In view of extensive material deliveries, preparations for the construction of three commercial halls have apparently begun at the former site of the Hirtenberg Mauthausen subcamp in the municipality of Leobersdorf.
The Mauthausen Concentration Camp Memorial, the Austrian Mauthausen Committee, the Jewish Community of Vienna, Lower Austria and Burgenland and the local initiative Mauthausen Concentration Camp Memorial Hirtenberg Subcamp were horrified to learn of the impending start of construction on the site of the former Hirtenberg Subcamp.
From September 1944, more than 400 women, most of them from Auschwitz, were interned in the Hirtenberg concentration camp. The women had to do forced labor every day in the adjacent ammunition factory on Lindenberg, suffering unimaginable suffering. For several years, the Mauthausen Concentration Camp Memorial and the Mauthausen Committee Austria, together with the local initiative Mauthausen Concentration Camp Memorial Hirtenberg Subcamp led by Erich Strobl, have been committed to commemorating the victims of the second largest women’s concentration camp in Austria.
Since 2021, immediately after it became known that the planned use of the historically contaminated area for commercial purposes became known, the Mauthausen Concentration Camp Memorial drew attention to the problem of commercial development and tried to inform and sensitize decision-makers about the history of the concentration camp. The Mauthausen Concentration Camp Memorial immediately contacted the owners of the property and the Federal Monuments Office and, within the scope of its possibilities, but ultimately unsuccessfully, tried to restore the area of the former Hirtenberg women’s concentration camp and the structural relics thereon to a historical and moral significance to obtain appropriate assessment.
On November 22nd, we appealed to Mayor Ramharter to actively participate in coming to terms with the region’s Nazi history. He announced that he was ready to talk. The offer to take a constructive path and establish a shared remembrance of the victims of the Hirtenberg concentration camp locally was also made to the owner Dr. Ratsperger. It has remained unanswered to date.
We appeal again and with the necessary urgency to put aside the construction intentions and immediately enter into a dialogue with all those involved and stakeholders in order to work together on how the history of the place can be made visible and an appropriate, worthy commemoration of the victims of the women’s concentration camp Hirtenberg can be made possible on site.
A sincere approach to history and the responsibility that derives from it serves the future. We emphasize this particularly with regard to other comparable places where we are today struggling with the failures and wrong decisions of the past and practices of erasing memory that were long thought to have been overcome and are trying to make up for them.
Barbara Glück, Director of the Mauthausen Concentration Camp Memorial
Willi Mernyi, Chairman Mauthausen Committee Austria
Oskar Deutsch, President of the Jewish Community of Vienna
Erich Strobl, local initiative Mauthausen Concentration Camp Memorial Hirtenberg Subcamp