Mühlviertel hare hunting

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The "Mühlviertler Hasenjagd" is the euphemistic name of a war crime in National Socialist Austria , in which in February 1945 National Socialist associations as well as soldiers and civilians hunted and murdered over 500 escaped Soviet prisoners after a major breakout from the Mauthausen concentration camp in the Mühlviertel .

The SS coined the cynical name "Mühlviertler Hasenjagd". In the current literature, the events are mostly referred to as Mühlviertel human hunt . The outbreak itself and the fact that some managed to escape represent a unique incident in the history of the Mauthausen concentration camp.

course

Breakout and escape

On the night of February 2, 1945, around 500 so-called K prisoners , mainly Soviet officers as prisoners of war, attempted to escape from death block 20 of the Mauthausen concentration camp in a cold of -8 ° C. With the fire extinguishers from their barracks and various projectiles, one group attacked the two watchtowers, while a second group short-circuited the electric fence with damp blankets and clothing. Then the prisoners climbed over the wall.

First 419 prisoners managed to leave the camp area. Many of the starving refugees collapsed in the snow shortly after the Wall or died in the hail of bullets from machine guns. All those who could not escape into the woods and 75 sick people who remained in the block were executed that same night.

In total, over 300 prisoners managed to escape initially.

persecution

On the same morning the SS camp administration declared a “hunt” in which the civilian population of the area also took part in addition to the SS, SA , gendarmerie , fire brigade, Wehrmacht , Volkssturm and Hitler Youth . The aim of this three week long “hunt” was not to bring any survivors back to the camp.

Most of the fugitives were caught and mostly shot or killed on the spot. The killed prisoners were brought to Ried in der Riedmark , the base of the “hunt”, and there they were piled up in a heap. Members of the Volkssturm who brought prisoners back to the concentration camp were insulted for not immediately killing them.

"Ried in der Riedmark formed a base during these days, that is, there the shot and slain concentration camps from the near and far surroundings were collected piece by piece and stacked in a heap - just like the hunted during an autumn hunt."

- Otto Gabriel

The criminal police in Linz later reported to the Reich Security Main Office (RSHA): “Of the 419 refugees [those who managed to leave the camp area] [...] in the Mauthausen, Gallneukirchen, Wartberg, Pregarten, Schwertberg, Perg area, over 300 returned seized, 57 of them alive. "

Only eleven Soviet officers are known to have survived the manhunt and the end of the war. Individual farming families and civilian foreign forced laborers hid prisoners despite the extremely high risk or provided the refugees hidden in the surrounding forests with food. Three months later the war ended and the inmates were safe.

Processing after 1945

In 1948 there were two trials at the People's Court in Vienna and Linz, which dealt with this end- stage crime.

While the events were only thematized in two fictional representations until 1990, the "Mühlviertler Hasenjagd" gained greater notoriety through further fictional publications from 1990 and through the fictional filming Hasenjagd - out of sheer cowardice there is no mercy from director Andreas Gruber in Austria. With around 123,000 admissions in Austria, the film was the most successful Austrian film of the 1994/95 cinema season.

The documentary film Aktion K by director Bernhard Bamberger, which was made at the same time, not only observes the reaction of the population to the shooting, but also lets those who witnessed the events of 1945 have their say. It was awarded the Grand Prize of Austrian National Education in 1994 and has been broadcast several times in German-speaking countries since then.

In May 2001, on the initiative of the Socialist Youth in Ried in der Riedmark, a memorial stone for the “Mühlviertel Hare Hunt” was erected.

Memorial stone that was erected in May 2001 in Ried in der Riedmark

“On February 2, 1945, around 500 almost exclusively Soviet officers who had been sent to the Mauthausen concentration camp to be murdered tried to escape from the camp. Immediately after the escape, under the order 'not to bring anyone back to the camp alive', a hunt for the escaped began, in which the SS, the gendarmerie, units of the Wehrmacht, SA departments and Hitler Youth, as well as members of the Volkssturm and other organizations and some civilians took part . This crime is known under the name of 'Mühlviertler Hasenjagd'. In Ried in der Riedmark, the shot and slain prisoners who were seized and murdered in the near and far surroundings were collected and stacked at the old elementary school. Only 11 officers who were either able to go into hiding in the woods or who were hidden with farmers survived. All the other escaped were seized and mostly murdered immediately.

