Frauenkirchen prisoner of war cemetery
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The prisoner-of-war cemetery in Frauenkirchen in Burgenland (also known as the Serbian cemetery ) contains graves of prisoners of war from the First World War . The prisoners of war came mainly from Serbia , Russia and Italy .
The prisoner of war and internment camp Frauenkirchen / Boldogasszony
The construction of the POW camp in Boldogasszony / Frauenkirchen began as early as September 1914, using Russian prisoners for this purpose. Subsequently, the camp was expanded twice and from 1916 onwards there were around 30,000 prisoners, although around 2/3 of the prisoners were on work outside the camp.
The Boldogasszony camp had its own groundwater well, a power plant, a light railway and a camp post office. The royal Hungarian XIV. Landsturm Guard Battalion was entrusted with guarding the camp, with between 300 and 1,200 men and between 13 and 26 officers keeping watch in the camp.
While there were many Russian prisoners in the camp when it was set up, the Boldogasszony camp was converted into a Serbian prisoner of war camp as early as autumn 1914. The Boldogasszony prisoner-of-war camp has also been an internment camp since it was founded. The deported civilians, men, women and children of all ages in the camp, came from Serbia, Montenegro and Bukovina. In the summer of 1916 around 2,500 Montenegrin internees were brought to the camp. In Frauenkirchen only a few officers, mostly Montenegrins and Italians, were imprisoned in separate barracks.
The prisoners' daily routine was strictly organized, consisting of working hours, breaks, hygienic measures and free time. In order to be able to guarantee the self-sufficiency of the camp, the camp command set up workshops for carpenters, tailors, locksmiths and shoemakers. The construction of the camp was carried out under massive time pressure, so that grievances during the construction were foreseeable. Inadequate hygienic precautions and the massive concentration of people in a confined space meant that epidemics like typhus were able to spread rapidly in the winter of 1914/15. The epidemic reached its deplorable climax at the beginning of February 1915 with over 100 deaths every day. An inspection report dated April 10, 1915, spoke of 3,690 typhus victims.
From the summer of 1915, the prisoners of war were used to work in agriculture, forestry, trade, industry, mining and the military.
At the end of the war, the prisoners were repatriated and at the same time the camp was plundered by the returning prisoners of war and the civilian population. The barracks and remaining real estate were offered for sale in 1919, so that within a very short time only the cemetery remained of the former prisoner of war camp. Between 4,500 and 6,000 people were buried here in individual graves and 14 shaft graves from the typhoid epidemic. The “ Black Cross ” was entrusted with the care and maintenance of the cemetery . The distinctive elements of the cemetery today are the Italian chapel, which was built by Italian prisoners while the camp was in existence, and the approximately 2.5 m high stone “Serbian Cross”. The Yugoslav monument was inaugurated in 1954.
Individual evidence
- ^ Brettl Herbert: The prisoner of war and internment camp Frauenkirchen / Boldogasszony. Half-turn 2014.
Coordinates: 47 ° 50 ′ 42.7 " N , 16 ° 54 ′ 33.5" E