Landeck Camp

The site before the relief years

Landeck was made the seat of a branch camp of Stalag Markt Pongau in the spring of 1941, and between then and 1943 three camps stood in the town: the largest on the ground of the present sports field, with five larger accommodation huts and three outbuildings; a single-hut camp at Perjen; and the camp in the Perfuchsberger Au, three huts holding about a hundred men. Judged by the number of huts, the branch camp held between 800 and 1,200 prisoners, and it was the largest labour detachment of its parent camp.

Polish and Ukrainian prisoners worked chiefly in agriculture and were allowed to live on the farms rather than in the camp. Prisoners were also used on the town’s own works — the rifle range in the Schloßwald, the air-raid tunnels driven into the hillsides, and the water main and sewer at Bruggfeld. The camp had its own sick bay, and the reserve hospitals at Zams and at the Valduna near Feldkirch came under it.

Deaths were entered in the register office books at Landeck, which also covered deaths in the hospital at Zams. The first was a Frenchman of twenty-two who died of pneumonia in the reserve hospital. Three deaths are entered for 1942, three for 1943, seven for 1944 — three Italians, three Ukrainians and a Pole — and four in the first four months of 1945.

The first months after the war

American Army photographs preserve unusually early views of the camp. An image dated 20 May 1945 shows civilian leaders gathered with American officers for a daily meeting about administration and everyday problems. A second photograph, taken on 5 June, shows a mother feeding her child. Together they record both collective organisation and ordinary family life.

The original American caption describes the mother as Russian. Landeck’s displaced population was multinational; these photographs show the wider camp in which Ukrainian life developed. They are not portraits of a specifically Ukrainian group.

Landeck also contained separate wartime prisoner-of-war sites. The municipal history places the largest of them east of the barracks stables, on the ground of today’s sports field in the Urichstraße, and notes that the hut still standing there is not of that date: it was put up by the Americans who provisioned the UNRRA camp. The Perfuchsberger Au site followed a different post-war history, including the detention of leading district Nazis.

Teams and numbers

The International Tracing Service’s list of Austrian camps carries two Landeck entries, both under Area Team IV at Innsbruck. The first, a displaced persons camp under Team 107, is recorded for May 1945, for 1946 and again on 20 September 1949; the second, under Team 199, for May 1947. Neither carries a camp number.

The first of those entries is independent confirmation that a camp was running at Landeck from May 1945, and the last date shows it still in the record in the autumn of 1949, more than a year after the count of 1,161 Ukrainians.

Children, education and mutual help

The Ukrainian Women’s Union organised a kindergarten with 35 children in 1945, later increasing to 45. Teaching used Ukrainian stories, songs and traditions. Women prepared materials for creative activities and made toys, turning limited resources into a setting in which young children could play and learn.

Landeck also had Ukrainian elementary, secondary and vocational schools. With roughly a thousand Ukrainians, it was the largest concentration identified in the French-zone account. Community organisations and both Catholic and Orthodox parishes supported different parts of Ukrainian life.

Women’s organisations also brought Ukrainian folk art to public exhibitions in Landeck and other Austrian towns. Their work joined the care of children with the preservation and public presentation of Ukrainian culture.

A theatre and a camp press

A Ukrainian theatre studio was established at Landeck in 1946. Its founders moved to Bavaria in 1947, and the company’s later touring connected displaced communities across western Germany. Landeck was an early stage in an artistic undertaking that continued after emigration to the United States.

The camp’s publishing activity was equally varied. Daily news, a weekly paper and a satirical weekly all appeared locally. Their different rhythms and purposes show a readership interested in information, community discussion and humour, even while living in temporary accommodation.

The surviving issue of the Ukrainian-language youth magazine Iunak is catalogued at Landeck and dated 1 May 1946. The catalogue describes an illustrated monthly that ran in Germany from 1946 to 1949 and then followed its readers abroad — to Canada in 1950, to the United States from 1951 to 1959, and back to Canada from 1963. The Landeck issue is the start of that emigrant history.

Keeping a crowded settlement healthy

A November 1946 camp health report records sanitation teams inspecting barracks, rooms, kitchens and latrines. People who were ill could be isolated, sometimes against their wishes. The camp’s routine therefore combined the provision of care with close supervision of living conditions.

A community that became smaller

The Ukrainian population recorded at Landeck fell from 1,161 on 30 September 1948 to 339 on 30 June 1950. These are counts of Ukrainians in the camp, not the combined population of every nationality. They capture the contraction of the community during the wider period of resettlement from Austria.

The theatre’s move to Germany illustrates one form of onward movement before overseas emigration. The newspapers, photographs and accounts of schooling preserve another part of the story: the institutions people created while waiting, and the cultural work they carried with them.