Wiesenhof and Gnadenwalderhof 1945 to 1949

Absam as a hub for the Jewish exodus 75 years ago

Wiesenhof in Tel Aviv

In August 1951, the following brief note appeared in the Haller Lokalanzeiger newspaper:
“Memories of Gnadenwald [Absam]. Six former inmates of the Wiesenhof camp who emigrated to Israel and built a settlement house in Tel Aviv named their new home Wiesenhof in memory of their many years there.”

Historian Thomas Albrich writes about the humanitarian situation in Eastern Europe, which, after liberation from Nazism in 1945, often led thousands of surviving Jews to Absam in Wiesenhof for only a few hours:

„Border shifts, forced resettlements, anti-Semitism, and irreversible expropriations led many Jews to desire escape, emigration, and a new beginning. Away from these places of horror and an unfriendly environment. This desire was supported by a number of Jewish organizations, which directed people’s urgent desire for a home and security toward Palestine – Eretz Israel. This gave rise to one of the largest organized escape operations ever seen in Europe. From 1945 to 1948, around 250,000 Jews from Eastern Europe were smuggled illegally into the Western occupation zones. Around half of this illegal refugee flow, 120,000 to 125,000 people, passed through Salzburg. Of these, 50,000 made their way to Italy via various routes.

For many, the route from Salzburg to Italy led via the Wiesenhof in Absam and the second Jewish refugee center, which had been set up in the neighboring Gnadenwalderhof in the spring of 1946. Both hotels had been Jewish-owned until the Anschluss in 1938, which certainly influenced the decision to use them after the war as stopovers for the Jewish exodus from Europe.