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A large number of Hungarian Jews died when
forced to work on the building of the Southeastern ridge in 1944/45 and in the
death marches starting in March 1945. There were executions and mass murders in
many towns along the Burgenland-Hungarian border. Unknown and unmarked graves
line the route of the “death march”. To this day many of these crimes have
not been clarified and only few memorials testify to the suffering of the
Hungarian Jews.
Eisenstadt
The remains of the Hungarian Jewish victims of Zumdorf (123 victims), Siegendorf
(67 victims), Neudörfl area and Güssing area (39 victims) were buried in the
newer Jewish cemetery of Eisenstadt by the National Association of Israeli
Religious Communities.
Deutschkreutz
265 Jews murdered in 1945 by the Nazis were buried in the Jewish cemetery of
Deutschkreutz.
Schattendorf
The Israeli religious community of Vienna erected a memorial here for the 26
Hungarian Jews who died here in the beginning of 1945 when forced to do hard
labor for the Nazis.
Neudörfl
On November 1, 2006 three memorial plaques for the victims of the Nazi regime
were put up at the local cemetery in Neudörfl. One of them makes reference to
the Hungarian Jewish laborers.
Rechnitz
Memorial Kreuzstadl
Around 180 Jewish Hungarian laborers were murdered near Kreuzstadl in March
1945. The R.E.F.U.G.I.U.S. - Rechnitzer Flüchtlings- und Gedenkinitiative-
organization wants to preserve Kreuzstadl as a memorial for all the victims of
the building of the Southeast ridge. Since 1995 there have been annual memorial
services which were attended by representatives of the religious communities of
Vienna or Graz, as well as a delegation from the religious community of
Zalaegerszeg.
On November 2, 1991 a memorial stone was
put up in the castle gardens of Rechnitz for the victims of the Kreuzstadl
massacre of March 1945 and for the four fighters in the resistance. In 2006 this
stone was replaced by a new memorial which commemorates the fallen soldiers and
the victims of the Nazis.
In the middle of the Jewish cemetery in
Rechnitz there is a tomb monument in memory of the eight Jewish Hungarian forced
laborers whose graves had been relocated from Kalch in the Neuhaus am
Klausenbach area to this cemetery in 1988.
Deutsch Schützen
In the Martin church and the forest by the church in Deutsch Schützen there are
mementos in memory of the mass execution of 57 Jewish Hungarian laborers on
March 29, 1945.
Queries by the Israeli religious community of Vienna supported also by the
ministry of the interior and Walter Pagler (of the Schalom organization) led to
the discovery of the mass grave in Deutsch Schützen 50 years later on August
23, 1995.
The tomb monument on the fenced premises was inaugurated with a religious
service on June 25, 1996.
You can find extensive photo documentation
of memorials of Jewish life in Burgenland at www.erinnerungszeichen.at
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