Help to ID People and Places in Austria Photos

**DiViSiBle** · 03-08-2011, 04:54 PM

A friend of mine, Calvin Johnson, aquired roll after roll of negatives from an estate sale. All of them Nazi photos in and around Marchegg Austria....we think. Any help identifying the people or places would be greatly appreciated. He has several more rolls that have not been developed yet and I hope to post some more soon. Thanks in advance, Richard

**Espenlaub Militaria** · 03-08-2011 04:54 PM

We also buy and trade your items and full collections!

**HPL2008** · 03-08-2011, 07:04 PM

I can't be of much help, but photograph # 9 has the huge ferris wheel of the Vienna Prater in the background.

Furthermore, I think that photograph # 4 is not in Austria at all, but rather shows a Czech location: Note the shop signs with "JOZEF [...]" and "[...] PRADLO".

**DiViSiBle** · 03-09-2011, 12:53 AM

Thank you so much...every little bit of info helps. richard

**HPL2008** · 03-09-2011, 07:03 PM

I found the location of the church in picture no. 4! Turned out, though, I was not 100% correct - It's not a Czech location, but a Slovak one: It's the church at Žilina.

Please see here for comparison:
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedi...lina_gross.jpg
http://www.visitslovakia.com/data/us...lina_1x(1).jpg
http://oberonrotary.files.wordpress..../07/zilina.jpg

The clue was the clothing shop sign in the background saying "KLOBUKY A PRADLO". I consulted with a Czech speaker (to be more precise, my father, who was born in Czechoslovakia) who pointed out that "Klobuky" (= hats) is the Slovak spelling, while "Klobouky" is the Czech one. Doing a Google image search for Slovak churches, I managed to identify the place.

**DiViSiBle** · 03-09-2011, 07:37 PM

WOW!!! That is amazing!!! And you are as well. I really appreciate the time you have taken to help unravel the story of these pictures. This board and the people who spend time here are my number one source for anything WW2 related. Thank you so much once again, richard

**HPL2008** · 03-09-2011, 08:35 PM

You're welcome! I can offer one final observation that might be helpful, too:

With three locations (Vienna, Marchegg and Žilina) identified, I took a closer look to their relative locations. I found that there is a railway line running from Vienna into Slovakia, with Marchegg being the Austrian-Slovak border crossing. (Notice that some of the men in photograph # 5 wear customs unifoms.) Žilina is located a good deal deeper into Slovakia.

Given the presence of these three locations, the fact that the Vienna and Marchegg photographs were taken at railway stations/-installations and that the castle photograph was apparently taken from a train, I think we can make an educated guess that the men from this Luftwaffe unit were transported by rail from Vienna via Marchegg into Slovakia.