Memorial Stele for the Camp «Oradour» on the old country road to Buch

In the Wilhelm-Erb-Stollen of the Schwaz mine, Messerschmittwerke produced engine cowls and cell parts for the jet fighter Me 262 with 300 to 400 forced laborers from December 1944. A large part of the foreigners were interned in a wooden barracks camp surrounded by barbed wire along the road towards Buch. When the French military government took over the camp in July 1945, they named it «Oradour» after the village Oradour-sur-Glane. There, an SS company had murdered 642 children, women, and men and reduced the village to rubble and ashes. The French commander in Schwaz had brought in former Nazis from Tyrol and Vorarlberg until the handover of the camp to the state in the summer of 1948. On May 20, 2015, the cultural committee of the town of Schwaz requested the erection of a memorial stele «Oradour» with a commemorative stone, for which the Schwaz mayor had strongly advocated. Hans Lintner unveiled the monument, designed by the artist Martin Schwarz-Lahnbach from Schwaz, on July 2, 2015.