Austria Nazi camp site business park plan sparks anger

Plans to build a business park on land linked to a former Nazi forced labour and concentration camp complex near Leobersdorf, Austria, have sparked anger from remembrance campaigners as construction work begins.

The project, about 40 kilometres south of Vienna, includes a cold storage warehouse and a Lidl supermarket branch. Plans were first revealed in 2024 and include land that once formed part of the Hirtenberg subcamp of the Mauthausen concentration camp.

The wider Weinberglager complex was used after Nazi Germany annexed Austria in 1938 for prisoners of war and forced labourers. Around 400 women, mainly from the Soviet Union as well as Italy and Poland, were imprisoned at Hirtenberg between September 1944 and April 1945 and forced to manufacture infantry munitions at a nearby factory complex.

Archaeological investigations identified surviving traces of the former camp complex, but Austria's Federal Monuments Office concluded that the remains were not sufficient for monument protection.

Erich Strobl, who leads a local campaign to preserve part of the site, said a historically burdened place was being built over and "sacrificed to the economy". The International Mauthausen Committee said a former concentration camp must not be built over with new structures.

The project has also drawn attention because the land was previously owned by local mayor Andreas Ramharter, who sold it in 2022 and 2023 for more than 15 million euros, local media reported. Ramharter declined to comment when contacted by AFP.

TRA LEO GmbH & Co KG, which bought the plot, told AFP it had offered to support a memorial on the site. Lidl said its planned store would be in the business park but not directly on the former concentration camp site.

A stele monument was erected in 2024 to commemorate victims of the Hirtenberg camp. Josef Pumberger, a board member of the Mauthausen Committee Austria, said tangible evidence of the buildings where Nazis imprisoned people was still important.