Never again fascism! Never again war!"

- text of the inscription

A memorial of the market town of Ried in der Riedmark May 5, 2001, an initiative of the socialist youth.

On May 7, 2006, a memorial was ceremoniously handed over in Gallneukirchen , where around 20 refugees who had already been tortured were murdered during this Mühlviertel hare hunt. A memorial event took place on February 1, 2019, where Michael Köhlmeier gave the speech.

Similar events

literature

Non-fiction books:

  • Linda DeMeritt: Representations of History: The Mühlviertler Hasenjagd as Word and Image. In: Modern Austrian Literature. No. 32.4, 1999, pp. 134-145. (English)
  • Ernst Gusenbauer: "What you catch will be shot cold". Ried in der Riedmark and the Mühlviertel hare hunt on February 2, 1945. In: Oberösterreichische Heimatblätter. 46 (2/1992), pp. 263–267, online (PDF; 823 kB) in the forum OoeGeschichte.at
  • Johanna Jiranek: Representations of end-phase crimes in literature and film from Austria from a past-political perspective. Thesis. University of Vienna, 2012. (online version) .
  • Matthias Kaltenbrunner: Escape from the death block. The mass breakout of Soviet officers from Block 20 of the Mauthausen concentration camp and the “Mühlviertel hare hunt”. Background, consequences, processing. (= National Socialism and its consequences. 5). Innsbruck et al. 2012, ISBN 978-3-7065-5175-5 .
  • Thomas Karny: Die Hatz: Pictures of the Mühlviertel “Hasenjagd”. Edition history of the homeland. Verlag Franz Stein Maßl, Grünbach (Austria) 1992, ISBN 3-900943-12-5 .
  • Walter Kohl : A mother is waiting for you too. The Langthaler family in the midst of the “Mühlviertel hare hunt”. Edition history of the homeland. Verlag Franz Stein Maßl, Grünbach (Austria) 2005, ISBN 3-902427-24-8 .
  • Hans Maršálek : The history of the Mauthausen concentration camp documentation. 2nd Edition. Austrian Camp Community Mauthausen, Vienna 1980, pp. 255–263.
  • Alphons Matt: One out of the dark: the liberation of the Mauthausen concentration camp by the bank clerk H. SV International, Schweizer Verlags-Haus, Zurich 1988, ISBN 3-7263-6574-5 .
  • Parliamentary Directorate (ed.): Democracy workshop current. Participate, have a say. Help shape! Memorial Day / Youth Project special edition, May 2010.

Fiction:

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Report on the Mühlviertel hare hunt on the Mauthausen Memorial website. On-line. Accessed May 16, 2017.
  2. ↑ a b c Alphons Matt: One from the dark. 1988, p. 75.
  3. ↑ Ernst Gusenbauer: "What you catch will be shot cold". Ried in der Riedmark and the Mühlviertel hare hunt on February 2, 1945. In: Oberösterreichische Heimatblätter . 46th volume, issue 2, 1992, pp. 263–267, online (PDF; 823 kB) in the forum OoeGeschichte.at
  4. ↑ Otto Gabriel, former gendarme, in: Website of the Mauthausen Memorial, Report on the "Mühlviertler Hasenjagd" (Document AMM V / 3/69).
  5. ↑ Hellmut Butterweck : Condemned and pardoned - Austria and its Nazi criminals. Czernin, Vienna 2003, ISBN 3-7076-0126-9 , p. 217ff.
  6. ↑ Online presence of the student body at the Johannes Kepler University Linz from 2001 ( memento from July 2, 2007 in the Internet Archive ): Report on the inauguration of the memorial stone in Ried an der Riedmark on May 5, 2001.
  7. ^ Gallneukirchen - Memorial for Peace - (PDF; 1.25 MB) In: gallneukirchen.spoe.at . July 14, 2006, accessed May 6, 2020.
  8. ↑ Gernot Fohler: Memory of "Mühlviertel Hare Hunt". In: mein district.at . January 21, 2015, accessed on May 6, 2020.
  9. ↑ Michael Köck: Learning from history. In: mein district.at . February 5, 2019, accessed on May 6, 2020.
    Michael Köhlmeier: What does it mean: learning from history? In: sabineschatz.at . February 2, 2019, accessed May 6, 2020.