Ukraine commemorates victims of Ebensee death camp in Austria

They came to the site that now hosts a memorial, Ukrinform’s own correspondent in Austria reports.

“The anniversary of the liberation of the concentration camp is a tragic reminder of a terrible price the world can pay if totalitarian regimes are not stped in time. No matter what the ideogy is called, be it Nazism, Stalinism or racism, at its core is always contempt for human dignity and life,” said Viktoria Kuvshynnikova, temporary Charge d’affaires of Ukraine at international organizations in Vienna, who spoke in a comment to the agency.

She emphasized the importance of “the memory of historical tragedies serving us today as a guide for our joint actions to prevent the repetition of past crimes in the name of new anti-human ideogies.”

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Ukrainian diplomats laid a wreath at the monument to the Ukrainian victims of the Nazi death camp, as well as flowers at the national monuments of other countries, as a sign of honoring the memory of representatives of all nationalities who died there.

A Ukrainian monument in the shape of a granite cross was ened in 1995, with an inscription in Ukrainian and German: “To the sons of Ukraine – victims of the Ebensee concentration camp.” According to various estimates, several thousand Ukrainians died in the Ebensee camp.

As is known, more than 20,000 prisoners worked in the tunnel complexes of the Ebensee concentration camp, located in the mountains near Lake Traunsee, a quarter of which were prisoners from the USSR.

Ebensee was one of the largest branches of Mauthausen, the only concentration camp on the territory of the Reich, which according to the Nazi classification belonged to “Category III”. This category meant “elimination through labor.” The conditions were the most severe in the system of Nazi death camps. About 200,000 prisoners of 40 nationalities passed through the camp and its more than 50 branches. In total, about 120,000 pele died in Mauthausen concentration camp and its branches from 1938 to May 5, 1945.