Bad Gastein Displaced Persons Camps

A small Jewish DP camp in the American occupied zone of Austria, Bad Gastein was comprised of requisitioned homes and five requisitioned hotels that constituted the DPs living quarters. The camp, considered luxurious by comparison to other DP camps, possessed an elementary school, a People’s University, and a high school that provided extensive vocational training programs open to both adolescents and adults. The students learned tailoring, millinery, barbering, photography, leather production, shoe making and repair, carpentry and cabinet making, and home economics. Bad Gastein embraced the fine arts, too, as it maintained a dramatic theater group as well as a chorale ensemble. A synagogue and a Talmud Torah provided religious education to the primary and elementary school children.

Map

Major camps for Jewish displaced persons, 1945-1946 (Map)

Following World War II, several hundred thousand Jewish survivors remained in camps for displaced persons. The Allies established such camps in Allied-occupied Germany, Austria, and Italy for refugees waiting to leave Europe. Most Jewish DPs preferred to emigrate to Palestine but many also sought entry into the United States. They decided to remain in the DP camps until they could leave Europe. At the end of 1946 the number of Jewish DPs was estimated at 250,000, of whom 185,000 were in Germany, 45,000 in Austria, and 20,000 in Italy. Most of the Jewish DPs were refugees from Poland, many of whom had fled the Germans into the interior of the Soviet Union during the war. Other Jewish DPs came from Czechoslovakia, Hungary, and Romania.

Credits:

• US Holocaust Memorial Museum

In the late 1940s, Bad Gastein’s DP hospital, Hofgastein, was considered to be one of the most modern centers of medical treatment in Europe. The hospital’s equipment provided for surgical treatment, physiotherapy, and obstetrics, among other things. Hofgastein also maintained X-ray machines for the DP inmates.

Several Jewish DPs from other camps, such as Ebensee, moved to Bad Gastein, which could accommodate over 2,000 people.

Three groups shared the administration of Bad Gastein: UNNRA (United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration), the US Army’s 232d Infantry Regiment, and a People’s Committee. The committee was composed of 25 elected members: 5 members from each of the five hotels. The committee acted as a liaison between UNRRA authorities and the camp population. Approximately 1,330 Jews lived there on March 25, 1946, the closing date of Bad Gastein.