The largest Prisoner of War (POW) camp of World War Two on the territory of present-day Austria
was located near the village of Gneixendorf outside the City of Krems: Stalag XVII B
Krems-Gneixendorf. At certain times there were as many as 60 000 POWs of various nationalities
interned here. There is hardly anything left to see of it today. The site is occupied by an
airfield with restaurant adjacent crisscrossing roads forests meadows and fields. Some
remains of the foundations of the military personnel barracks are preserved on the overgrown
terrain near the airfield as well as further east a massive water reservoir. The steel plaques
of an art installation and a few weathered memorial stones refer to the history of the site.
For two and a half years the photographer and photo journalist Karin Böhm repeatedly visited
the site of about a square kilometer which lies close to her home. When choosing her route
she let herself be guided on a journey of chance discovery by her interests knowledge and
intuition. Her perseverant engagements with the site resulted in a photographic observation and
survey. Karin Böhm found relics of the past abandonment to overgrown nature as well as
contemporary usages of the site and plotted these using geo-coordinates. Parallel to her work
the historian and cultural studies scholar Edith Blaschitz researched historical sources
pertaining to Stalag XVII B in the framework of the research project NS-'Volksgemeinschaft' und
Lager im Zentralraum Niederösterreich. Geschichte - Transformation - Erinnerung (The Nazi
'Volksgemeinschaft' and Camps in the Center of Lower Austria: History Transformation and
Memory). This research revealed new insights on the French POWs the largest national prisoner
group as well as the hitherto under-researched Belgian Italian Serbian and Spanish POWs.
The perspectives of the internees their contacts with the local population and engagements
with the memory of the camp formed the focal point of this research project which also
included interviews and correspondence with the few surviving eyewitnesses as well as
descendants of the POWs the camp personnel and local residents of the surrounding towns.
Karin Böhm wove her survey of the present-day site together with the historical documents and
current reactions emerging from the research project - photographs drawings letters emails
interviews diary entries maps and documentation - to create a dense visualtextual ensemble.
Four chapters beginning with quotes and personal notes are dedicated to the POWs their
deployment for labor the camp personnel and the search of descendants. Historical and
present-day photographs are placed in dialogue with one another and thus open up new levels of
observation. The connection between past and present is not only visible in the
photographically documented traces of the historical site but also in the reproductions of
historical documents marked with 'traces' of the present - a yellowed photograph in the hands
of its owner a table in the archive. Karin Böhm and Edith Blaschitz repeatedly enquire into
the connection between a site that today appears to be 'empty ' yet remains anchored in the
memories of many families worldwide and the past. Together they reflect upon the meanings
evoked against the background of historical events. The juxtapositions where necessary were
adapted. Karin Böhm's photographs sometimes require a second look in order to perceive details
following which ostensibly idyllic images crumble. Selected aspects of this complex artistic
visual-textual-mosaic are analyzed by the art historian and visual scholar Viola Rühse in the
concluding essay which pays special attention to the present-day images.
