Nothing Left to See?

The largest Prisoner of War (POW) camp of World War Two on the territory of present-day Austria was located near the village of Gneixendorf outside the City of Krems: Stalag XVII B Krems-Gneixendorf. At certain times, there were as many as 60,000 POWs of various nationalities interned here. There is hardly anything left to see of it today. The site is occupied by an airfield with restaurant adjacent, crisscrossing roads, forests, meadows, and fields. Some remains of the foundations of the military personnel barracks are preserved on the overgrown terrain near the airfield, as well as further east a massive water reservoir. The steel plaques of an art installation and a few weathered memorial stones refer to the history of the site.

For two and a half years, the photographer and photo journalist Karin Böhm repeatedly visited the site of about a square kilometer, which lies close to her home. When choosing her route, she let herself be guided on a journey of chance discovery by her interests, knowledge, and intuition. Her perseverant engagements with the site resulted in a photographic observation and survey. Karin Böhm found relics of the past, abandonment to overgrown nature, as well as contemporary usages of the site and plotted these using geo-coordinates.

Parallel to her work, the historian and cultural studies scholar Edith Blaschitz researched historical sources pertaining to Stalag XVII B in the framework of the research project "NS-'Volksgemeinschaft' und Lager im Zentralraum Niederösterreich. Geschichte - Transformation - Erinnerung" (The Nazi 'Volksgemeinschaft' and Camps in the Center of Lower Austria: History, Transformation, and Memory). This research revealed new insights on the French POWs, the largest national prisoner group, as well as the hitherto under-researched Belgian, Italian, Serbian, and Spanish POWs. The perspectives of the internees, their contacts with the local population, and engagements with the memory of the camp formed the