Crimean Tatar’s Traces in Vorarlberg

Bundschuh W.

284-295 p.


doi.org: 10.22378/he.2023-8-2.284-295


In the course of research on the history of Tatar forced laborers, the author came across a little-known chapter of Vorarlberg’s history: the tragic history of a Muslim minority, Turkic-speaking Crimean Tatars, who fell between the millstones of the Nazi policy of conquest and extermination in Eastern Europe and Stalinist tyranny and were suffering a lot in the process. One trace of this minority leads to Austria’s westernmost State of Vorarlberg: In 1945/46, a refugee group of surviving Crimean Tatars was stranded here and housed in the village of Alberschwende.


Keywords: Crimean Tatars, Muslim minority, forced labours, Second World War in Austria

For citation: Bundschuh W. (2023) Crimean Tatar’s Traces in Vorarlberg. Istoricheskaya etnologiya [Historical Ethnology]. Vol. 8. No. 2: 284–295. DOI: 10.22378/he.2023-8-2.284-295


SOURCES AND MATERIALS

VLA – Vorarlberger Landesarchiv, Bregenz.
BWA – Bregenzerwald Archiv, Egg.
Austrian Fund for Reconciliation, Peace, and Cooperation. Forced Labor in Austria 1938–1945. URL: http://www.reconciliationfund.at/
Forced Labor 1939–1945. Memories and History. URL: https://www.zwangsarbeit-archiv.de/
Bundschuh W., Ruff M. (2008) Projekt “Brücken schlagen – ehemalige Zwangsarbeiter und Zwangsarbeiterinnen aus der Ukraine zwischen Rückkehr und neuer Heimat” [Project “Building Bridges – Former Forced Laborers from Ukraine Between Return and New Homeland”]. Projektbericht für den Zukunftsfonds der Republik Österreich.

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About the author: Werner Bundschuh, Dr. Sc., independent researcher (Bregenz, Vorarlberg, Austria); werner.bundschuh@outlook.com


Received December 29, 2022   Accepted for publication February 15, 2023

Published Online October 24, 2023