Great info, thanks for posting … I just had lunch today with an old frat buddy who's mom was a 'Donauschwab' from Hungary. So far no luck here in Klumbis finding a place that knows anything about what good Gulaschsuppe is
Plenty 'Volksdeutsche' all over southern Europe and along the Danube into eastern Europe and the Ukraine and beyond paid one h*lluva price as a result of that disgusting war. Dad recently told me that while with the 3.Gebirgs during the retreat from near Stalingrad and back through the Ukraine, there were entire towns they passed through where everyone spoke only German.
Practically all of my parents' friends here when I was a kid were Germans from East Prussia, Schlesien, Alsace, Bohemia, Slovenia, Croatia.. of whatever those folks experienced during and after the war, little to nothing was shared with any of us, their kids. All I know is that two taboo topics in my home were politics and religion.
As for the prisoners in the photo, maybe also possible that they were from South Tirol (Südtirol), pretty much where the pics were taken? Talk about people who were hung up and left out to dry in the wind … South Tirol was a province where the population was historically of Austrian-German ethnicity - those folks got thoroughly screwed over, not just once, but twice, during the early 20th century .. first after WWI when the province was handed over to Italy via the armistice, then again after 1933 thanks to the führer because he and il duce were political buddies. Any wonder that some of them may have sided with the Germans in hopes it would give their people a chance to preserve their family property and their heritage? Plenty 'Südtiroler Siedlungen' (South Tirolean Settlements) were established for the refugees in towns all over Austria to incorporate the displaced into the local populations.