Alfred Palisek

Alfred Palisek attends the Humanist Grammar School in Vienna 3rd, Kundmanngasse. In the afternoon of March 11, 1938, he took part in a VF demonstration and experienced the confrontation with Nazi thugs. Immediately after the Anschluss, he witnessed the forced removal of some of the teaching staff at his school and the expulsion of his Jewish classmates. His critical attitude towards the regime resulted in his "relegatio discipuli", or expulsion from the school. The decisive factor was probably that on April 20, 1938, he tore up a charcoal drawing by his drawing professor with a portrait of Adolf Hitler, which all pupils were supposed to copy. After being expelled from school, he worked mainly in the graphic arts, was conscripted into the cartographic office in 1940, but was then dismissed for making a "statement that undermined military strength". In 1942, he wanted to take evening classes at the Roland Matura School to obtain his school-leaving certificate. However, he was called up to the German Wehrmacht in October 1941. To avoid further harassment, he enlisted at the front and was assigned to the grenadier regiment in Tunis in the fall of 1942. Here he was taken prisoner of war by the British on May 8, 1943. At the end of the month, he was handed over to the US troops in Casablanca. In the summer of 1943, he was transferred to the Quarzazate oasis in the area of the Sahara sandstorms, where the prisoners of war were used by the French for road construction work. Alfred Palisek begins recruiting for an "Austrian Legion" to actively contribute to the liberation of Austria. Because the Austrians have removed the swastika from their uniforms, their German fellow prisoners regard this as "high treason". To avoid further incidents, the German and Austrian prisoners of war were eventually separated.

In a collection camp for Austrians in Algeria, Alfred Palisek began recruiting for an Austrian battalion, which soon comprised 280 men. However, his efforts were met with great skepticism by both the French and the British. The French initially thought of forming a battalion as part of the Foreign Legion, but the Austrians rejected this. In Sidi Bel Abbes, the garrison of the first regiment of the French Foreign Legion, the Austrian prisoners of war received several weeks of training before being taken to an Italian prisoner of war camp near Marrakech, where they had to work hard.

In the summer of 1944, on the orders of General Alphanse Juin (1888-1967), commander-in-chief of the French troops in North Africa, all Austrian prisoners of war were brought together in an Austrian camp. On October 25, 1944, Alfred Palisek circulated a booklet in the camp with the following declaration:

"As a free Austrian, I declare my support for an independent Austria and am prepared to actively stand up for Austria, even with a weapon in my hand if necessary. I declare this with my signature."

In the USA as well as in France and Great Britain, all efforts to form an Austrian government in exile failed due to the unwillingness of the socialist emigration to cooperate. Due to these various internal and political concerns, the order to set up an Austrian unit was not given until April 9, 1945. At this point, there were already over 1,000 reports. On 4 May, the first 200 men were kitted out and marched from Algiers via Marseille to Riome (near Clermont-Ferrand), where the French set up the first Austrian volunteer battalion of 500 men on 25 May 1945.

On 14 September 1945, they were transferred to Lindau and issued with "Austrian" uniforms, and on 26 September they continued on to Innsbruck, where they were assigned to support the French occupying troops. On December 31, 1945, the 484-man unit, which had been deployed in Bregenz since November, was disbanded. The "1er Bataillon de Volontaires Autrichiens" (1er B.V.A.) is the only Austrian military formation that is actually deployed as part of the Western Allies.

Alfred Palisek remains a prisoner of war in the Austrian camp Camp Suzzoni in North Africa until February 1946. In spring 1946, the last Austrians were loaded onto a ship bound for Marseille. The odyssey comes to an end.