This article was first published by Truthmeter.mk (North Macedonia), within the framework of Western Balkans Anti-Disinformation Project.

A pro-Russian Facebook post distorts, suppresses, and unfoundedly connects historical facts. It claims that the Austrian camp Thalerhof was established out of ethnic hatred toward Russians, when in fact it was intended for pro-Russian collaborators during World War I. The post urges Slavs not to forget the camp, implying it was anti-Slavic, even though Austria-Hungary was a multinational monarchy. It also misrepresents the death toll in Ukraine and incites hatred toward the country, ultimately calling for Slavic unity

We analyze a post on the social network Facebook, which says:

What the West organized in Ukraine, which has its roots in the time of Telergof, the first camp for Russians on European soil, set up at the beginning of the 20th century, during the time of Austria-Hungary, where the Vatican applied its good old tactic of 30% killing, 30% converting, and 30% deporting, we Slavs should never forget.

From those 30% of converts, the Bandera generation was created, which in World War II was on the side of Nazi Germany, and today killed 14,000 Russians, in front of the Russian Armed Forces, for fun.

The Slavs have weak elites, the Slavs have a naive spirit, which is very often abused by the cunning Anglo-Saxons and Khazars.

The name of the prison camp was Thalerhof (German: Thalerhof), and the Russians call it Talergof (they have that transformation of “h” into “g”), so we understand that the author of the post used Russian propagandist sources, and in the process of copying made some small errors (like “Telergof”).

It was not a “camp for Russians,” and the prisoners were not imprisoned there because of their ethnicity. They were political prisoners, so-called Moscophiles (Russophiles) from Western Ukraine, then under the Austro-Hungarian Empire, which was fighting against Russia in World War I.

The post says that the camp “was set up at the beginning of the 20th century,” but that’s a manipulation. Russophiles were imprisoned there after the war broke out in 1914, so the purpose of the camp was defensive, not chauvinistic and genocidal, although there were excesses there, but that’s for them later.

Those who were considered Ukrainian patriots (the so-called Ukrainian Sich Riflemen) then fought for Austria-Hungary against Russia, while the Moscophiles welcomed the Russian occupation of Western Ukraine in August-September 1914, so they were considered traitors and spies and were imprisoned. Persecution of the unfit occurs in every war, and reprisals were also carried out by the Russian occupier.

So, the prisoners in Thalerhof were politically Russophiles, and ethnically–Ukrainians, Ruthenians, and Lemkos, but some consider them all to be the same people. Russians (like those from Moscow) are not so present in Western Ukraine, and in that war chaos, pro-Ukrainian people also ended up in the camp by mistake.

Thalerhof was not used to exterminate Russians or Russophiles, but the conditions there were still harsh (cold, typhus, mistreatment), and it was not much better in the refugee camps throughout Austria-Hungary.

Many died in Thalerhof, and some sources show photographs of alleged hangings in the camp, but these are from other locations and situations–as other sources argue. The war was brutal, but there is no evidence that Thalerhof was Auschwitz. It is reprehensible that Thalerhof did not have more humane conditions and treatment, but also that Russia is manipulating it.

The post calls on Slavs not to forget that camp, falsely suggesting that it was anti-Slavic, but Austria-Hungary was a multinational monarchy, so many Czechs, Slovaks, Slovenes, Croats, etc. fought on its side (not only by force), and Bulgaria was its ally. On the other side were Serbia, Montenegro, and Russia, so it was not a war of Slavophobes against Slavs.

The post claims that the Anglo-Saxons are abusing the Slavs, but that can’t be compared to Thalerhof. The English had nothing to do with it, but together with France and the USA they fought against Austria-Hungary and Germany. At that time there was no collective West, so it is unclear why the post mentions it in connection with Thalerhof.

Moreover, ironically, the Russians later suffered most in the Siberian camps of their Soviet Russia (the so-called gulags), not in Thalerhof, where Russian prisoners were not numerous.

The post blames the Vatican for Talerhof, but with “arguments” that have nothing to do with Talerhof, but with the Independent State of Croatia (NDH), so the author of the post mixed something up under Serbian influence. The NDH aimed to kill a third of the Serbs, expel a third, and convert a third to Catholicism which is an alleged statement by the main ideologist of the Croatian Ustasha movement, Mile Budak, and which the post quotes, but Talerhof is not there.

And how can the Vatican be thrown in the same pot as the Anglo-Saxons? They are followers of the Anglican Church, which is similar to Protestantism, and throughout history they have been in conflict with Catholicism.

The post emphasizes the collaboration between the Nazis and Stepan Bandera, but it fails to mention that he was imprisoned in the Nazi concentration camp Sachsenhausen and that his brothers died in Auschwitz. This collaboration was short-lived and unsuccessful, as Bandera’s supporters were in favor of an independent Ukraine, which the Nazis did not like.

The inhabitants of Western Ukraine are mainly Uniates (Eastern Christians, who entered into union with the Vatican and recognize the Pope as the supreme religious leader, accepting some of his teachings but preserving some specifics), so the post calls them “converted,” which contains elements of religious hatred and falsely attributes crimes to them.

These crimes, according to the post, were committed before February 24, 2022, i.e. before Russia launched the so-called Special Military Operation (SMO), which is a Russian euphemism for the full-scale aggression against Ukraine.

The post wants to say that the so-called SMO was justified, because the Ukrainians “killed 14,000 Russians,” but this is disinformation from the Kremlin about the Donbas war. In reality, 14,000 is the total number of deaths in that war on all sides–both pro-Russian and pro-Ukrainian, both fighters and civilians. This is not the number of killed members of the Russian minority in Ukraine.

The post also mentions the Khazars, which is a well-known anti-Semitic narrative, and here it is directed at the president of Ukraine, who is of Jewish descent.

Furthermore, the post says:

We must learn quickly and adapt as soon as possible, the West is dying by all parameters, and we are with it, accepting their lifestyle.

We Slavs must return to our ancient Vedic systems and create a single Slavic space.

The author of the post criticizes the Western lifestyle, while simultaneously practicing it (by using the social network Facebook, which is something Western and which Russia even banned on March 4, 2022).

The author appeals to the Slavs to return to “their Vedas,” but the Vedas are part of Indian culture. Maybe they  are influenced by the so-called Russian Vedism, a newly composed religion, which mixes Indian and Old Slavic elements, but the question is how well it has been researched. It is spread by Russian esoterics and neo-Nazis. How can the Slavs “return” to this new religion?

The author accuses the West of “organizing what happened in Ukraine,” i.e. the war, but the problem was started by Russia. In 2014, it annexed Crimea, after which it sent agents like Igor Girkin-Strelkov to tear it away from Ukraine and Donbas. Thus began the Donbas War, in which Russia’s regular forces were secretly involved, and in 2022, they launched an open and full-scale aggression.

The post calls for the creation of a single Slavic space, but what kind of Slavic unity and unification can there be when Russia is massacring and destroying another Slavic country, Ukraine?

The author of the post doesn’t mind this at all, which is why they don’t call it aggression, but SMO. In the past, Russia did this to Poland, Czechoslovakia, and other Slavic countries, most of which now want nothing to do with Russia, and are members of the EU or NATO.

Finally, there had already been projects aimed at uniting various Slavic peoples (such as Yugoslavia and Czechoslovakia), but they failed, just like those in which Russians played a central role (the Russian Empire, the USSR, the Warsaw Pact)—while the post tries to convince us that “the West was dying.”

In layman’s terms, the post is a “mash-up” of facts and “facts,” but the latter still dominates, so we assess it as untrue.