Language:
German
Year of publication:
2007
Titel der Quelle:
Zeitgeschichte
Angaben zur Quelle:
34,6 (2007) 351-371
Keywords:
Holocaust, Jewish (1939-1945)
;
Holocaust, Jewish (1939-1945) Influence
;
War crime trials
;
Holocaust, Jewish (1939-1945)
;
World War, 1939-1945 Conscript labor
Abstract:
Based on information from the protocols of war crimes trials held in Austria soon after the war, reconstructs the events which followed the first wave of transports of Hungarian Jews to Austria in spring 1944 for forced labor in Vienna and Niederdonau. This transport consisted of families, and was part of Himmler's good-will gesture toward Hungarian Jewry in his effort to establish contact with the Allies. The labor camps were under the joint authority of a branch of the SD Sonderkommando for Hungary under Hermann Krumey and Siegfried Seidl, and of the local administration. (The second wave of transports, in fall 1944, was sent to help build the "Südostwall" against the Soviet invasion; this group was under the authority of the Nazi Gauleiter.) Although the Jews of the first wave were supposed to be privileged and protected, many died due to the hard labor and starvation rations. The SD enlisted the Viennese Jewish community for administrative tasks and medical care. Some of the labor camp commanders tried to ease the lot of the prisoners, but most were brutal. With the approach of the Red Army, the SD evacuated a part of the prisoners to Theresienstadt, and, after the railway lines were cut, partly on foot to Mauthausen. Incapacitated Südostwall laborers who were transferred to the responsibility of the Viennese Sonderkommando were neglected as no longer of any use and left to die of exposure and disease.
URL:
Locate this publication in Israeli libraries
Permalink