Concluded projects

of the Institute of Conflict Research

Austrian Camp Community Ravensbrück

Project Management:	Univ. Prof. Dr.in Erika Thurner
Project Team:	Mag.a Dr.in Helga Amesberger Mag.a Dr.in Brigitte Halbmayr Mag.a Kerstin Lercher
Concluded in	February 2007
	German

The project entitled "Austrian Camp Community Ravensbrück" consists of two parts: a documentation of the 60-year of the Austrian camp community (completed in 2007) and the registration by name of the female and male Austrian inmates in Ravensbrück. On the latter we have worked since 2005.

Even 60 years after the liberation of the Ravensbrück women’s concentration camp, it is still unclear, how many Austrians were detained there. It is very difficult to find out the actual number of Austrians in Ravensbrück, because they were registered as "Reichsdeutsche". Moreover the National Socialists destroyed a lot of documents before leaving the camp. Estimations ranged from 800 to 1,000 Austrians in Ravensbrück. The research we have conducted so far in various Austrian archives and in the Ravensbrück memorial has underpinned our hypothesis that the number of inmates was at least twice as high: to date we have found the names of 2,350 women and men. Most of them were arrested for political reasons, because they were Jehovah's Witnesses, Jewesses/Jews or Sinti and Romanies. This number isvery likely to increase. Moreover the sources concerning inmates who were arrested because of (alleged) crimes or who were marked as "Anti-socials" are very scant. Among others, these groups were not acknowledged as victims of the NS-regime by the state/Austrian government after liberation. As a result we have found only little evidence of them in the victim welfare files.

To gain information about these groups, it is necessary to expand our research the archives of the Federal Police Directorates. Thanks to the financial support by the "Zukunftsfonds der Republik Österreich" and the Ministry of Social Affairs and Consumer Protection we are able to continue our research work in 2008. However, due to financial constraints it has so far been impossible to analyse the researched data about the social backgrounds of the victims, their histories of persecution and their lives after 1945 (if they survived).