St. Florian: Military bottle, found in a mass grave

Towards the end of the war, Jewish Hungarians were exploited as forced labourers in Eastern Austria. As the Soviet army advanced, the ill-nourished and exhausted women and men were sent on death marches to Upper Austria. 23,000 out of 30,000 people were killed on those marches. Many of the murderers were local men guarding the forced labourers. This bottle belonged to a Jewish person who was forced to march from a tent camp in Mauthausen, past the city of Enns, to a subcamp in Gunskirchen, near Wels. Their dead body was buried in the woods near St. Florian – this was one of 99 murders happening in this town alone. Even among those who managed to reach Gunskirchen, around 200 died each day.

In 1990, the Austrian military restored the graves of murdered Jewish Hungarians. During the work, soldiers found this bottle and handed it to General Hubertus Trauttenberg. The murder victim had probably brought the item in preparation for being deported. This canteen is a reminder of the brutality of the death march guards. There are reported cases of people being shot while trying to gather drinking water.