Alexander Prenninger (Austria), doctoral student, Universität Wien, “Evakuierungstransporte und Todesmärsche in das Konzentrationslager Mauthausen durch das Gebiet der Tschechischen Republik”.

Alexander Prenninger (Austria) is a researcher at the Ludwig Boltzmann Institute for Historical Social Science (Vienna-Salzburg). He also lectures at the University of Salzburg. From 2007 to 2011 he was centrally involved in the “Mauthausen Survivors Research Project” (MSRP). His major interest lies in oral history and the life stories of concentration camp survivors. His research is specifically focusing on the routes of deportation and the social networks of deportees. During his EHRI fellowship he conducted research for his Ph.D. thesis on “Evacuation transports in the last phase of the Mauthausen concentration camp”.

During his tenure at the Jewish Museum in Prague he was researching the evacuation of concentration camp prisoners to Mauthausen through Czech territory. Because of its location, Mauthausen and its sub-camps became a target area for many evacuation transports and death marches, many of them led through today’s Czech Republic. In Prague, he consulted especially the holdings of the Jewish Museum, the National Archive and the Security Services Archive. The findings will allow a better interpretation of survivors’ narratives on their personal experiences, the inclusion of reactions of the Czech population, and contribute to an explanation why most of the evacuation transports were led through the Reichsgau Sudetenland and not the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia. Alexander Prenninger was in residence at the Jewish Museum in Prague in June 2014.

He can be contacted at alexander.prenninger@sbg.ac.at.