Concluded projects
of the Institute of Conflict Research
Registry by name of former Austrian inmates of the Ravensbrück concentration camp - Extension of archival research
| Project Management: | Univ. Prof. Dr.in Erika Thurner Univ. Prof. Dr. Anton Pelinka |
| Project Team: | Mag.a Dr.in Helga Amesberger Mag.a Dr.in Brigitte Halbmayr Mag.a Kerstin Lercher |
| Financed by: | Federal Ministry of Labour, Social Affairs and
Consumer Protection Federal Ministry of Science and Research National Fund of the Republic of Austria for Victims of National Socialism "Zukunftsfonds" (National Fund of the Republic of Austria) |
| Concluded in | June 2009 |
60 years after the liberation of the Ravensbrück women’s concentration camp, exact figures about the female and male Austrian inmates are still lacking. As Austrian inmates were registered as nationals of the "German Reich" ("Reichsdeutsche"), it is difficult to determine the number of imprisoned Austrians. Furthermore, many documents were destroyed by the National Socialists before the evacuation of the concentration camp. Moreover, information about (alleged) "criminals" or persons detained because of so-called "asocial behaviour" is especially hard to obtain, because these two groups do not belong to the groups recognised as victims and are therefore not listed in the files of Opferfürsorge (Victims’ Welfare Service), one of the project’s principal sources of information. It may also be assumed that many women detained on grounds of prohibited relations ("Verbotener Umgang") - who up to the 1950s were not considered victims of National Socialism - did not apply for benefits to Opferfürsorge. To get evidence about these groups it was necessary to extend the research to Austrian police archives. The search for inmates’ registers from the years 1938 to 1945 was unexpectedly difficult, and despite all efforts, not all of them could be found.
On the other hand, the extension of research to the archives of the Austrian police yielded many entries about groups on which very little has been known so far, and as a result we have been able to add almost 300 new entries to our data base. We also found information about the grounds of persecution, the places and duration of detention etc., over and above already existing entries in the data base, which now contains 2,741 names including data about the victims’ lives before, during and after persecution. This number is about three times higher than the figures assumed for Austrian inmates in the Ravensbrück concentration camp.
Plans to analyse the data base in respect of origin, history of persecution and life after liberation (if survived) are conditional on further grants. There are also plans to make parts of the data base accessible to the public via the Internet.
