Thalerhof internment camp

Thalerhof(also transliterated asTalerhoffromCyrillic-based East Slavic texts) was aconcentration campcreated by theAustro-Hungarianauthorities active from 1914 to 1917, in a valley infoothills of the Alps,nearGraz,the main city of the province ofStyria.

View to the concentration camp

Overview

Central Camp Talerhof 1914-1917

Killings in Talerhof

The Austro-Hungarian authorities imprisoned leaders of theRussophilemovement amongCarpatho-Rusyns,Lemkos,andGalicians(seeGalician Russophilia); those who recognized theRussian languageas theliterary standard formof their ownSlavic language varietiesand had sympathy for theRussian Empire.Thus, the captives were forced to abandon their identity asRussians,or sympathies for Russia, and identify asUkrainian.Captives who identified themselves as Ukrainians were freed from the camp. Between 1924-1932, four issues of the Thalerhof Almanac were published inLviv,in which collected documentary evidence of the number of prisoners and the murders of peaceful Russophiles by the Austrian authorities was published. Out of 5,500,158 inhabitants ofEastern Galiciain 1914, 2,114,792 (39.8%) were native speakers ofPolish,and 3,385,366 (58.9%) were native speakers ofRuthenian(RusynorUkrainian). In the book "Habsburg national politics during the First World War", authors D.A. Akhremenko, chairman of a public organization called Historical Consciousness, and K.V. Shevchenko, a professor atBelarusian State University,state that Thalerhof held a total of 10,000 Russians, about 2,000 Rusyns (according to other sources up to 5,000), and about 200-250 students placed in the camp on charges ofsympathy for the Russian Empire,and the Russian books ofGrigory Skovoroda,Taras Shevchenko,Pushkin,Tolstoyand others.In total over twenty thousand people were arrested and placed in Thalerhof camp.

Thalerhof had no barracks until the winter of 1915. Prisoners slept on the ground in the open-air during both rain and frost.According toU.S. Congressman Medill McCormick,prisoners were regularly beaten and tortured.On 9 November 1914 an official report of Fieldmarshal Schleer said there were 5,700 Carpatho-Rusyns, Lemkos, and Ukrainians in Talerhof. In the winter of 1914-1915, a third of the roughly 7,000 internees died of typhus.The camp was closed by EmperorCharles I of Austria,6 months into his reign.

In the first eighteen months of its existence, three thousandprisoners of Thalerhof died, including the Orthodox saintMaxim Sandovich,who was martyred here (beatified August 29, 1996 by theRussian Orthodox Church Outside Russia).

From 1945 to 1955 the site was used as an airbase by the RAF, and known, as RAF Station Thalerhof before being transferred back to the Austrian Government.Graz Airportcurrently occupies the former site of the camp.

The barracks were demolished in 1936. The corpses of 1,767 internees were then exhumed and reburied in a mass grave atFeldkirchen bei Graz.

People interned in Thalerhof

• Jaroslav Kacmarcyk
• Maxim Sandovich
• Metodyj Trochanovskij
• Hryc Krajnyk from Ulucz
• Encyclopedia of Rusyn History and Culturelists the following persons: priests (Havryil Hnatyshak, Teofil’ Kachmarchyk, Dymytrii Khyliak, Vasylii Kuryllo, Mykolai Malyniak, Vasylii Mastsiukh, Tyt Myshkovskii, Ioann Polianskii, Olympii Polianskii, Roman Pryslopskii), lawyers (Iaroslav Kachmarchyk, Teofil’ Kuryllo) and cultural activists (Nikolai Hromosiak, Dymytrii Kachor, Simeon Pysh, Metodii Trokhanovskii, Dymytrii Vyslotskii).

See also

• Ukrainian Canadian internment
• Central Labour Camp Jaworzno