Markt. He himself had been assigned to serve as an escort on April 10, and again on April 13, 1945.
  111. LG Linz Vg 6 Vr 541/46, against Josef Bruckner and others.
  112. Neuhauser-Pfeiffer and Ramsmaier, Vergessene Spuren, p. 132.
  113. LG Bonn 8 Ks 1/62 13 UR 3/61, case against Hermann Mair, April 11, 1962, in the verdicts handed down from November 21, 1961 to January 10, 1963, nos. 523-547, vol. XVII, Justiz und NS-Verbrechen. Sammlung deutscher Strafurteile wegen nationalsozialistischer Toetungsverbrechen 1945-1966, comp. Irene Sagel-Grande, H.H. Fuchs and C.F. Rueter (Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 1978).
  114. Ibid.
  115. LG Linz Vg 3577/47, against Adolf Klaus-Sternwieser.
  116. LG Linz Vg 6 Vr 868/47, against Franz Kreil.
  117. LG Linz Vg 6 Vr 541/46, against Leopold Lehner and others.
  118. Jewish Community of Steyr to the State Prosecutor’s Office Steyr, February 22, 1946, Subject: exhumation, DÖW 14.792.
  119. Neuhauser-Pfeiffer and Ramsmaier, Vergessene Spuren, p. 130.
  120. LG Linz Vg 6 Vr 1218/46, against Josef Huber; and LG Linz Vg 8 Vr 1218/46, against Josef Hinterleitner.
  121. Report, Controller Military Government Courts Branch to Director, Subject: Atrocities Cases, South East Styria and Judenburg Area, June 6, 1947, PRO FO 1020/2063.
  122. Proceedings of the General Court, British Military Government, Graz, September 25, 1947, against Albin Grossmann and others, in AdR BuMinJu 68.763/55, Subject: cases against Albin Grossmann and others, LG Graz Vg 1 Vr 2841/46.
  123. LG Graz Vg 1 Vr 2116/49, against Otto Maessing and others.
  124. Letter from the Historical Jewish Documentation, Linz, to the Jewish Concentration Camp and Gravesites Investigation Committee, Vienna, March 31, 1948, YVA, 05/89.
  125. Inquiries regarding Hugo Zemanek, AdR BuMinJu 20.304/2-A/63.
  126. Letter from the Jewish Historical Documentation, Linz, to the Jewish Concentration Camp and Gravesites Investigation Committee, Vienna, March 31, 1948, YVA, 05/89.
  127. On April 20, 1945, there were more than 5,435 male and 367 female prisoners in the tent camp, yet its maximum was 10,000 persons; see Hans Marsalek, Mauthausen, pp. 135 and 88. See also Peter Kammerstaetter, Der Todesmarsch ungarischer Juden vom KZ Mauthausen nach Gunskirchen, April 1945. Eine Materialsammlung mit Bildern (Linz: unpublished, 1971), p. 8, DOW 6733.
  128. Kammerstaetter, Todesmarch nach Gunskirchen, p. 18. The camp at Gunskirchen was located about 5 miles southwest of the city of Wels near the River Traun.
  129. Ibid., p. 29.
  130. Ibid., p. 6.
  131. The location of the memorial stones and the number of victims buried there is given in Kammerstaetter; see also Erich Fein, ed., “Die Steine reden,” Arbeitsgemeinschaft der Verbaende und Widerstandskaempfer KZ-Oesterreichs (Vienna: Europa-Verlag, 1975). 
  132. Szita, “Forced Labor,” p. 179.
  133. Report, Jewish Historical Documentation, November 19, 1951, YVA, 015/36.
  134. LG Wien Vg 1a Vr 564/45, against Rudolf Kronberger and others; interrogation of Siegfried Uiberreither by Lord Schuster on March 5, 1946, regarding responsibility for the murder of 7,000 Hungarian Jews in Styria in April 1945, DOW 12.697 and statement by Franz Ziereis, Mauthausen commandant, May 25, 1945, quoted in Peter Kammerstaetter, “Der Todesmarsch ungarischer Juden vom KZ Mauthausen nach Gunskirchen, April 1945. Eine Materialsammlung mit Bildern” (Linz: unpublished, 1971), p. 8, DOW 6733. Interrogation of the witness Tobias Portschy, February 5, 1960, LG Graz 13 Vr 20/60, against Oskar Reitter, and Kasztner Report, YVA, B/7-3, p. 170.
  135. LG Wien Vg 1a Vr 194/53, against Peter Acher.
  136. LG Wien 2d Vr 2059/45, against Franz Dobesberger and others; see also footnote 48.
  137. LG Wien Vg 8e Vr 661/55 and LG Wien 20a Vr 661/55, against Alfred Weber.
  138. LG Graz Vg 11 Vr 812/46, against Jakob Rappold and Johann Grobbauer.
  139. LG Graz 13 Vr 20/60, against Oskar Reitter.
  140. On the trials for violent crimes against Hungarian Jews, see also Eleonore Lappin, “Prozesse der britischen Militaergerichte wegen nationalsozialistischer Gewaltverbrechen an ungarisch-juedischen Zwangsarbeitern in der Steiermark,” in Rudolf G. Ardelt and Christian Gerbel, eds., Oesterreichischer Zeitgeschichtetag 1995 (Vienna: Studienverlag Innsbruck, 1997), pp. 345-350; idem, “Die Ahndung von NS-Gewaltverbrechen im Zuge der Todesmaersche ungarischer Juden durch die Steiermark,” in Winfried Garscha and Claudia Kuretsidis, eds., Keine Abrechnung (Leipzig and Vienna: Akademische Verlagsanstalt, 1998), pp. 32-53; idem, “Opfer als Zeugen in Gerichtsverfahren wegen nationalsozialistischer Gewaltverbrechen: Ein unterbliebener Opfer-Taeter-Diskurs,” in Gertraud Diendorfer, Gerhard Jagschitz and Oliver Rathkolb, eds., Zeitgeschichte im Wandel. 3. Oesterreichischer Zeitgeschichtetag 1997 (Vienna: Studienverlag Innsbruck, 1998), pp. 330-336.
  141. Lappin, “Ahndung von NS-Gewaltverbrechen,” in Garscha and Kuretsidis, eds., Keine Abrechnung, pp. 32-53.
Yad Vashem Holocaust History Museum

Worldwide antisemitism is on the rise.


At Yad Vashem, we strive to make the world a better place by combating antisemitism through teacher training, international lectures and workshops and online courses.

We need you to partner with us in this vital mission to #EducateAgainstHate

DONATE NOW