Ebensee, a small village on Lake Traunstein in the Upper Austrian Alps, is today a place for relaxation, hiking and, in the summer, swimming for many tourists. Ebensee, however, is much more: from November 1943 to May 6, 1945, the National Socialists held more than 27,000 prisoners in concentration camps here. Ebensee served as the external warehouse of Mauthausen concentration camp and was incorporated in an extensive network of concentration camps. The majority of the prisoners at Ebensee came from Eastern Europe: from Poland, the Soviet Union and Hungary. Some 30 percent of them were registered as Jewish prisoners. Over 8,100 people were murdered in Ebensee or died due to the catastrophic living conditions and the extremely harsh forced labor conditions building tunnels.
The situation of the prisoners in the Ebensee concentration camp intensified once more in the final months of the war as the National Socialists carried thousands of additional weakend and half-dead prisoners to Ebensee on death marches and death transports. Troops from the US Army liberated the completely overcrowded concentration camp on May 6, 1945. This made it one of the last large concentration camps to be reached by Allied troops. The photos and videos of the liberated Ebensee camp were seen around the world. They became disturbing visual icons and proof of the NS tyranny and the concentration camps.
Reinhard Florian, a German Sinto, movingly describes in his memories how he could no longer be the person he once was after surving the German concentration camps, including Ebensee: his family, his circle of friends, his property and even his hometown in East Prussia no longer existed: “Through the suffering that we had to endure, we have become prisoners of our memories.” Liberated and still not free is how many prisoners remember the time afterward. The day of liberation was without question a day of relief, liberated from the NS tyranny, but for many, it was also the saddest day of their lives. Many of the survivors describe the time afterward as a great emptiness in which feelings such as mourning, rage, pain and unrest were dominant. The joy of one’s own survival quickly transformed into demoralizing questions: What has become of one’s relatives? Where to move back to? How should things go on? Who can be trusted? Who will listen? Who will understand one’s own traumatic experiences?
Former prisoners of the Ebensee concentration camp experienced the weeks following liberation in very different ways: in Ebensee, many described the time following survival as hell and especially as a time of vigilante justice. Some of the survivors themselves turned against their former guards, members of the National Socialist party and SS members as well as former fellow prisoners. Others spent months in the hospital and scarcely remembers the time directly following liberation. Others, in turn, found physical and psychic strength and became active immediately. They became involved in supporting other liberated prisoners or their respective national groups. Still others procured bicycles or better shoes and set off on their own toward home or to search for relatives. An extreme chaos unfolded: stress and tension lived on, even if they were completely different than during the time of prisoners of the NS. Hundreds of concentration camp survivors were so traumatized and downright apathetic that were scarcely in the position to participate in activities or to even make decisions. Some others wanted to enjoy their regained freedom as much as possible: some reported of boisterous celebrations, hikes and new friendships and love affairs. Others, like a group of liberated Ukrainians, decided to leave Ebensee as soon as possible but wanted to remain in Austria and pass themselves off as Poles, Czechs and Russians, as they were afraid of forced repatriation and political repression on the part of the Soviet secret service. Still others wanted to get out of the former barracks of the concentration camp as quickly as possible: they went into the area surrounding Ebensee where they, at times voluntarily, at times through pressure and at time with the help of the US-Americans, appropriated premises and possessions from the Austrian population.
Zygmunt Henry Braun survived his persecution by the NS by hiding his Jewish identity, going into hiding and then passing himself off as a Catholic Pole. What group did he belong to now and where should he go? He had personally heard about antisemitism, but he did not experience this in the time directly following the war, he recalled in 2014. After spending some weeks in the hospital, a doctor asked him where he wanted to go following his release. This was an enormous dilemma for Braun: “In the end, I said I wanted to go back to Ebensee (…), not really knowing where to go, (…) not knowing what to do next”. All of those liberated received the status of DPs, displaced persons. For the Allies, DPs were people who were located outside of their country of origin at the end of the war and who required help. Alongside the prisoners liberated from concentration camps, liberated civil forced laborers and prisoners of war were also deemed to be displaced. According to the concept of the Allies, DPs should be returned to their homes as quickly as possible. Of some 11 million DPs, however, about one million remained, particularly in West Germany, Austria and Italy. A home no longer existed for many of them: their families and property had been destroyed by the National Socialists. In addition, the massive changing of borders in Eastern Europe meant that a return was often impossible. What’s more, many of the DPs refused to live under communism: returning, for example, to the Soviet Union or a Poland under Soviet influence was unthinkable for most of the DPs who remained behind. Many of the Jewish displaced persons only saw their own future as safe in their own Jewish state. A long period of uncertainty and waiting followed. Living on the edges of German-speaking society as well as in the country of the former perpetrators, a majority of the DPs emigrated, often after three, four or five years, to the USA, Australia, Canada and Great Britain as DPs. Zygmunt Henry Braun made his way to Melbourne at the other end of the world. Regardless, however, of where the survivors went, Ebensee and their time in the concentration camp never left them.
