Page - 814 - in THE FIRST WORLD WAR - and the End of the Habsburg Monarchy, 1914 – 1918

814 Camps up and down the land. No territories nearby were chosen, however, to take in the ref- ugees and evacuees, but instead cities and localities located deep in the interior of the Dual Monarchy. The quasi deportees were the last ones to learn of their destination. The implementation of the operations was, as in the east, a matter for the Ministry of the Interior. The Ministry had instructed the governors of the crown lands already selected for the refugees from the east as early as the beginning of April 1915  – at a time when it was still being negotiated how an Italian entry into the war could be prevented  – ei- ther as a precaution or perhaps also pessimistically, to make public the municipalities that would accommodate the refugees. In May, a central transport administration was established. The distribution centres were Salzburg and Leibnitz. These two cities had their own examination stations, which acted, like at the borders of the crown lands in the east, in accordance with the ‘Cinderella principle’ : the ‘good ones’ were sent to ref- ugee camps or were distributed among refugee communities ; those, however, who were regarded as irredentists, spies or informers, or at least considered unreliable, were taken to internment camps. As in the case of the refugees from the east, the allocation at the examination stations also took place according to national, confessional and, not least, social and material criteria. If the refugees did not have any funds, they were allocated to fixed refugee communities. If they were destitute, they were sent to a camp. One transport followed another. If the evacuees were sent to camps, it was generally those that already existed and had been erected previously for Polish andRuthenian refugees. Wherever this was not the case, new barrack camps were built. A rough calculation re- vealed that from the territories of the Dual Monarchy bordering Italy, 150,000 people would have to be accommodated elsewhere. With this, the total number of destitute refugees swelled to 550,000, not including those who were endowed with some cash but were at any rate also uprooted and counted a further 300,000 to 400,000 people. All in all, they amounted to a round figure of a million refugees.1911 In order to enable im- portant social contact, keep down the linguistic barriers and assuage confessional needs, the camps were separated according to national, linguistic and religious groups. After all these things had been sorted out  – albeit not very well  – the followind distribution of the large refugee camps emerged : – Braunau am Inn housed South Tyrolese of Italian nationality – Bruck an der Leitha  – Slovenes – Choceň (Chotzen) in Bohemia  – Poles and Ukrainians of Christian confessions – Havličkův Brod (Deutschbrod) in Bohemia  – Jews – Enzersdorf im Thale in Lower Austria  – Romanians and Ruthenians from Bukovina – Gmünd in Lower Austria  – Ruthenians – Pottendorf-Landegg in Lower Austria  – inhabitants of the Austrian Littoral of Ital- ian nationality