2015: The Refugee Tragedy of Parndorf

On August 26, 2015, 71 people died in a refrigerated lorry in an attempt to travel from Hungary to Austria. Their bodies were found a day later in the vehicle that had been abandoned by the smugglers on the east motorway A4 in the town of Parndorf (Burgenland). There were 59 men, 8 women and 4 children from Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria, and Iran. They suffocated at high summer temperatures of over 30°C in the hermetically sealed refrigerated lorry.

World-wide consternation was expressed in the wake of this incident. The so-called refugee crisis had arrived to the streets of Europe and in people’s consciousness. One week later, Austria and Germany permitted refugees stranded in Hungary to freely enter. In the meantime, German Chancellor Angela Merkel committed to opening borders (“We can do it”).

More than one million people tried to immigrate to the EU in 2015, fleeing civil wars, terrorism, and due to the supply bottleneck in refugee housing around Syria, most of them via the Mediterranean Sea and the Balkan Route. The deaths in the Mediterranean – about 4000 were registered in 2015 – remained largely unnoticed as in the previous years. The Parndorf tragedy marks neither the beginning nor the climax of events, but does make visible refugees’ readiness to take risks, the ruthlessness of smugglers, and the helplessness of politics.