A Lidl supermarket and a refrigerated storage and logistics facility are set to be built on the remains of Austria's second-largest women's concentration camp, situated near the town of Leobersdorf.
The Hirtenberg subcamp was a World War II women's labor concentration camp established in September 1944 as part of the wider Mauthausen concentration camp network. Most of the prisoners were Jewish women transfered from Auschwitz who were sent to the women's camp to manufacture munitions. The camp was evacuated in April 1945.
Leobersdorf Mayor Andreas Ramharter, who is also a real-estate entrepreneur, had profited from the sale of the site, Wiener Zeitung newspaper reported. His company had sold it to businessman Thomas Rattensperger for more than €15 million ($17m.), and Ramharter received an extra €1.34m. through rezoning, the report said.
The site will be turned into a facility with multiple loading docks, freezer sections, and shipping areas, Wiener Zeitung reported. It will also include a branch of the German discount retailer Lidl, the report said.
When the plans were first broached in 2024, they caused significant controversy.
Mauthausen Memorial director Barbara Glück said the demolition was a disgrace.
Oskar Deutsch, president of the Israelitische Kultusgemeinde Wien, said: “That profit was made here at the expense of the memory of tortured and murdered women.”
The site should have been preserved to commemorate “this dark chapter of our history” and “should not be covered over by a shopping center,” he said.
Federal Monuments Office approves supermarket plans
The Federal Monuments Office said the remains of the camp were “not sufficient to warrant protected monument status,” and therefore, it permitted the building to proceed.About 400 women were interned in the concentration camp, according to the Mauthausen Guides website.
The first transport with 391 women arrived at the Hirtenberg subcamp from Auschwitz on September 28, 1944, it said.
The second one arrived on November 27, 1944, with another 11 female prisoners, three of whom came from Auschwitz-Birkenau, the largest concentration camp and extermination site. Eight of them came from Ravensbrück concentration camp for women.
Most prisoners were Russian women
The largest group of the women were 194 Russian protective-custody prisoners; 101 were Italians, most of them from the border region with Slovenia, which was then occupied by Italy.
In addition, 95 women from Poland, five from Yugoslavia, three from Hungary, two from Croatia, and one each from Germany and Slovakia arrived at the Hirtenberg subcamp. The youngest among them were only 16 years old; the oldest was a 58-year-old woman from Poland.
As of press time, the Federal Monuments Office had not yet replied to a request for comment from The Jerusalem Post.