Post-war Austria: map shows camps in Soviet occupation zone

Several hundred camps existed in the Soviet occupation zone after the Second World War, where tens of thousands of people were interned in the turmoil of the post-war period. Under the lead of historian Barbara Stelzl-Marx, a project by the Ludwig Boltzmann Institute for Research on the Consequences of War (BIK) has now put a piece of invisible history on the (virtual) map.

Culture and Society

by Redaktion/Agenturen

June 6, 2025

In Lower and Upper Austria, Burgenland and Vienna, 247 camps have been identified by the “Encampment” research project for the first time and recorded on an online map. At the end of the war – the 80th anniversary of which was on May 8, 2025 – Austria housed roughly one million displaced persons and was, thus, an overcrowded country, explains historian Barbara Stelzl-Marx. Many of these displaced persons were quartered in the Soviet occupation zone. “They may be invisible at first glance, but these camps are imprinted onto the landscape and people's life histories,” says Stelzl-Marx who was in charge of the three-year BIK project in cooperation with the Ilse Arlt Institute for Social Inclusion Research, St. Pölten UAS and the University of Graz.

A great diversity of uses

The camps were set up for very different purposes and were used for people from a wide variety of backgrounds. After the war, many people were homeless, and the camps and overcrowded villages were home to frontline soldiers and occupation forces, former prisoners of war, forced laborers and concentration camp inmates, as well as refugees, displaced persons and Austrians returning from abroad. “In some cases, entire villages were used as camps, and the local population had to move elsewhere,” notes Stelzl-Marx. In other cases, furnishings belonging to the local population were transferred to the encampments.

The basic research project Encampment provides an insight into the forgotten camp landscape in occupied post-war Austria. A map documents around 250 camps in the Soviet occupation zone.

Project website

A striking feature in Austria is the continuity of camps that already existed before 1945, such as the camp in Melk, a former outpost of the Mauthausen concentration camp, or the military training area in Bruckneudorf with its two camps at Bruck and Kaisersteinbruch in Burgenland.

Aerial view of the former Kaisersteinbruch camp from 1945 in Burgenland, Austria — The site of the Uchatius barracks (Kaisersteinbruch) in an aerial photograph from 1945. © Museums- und Kulturverein Kaisersteinbruch

References to the present

Accommodating refugees and displaced persons was extremely challenging at the time, confirms Johannes Pflegerl, Director of the Ilse Arlt Institute for Social Inclusion Research. State structures had collapsed, Austria was under Allied occupation and supplies were short. In addition, the number of homeless people was enormous, and the country still had to find a way of coping with the Nazi legacy.

“Comparing these conditions with today’s situation puts the view held by many that we are currently confronted by a refugee emergency into perspective,” says Pflegerl. The reappraisal of the history of these camps, which the project has undertaken for the first time, provides much-needed guidance for today. “Today, just as then, camps are sensitive seismographs.”

Intensive research work

The project, which was funded by the Austrian Science Fund FWF and Lower Austria, recorded all camps that were in existence for at least three weeks. “Without that selection yardstick, we would not have found just 247 camps, but probably a number in excess of one thousand,” explains Katharina Bergmann-Pfleger from BIK, since, particularly at the end of the war, there were many short-term structures serving as shelters for the population as the Red Army approached. The project findings required long and in-depth research. Bergmann-Pfleger cooperated intensively with municipal, city and regional archives, as well as the national archives. In addition, the researcher engaged in literature analyses and sifted memories of contemporary witnesses, with some of whom she also was able to conduct interviews.

Research activities that had originally foreseen work in Moscow archives had to be abandoned due to the Russian war of aggression against Ukraine. Nonetheless, Russian archival material, which was available from earlier projects at the BIK, could be vetted for camp information.

“But we probably haven't identified all the camps,” says Bergmann-Pfleger. That is one reason why she does not consider the research project as being completed. She expressly welcomes support from the general public in the form of tips, images or information. Perhaps the map will raise awareness of traces from the post-war period. Even if many things have become invisible, a few traces do still exist – such as the street name Lagergasse or remnants in forests from the forced repatriation of Cossacks.