Forgotten Horrors
The Nazi sub-camp system
Salzburg
Salzburg, Austria
In the centre of Salzburg, there is a bridge across the River Salzach called the Staatsbrucke. A plaque somewhere on one of the bridge approaches records that it was constructed by hundreds of prisoners of war and slave labourers. The plaque was installed during renovation of the bridge in 2007.
Also in Salzburg was the Maxglan camp, named after the Maxglan suburb of Salzburg where it was located. This camp accommodated about 230 Sinti and Roma gypsies from 1939 until April 1943, when 160 of them were transported to Auschwitz for extermination. This figure includes 17 children born in the camp. From the time of their incarceration, the only time when they were allowed to leave the camp was as slave labour on various projects.
Upper photo shows the site of the Maxglan Camp in the Maxglan suburb of Salzburg. A memorial is located at the junction of Glan-Treppelweg and Schwarzgrabenweg, upper left corner of the screenshot taken from Google Earth. The lower image is a photo of Sinti women and children taken in Maxglan Camp in 1939 or 1940, courtesy of the Documentation Centre of German Sinti and Roma, Heidelberg, Germany.
Some of the prisoners from Maxglan were taken to Styria where they had to work on road construction. Others were used for regulation of the Glan River and as extras in Leni Riefenstahl's film Triumph of the Will.
A report on the dissolution of the gypsy camps in Salzburg, dated 5th April 1943.
Gypsies in the Maxglan Camp (Images courtesy of the Documentation Center of Austrian Resistance)
A memorial is located on the site of the Maxglan Camp, no traces of which remain. Currently, an airfield and various pathways used by walkers occupy the site with a number of suburban houses nearby. The monument is made of welded sheet metal and depicts a human figure standing on a cart, symbolising work carried out by the inmates of the camp. The inscription on the memorial reads: "Zur Erinnerung und Mahnung / In Salzburg wurden mehr als 230 Sinti und Roma / Opfer der nationalsozialistischen Rassenpolitik. / Eingesperrt im so genannten „Zigeunerlager Maxglan”, / mussten sie im Rahmen der Glan-Regulierung Zwangsarbeit leisten. / Im Fruehjahr 1943 wurden sie in die Vernichtungslager deportiert.”
(As a commemoration and a warning. / In Salzburg over 230 Sinti and Romów / fell victims to the racial policy of the National Socialism. / Imprisoned in the so called ”Maxglan Camp for the Gypsies”, / they had to do forced labour on the regulation of the Glan river. / In the spring of 1943 they were deported to death camps.)
A survivor report can be found as a 30 minute broadcast at the website of the Cultural Broadcasting Archive.
According to a list preserved by the German Government, there were other camps or working Kommandos at Salzburg, one of them at Hellbrunner Allee and another at Kapitelplatz, with another four mentioned, making six, all of them administered by Dachau. It is probably these Kommandos that are referred to by the ITS list.
According to a four-page document written by Nicole Slupetzky for the 3rd Symposion of the Hohe Tauern National Park Conference, Volume for Research in Protected Areas (pages 209-212), the Nazis were especially interested in the use of water energy production, something that led to two large projects in the Salzburg area. The projects were located about 2,300 metres above sea level and consisted of dams that facilitated huge reservoirs at Mooserboden (Kaprun) and Weißsee (Uttendorf). A sub-camp of Dachau was established in order to serve these projects, accommodating 450 people who worked on the projects in pretty horrendous conditions. However, this Weißsee (Uttendorf) sub-camp is listed separately on the ITS list (See Uttendorf-Weisee).
Oskar Dohle's paper, published in the Ur Journal of Humanities and Social Sciences in 2016, entitled Slaves for Hitler’s war. Polish forced labourers in Salzburg during World War II, states that other slave labourers were employed, from 1939 onwards, in the Salzburg area on farms, where they were treated relatively humanely, while other slave labourers worked in craft workshops or in small factories.
'Hellbrunner Allee' (Hellbrunner Avenue) refers to a long, tree-lined, avenue running from Morzg, south of Salzburg, to the southern outskirts of the city where it joins a road leading to the university botanical garden. It is possible therefore that this Kommando was set to work on road construction or repair. Similarly, 'Kapitelplatz' is a square on the south side of the river, adjoining Salzburg Cathedral.