The research project “Encampment” identified and documented around 250 camps that existed during the post-war period from 1945 to 1955 in the area of the former Soviet occupation zone (Lower Austria, Burgenland, parts of Upper Austria, and Vienna). The information and materials were collected on a website with an online camp map, which was presented at a press conference in Vienna on June 3, 2025.

Camps are places where the social, political, and human consequences of war and occupation are particularly evident. In the Soviet occupation zone of Austria—in Lower Austria, Burgenland, parts of Upper Austria (Mühlviertel), and several districts of Vienna — were at least 250 camps between 1945 and 1955 for the accommodation of people of various origins. These camps took many different forms, ranging from detention and labor camps to front camps, residential camps, company camps, delousing camps, collection, transit, discharge, and reception camps, as well as screening, repatriation, and filtration camps.

The research project „Encampment“ (Grant-DOI: 10.55776/P34085) unded by the Austrian Science Fund FWF and the Province of Lower Austria, is now exploring this so far largely neglected area and making its findings available to the public online.

With the help of extensive analysis of eyewitness accounts and interviews, literature and source analyses – including from municipal, city, and state archives, the Austrian State Archives, and international documentation centers and archives such as the Arolsen Archives – around 250 camps have been systematically identified, located on a digital camp map, and described. The website thus documents for the first time the historical camp landscape of the Soviet occupation zone and invites visitors to explore this so far little-known chapter of Austrian history.

The research project on which is based on the website has been conducted since early 2022 under the direction of Univ.-Prof. Dr. Barbara Stelzl-Marx at the Ludwig Boltzmann Institute for Research on the Consequences of War—in cooperation with the Ilse Arlt Institute for Social Inclusion Research, the St. Pölten University of Applied Sciences, and the Institute of History at the University of Graz.

Behind the individual camps lies an enormous range of functions and uses. Seven main groups of inmates were housed there: Soviet frontline and/or occupation soldiers, former Soviet prisoners of war, former victims of Nazi repression (forced laborers and concentration camp inmates), Austrian and German prisoners of war (former members of the Wehrmacht), refugees, displaced persons and resettlers, former National Socialists, and Austrians returning or repatriated from abroad. Although the Soviet Union’s original plans had envisaged the rapid repatriation or onward travel of most of these groups, some camps existed longer than intended and thus became long-term temporary solutions.

The results of the “Encampment” project provide insight into a previously almost forgotten camp landscape in occupied post-war Austria, which shaped the reality of life for hundreds of thousands of people from a wide variety of nations in the first two post-war years, albeit only for a short time, but all the more lasting for that. The camp map available online not only documents the current state of research, but is also intended as an open project. Information on camps not yet recorded, supplementary information, and especially visual material are expressly welcome. The work on “Encampment” is not complete, but invites the participation of further experts and interested parties.

Further information about the project, the map, and the research team will be available on the project website from June 3, 2025:

https://encampment-bik.lbg.ac.at/

Project manger: Univ.-Prof. Dr. Barbara Stelzl-Marx (BIK)
Project team: Mag. Dieter Bacher (BIK, Koordination), Mag. Dr. Anne Unterwurzacher (IAI), Mag. Dr. Katharina Bergmann (BIK), Doz. Mag. Dr. Hannes Leidinger (BIK), Mag. Martin Sauerbrey (BIK)