POW Camp in Jindřichovice: Founding, Everyday Life, Memorialization

Abstract

The prisoner of war camp in Jindřichovice (German: Heinrichsgrün), located in the Ore Mountains on the territory of the modern Czech Republic, was one of the largest such camps of the First World War in Austria-Hungary. In the period from 1915 to 1918, tens of thousands of prisoners of war from Serbia, Montenegro, the Russian Empire, and Italy passed through it. Many Serbian civilians were interned in addition to military personnel. Over 170 buildings were erected for the camp which was capable of accommodating almost forty thousand prisoners and which was surrounded by a fence with barbed wire and watchtowers. The whole complex was almost autonomous, with all the necessary infrastructure, including a bakery, hospital, laundry, ablutions, and a chapel. Prisoners of war were used in a variety of jobs in the vicinity, primarily related to agriculture. Their labour was also used for the repair of roads, the extraction of basalt in a nearby quarry, and in industry, primarily at a metallurgical plant in Rotava and in the construction of a chemical plant in Sokolov (at that time Falknov; German: Falkenau). From 1917, the situation with the provision of food and medicine began to worsen in the camp, leading to the spread of disease and a rapid increase in the mortality rate. In total, 3,855 people died here, including 2,465 Serbs and Montenegrins, 1,301 Italians, 56 Russians, and approximately two dozen of the Austro-Hungarian camp guards, among whom were several Czechs. The prisoners of war were buried in a cemetery near the camp, which has survived to this day. After the war, the remains of the Serbian prisoners were exhumed and, together with the remains of thousands of soldiers of the newly established Yugoslavia who had previously been buried in locations all over Bohemia, were transferred to a mausoleum, which was converted from the camp’s water supply cistern. Today, it contains the remains of about 7,190 of those who came from the territory of the former Yugoslavia — mostly Serbs, but also soldiers who fought in the war on the side of Austria-Hungary, primarily Slovenes, Croats, and Bosnians, and also 189 Russians.