Schleißheim

A camp on both sides of the road

The barracks had been built in 1937 for trainees at the Schleißheim aviation technical school. After the war, the accommodation became part of the displaced-persons system. Its location beside Schleißheimer Straße is important: the camp community was not simply another name for every postwar use of the nearby airfield.

Research into the Russian section dates its establishment to August 1946, when about 2,000 people were brought by lorry from Kempten and Füssen. The study follows their attempts to retain DP status after the main repatriation phase. This arrival history concerns that Russian community; it does not establish an identical founding date for the Ukrainian section.

The Ukrainian church paper Tserkovnyi visnyk describes the arrival from the Ukrainian side. Less than a month after part of the Ukrainians deported from Füssen had moved to Schleißheim, the Orthodox among them set about rebuilding their national and cultural life in the new camp — which the paper describes as lying not far from Munich and surrounded by pine woods — and first of all about organising a church. Given a light, spacious room, they fitted it out and decorated it, made a fine iconostasis and hung it with large images; the young painter Abramovych executed figures of the Saviour and the Mother of God in the Ukrainian style for the icon cases, and a large Crucifixion after Rubens.

The church was named after Grand Prince Volodymyr, and on 28 July, his feast day, Archbishop Mykhail came from Munich to consecrate it. The church was decorated with flowers and garlands; Plast scouts, pupils of the elementary school and of the gymnasium, members of the church council, civic organisations and a large number of camp residents assembled in the square outside. The presidium of the church council and the rector told the archbishop what it meant that the Orthodox Ukrainians of Schleißheim would now have a church of their own for the hard years abroad.

Life among the barracks

The local historical exhibition describes a compound of 145 barracks designed for up to 4,500 people. That is a capacity figure for the wider camp. Buildings contained around eighteen to twenty rooms; families could find themselves sharing rooms as accommodation grew tighter. Washing facilities and toilets stood outside, while poorly insulated walls and windows made winter heating difficult.

A published family account from the Russian section describes the path to the communal kitchen as a meeting place where residents exchanged news while collecting food. Meals were carried home in containers. Its accompanying photograph shows people crossing open ground with low barrack buildings behind them. These recollections illuminate everyday surroundings shared within the larger camp, without turning one family’s experience into a census.

Education and cultural life

Ukrainian recollections describe a busy programme beyond ordinary lessons: theatre, a church choir, gymnastics and nursing courses held during two successive summer holidays. Historian Kateryna Kobchenko uses this evidence to show how young people remembered the DP years as a period of recovered opportunities after wartime disruption.

The Russian section’s Mendeleev Gymnasium occupied converted barrack rooms. A family account describes small classes, scarce writing paper and students sharing lecture notes. Music, dancing and vocational instruction offered further ways to learn and prepare for life elsewhere. These Russian school details belong alongside, rather than in place of, the distinct evidence for Ukrainian educational life.

A varied religious and social community

The wider compound included Russian Orthodox and Greek Catholic churches and a Buddhist temple used by Kalmyks. A library, cinema, theatre and Friday exchange market were among its shared facilities. Contemporary paintings preserve another side of this landscape: barrack lanes, gardens, poultry and the trees around the camp.

The surviving paintings are historical views made by people who knew the camp, rather than later reconstructions. Alongside photographs and written recollections they convey how the utilitarian buildings became a lived-in neighbourhood. Their subjects include ordinary work and efforts to supplement the necessities provided through organised relief.

The Ukrainian community in numbers

Ukrainian population returns list 2,023 people in the 1946–47 questionnaire series, 1,472 in May 1947 and 333 in December 1947. These figures describe the Ukrainian community, not all residents of the Russian, Kalmyk and other groups. The table therefore measures a different population from estimates for the entire barrack compound.

Emigration and a new use for the site

Residents left through several routes. One published family history documents a journey from Munich in June 1950, onward through Bremen and by ship to Venezuela. Others in the same account left for Australia, Belgium, Morocco and the United States. These are examples of actual destinations, not a complete breakdown of departures from the camp.

In November 1951 Bavaria took over the remaining accommodation as a government camp for homeless foreigners. The City of Munich’s history places its dissolution and municipal purchase in 1953. From August that year the city housed homeless families in the repaired barracks. This later municipal settlement continued into the 1960s, when residents moved into new housing and the barracks were gradually removed.