Alpine Peace Crossing -
memorial hike
This year’s commemorative events are held under the central theme “Sport as a Playing Field of the Nazi Dictatorship: Community, Coercion, Exclusion.” The Nazi regime turned the 1936 Olympic Games in Berlin into a stage for its propagandistic self-presentation. Two years later, Leni Riefenstahl’s two-part propaganda film Olympia reinforced both the staging of National Socialist–fascist strength and modernity and the image of a strong, healthy, and mass-mobilizable “German national body” in cinemas, including internationally.
Hardly any other sphere of society illustrates as clearly as sport how intensively the Nazi regime manipulated bodies, performance, and notions of community for its ideology. Sport was not merely physical exercise—it became a tool of political formation, an aestheticization of power, and preparation for war.
The 1936 Olympic Games demonstrated sport as a spectacle of superiority, as the staging of a racist world order, and as a propaganda event that has left a lasting imprint on collective memory. Yet sport was and is also a lived practice of resistance. This is reflected not least in the core of our association’s work, the annual commemorative hike over the Krimmler Tauern, as a form of remembrance practice.
The year 2026 is a good moment to ask: which structures, images, and narratives persist in our present—and how can we oppose them?
The memorial hike that follows on July 5, 2026 takes the participants over the Krimmler Tauern to Kasern (South Tyrol/Alto Adige). The hike takes you along the historic escape route through which several thousand Jews were able to escape from Austria via Italy to what was then Mandatory Palestine. The hike is accompanied by input on the historical escape as well as current references.
Program:
Saturday, 4th of July 2026
2:00-7:00 p.m.: Dialogue Forum Krimml
Location: Krimml Elementary School
Admission from 1:00 p.m., opportunity to view the traveling exhibition Overcoming Borders – Jewish Escape in the Salzburg High Mountains in 1947.
2:00 p.m. Start of the dialogue forum
This is followed by the content-related part of the Krimml Dialogue Forum with a concluding buffet.
(Full day: Check-in at the Krimml Tourist Office (Oberkrimml 37, 5743 Krimml).
Sunday, 5th of July 2026, from 6:00: Memorial Hike
On our Memorial Hike we will follow the traces of the 1947 escape, crossing the Krimmler Tauern and hiking to Kasern in South Tyrol/Alto Adige. The hike leads through high alpine terrain up to the altitude of 2,634m. The walking time alone is 8 hours. Appropriate physical condition, hiking boots, weather protection, drinks, snacks and hiking poles are required!
Alternatively, two shorter variants are also possible, which are less strenuous and turn around before crossing the pass.
Please note that you must decide on one of the variants when registering and no changes are possible at short notice, as we have to plan the respective transfers with cabs and buses in advance.
