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Many trainstations were filled with migrants. Some people came to bring food, clothes, blankets or just to talk or play games with the waiting refugees.

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Many refugees firstly arrived in Greek or Italy by boat. These boats were overfilled with people and were just made out of some plastic. These castaways often payed all their money to get on one of those boats. A lot people died due dehydration.

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Refugees cheered into Germany and Austria

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Austria is a small country of only 8.4 million people in the heart of Europe. Post offices tend to confuse it with Australia, prompting Australia to once issue a special rubber stamp requesting that letters be "redirected to Austria in Europe". Almost 22 years ago Austria, joined the EU alongside Sweden and Finland, with 67% of the Austrian population voting in favour of membership in a national referendum in June 1994 - the accession treaty was signed later that month.

Austria is a small country of only 8.4 million people in the heart of Europe. Post offices tend to confuse it with Australia, prompting Australia to once issue a special rubber stamp requesting that letters be "redirected to Austria in Europe". Almost 22 years ago Austria, joined the EU alongside Sweden and Finland, with 67% of the Austrian population voting in favour of membership in a national referendum in June 1994 - the accession treaty was signed later that month.

There is no doubt that the Austrian economy has profited significantly from its involvement in the growing European single market. Some 70% of Austria's foreign trade is with EU member states. When 10 more states, most from eastern Europe, joined the EU in 2004 - adding 74 million people to the union - Austria and Germany insisted on a transition period of up to seven years in which they could exercise control over their labour markets. Eastern European states had less competitive economies, a lower gross domestic product per capita and significantly lower wages. The considerable difference in income between "old" and "new" EU member states caused great public concern at the time.

This fear of foreign competition in the labour market is one of the reasons why more than 40% of Austrians now regret joining the EU.

For years Austria saw itself as an isle of the blessed, a small, peaceful country that had full employment and next to no strikes, and whose beautiful landscape and cultural highlights attracted millions of tourists every year. Vienna has topped the Mercer Quality of Living survey as the city with the highest quality of living worldwide for the third time in a row.

The effects of the global financial crisis, however, were felt in Austria too. Unemployment began to rise and is now about 9.4%, bank troubles abounded, and those who felt their jobs were threatened began to look around for a scapegoat - and began to blame the EU for all their woes.

Historically, Austria's reputation for taking in refugees has been excellent. During the Hungarian uprising of 1956 it opened its borders to thousands of Hungarians. One has only to recall James Michener's famous statement in his book The Bridge at Andau (1957), in which he chronicled the uprising: "If I am ever required to be a refugee, I hope to make it to Austria." Much the same happened during the Prague spring of 1968 when Austria opened its borders to let in thousands of Czechoslovakians. And during the Balkan war of 1995 it again took in thousands of people fleeing the former Yugoslavia.

Religion was never a factor. Muslims from the former Yugoslavia were made just as welcome as Catholics from Croatia or Orthodox Serbs. My parish took in 30 Muslims for several months at the time and I helped some of the children learn English. I remember how surprised I was when one of the mothers asked me if her three children could dress up as the three magi at Epiphany, when Austrian children from each parish go from house to house collecting money for the Catholic Three Wise Kings' mission. Apparently they had always joined the Catholic children back in their homeland although they were Muslims. Our parish priest smiled and said: "The money is for a humanitarian cause and will help those in need, regardless of their religion, so of course they can." One cannot imagine that happening today.

While the refugees and migrants who poured over the border at the end of last August were made just as welcome, a general feeling of unease was only too apparent. The government and the thousands of voluntary helpers enthusiastically welcomed Angela Merkel's open-door policy, and the president of the Austrian bishops' conference, Cardinal Christoph Schönborn of Vienna, rushed to the border to personally welcome the refugees, but a general scepticism about the people entering the country soon became apparent.

As trains full of refugees crossed through Austria it was evident that the women, babies and small children shown in press photographs were only a small minority. The large majority were able-bodied young men of between 20 and 35. Many Austrians wondered how little Austria, whose migrant camps were already full to overflowing, could successfully integrate them and, above all, find work for them.

At a memorial service for the 71 migrants who suffocated in a refrigerator truck found abandoned in eastern Austria, Schönborn made it clear that Europe was facing the greatest humanitarian challenge in decades, "which will change all our lives". He deplored the failure of EU countries to share the refugee burden equally. Many Austrians could not understand why the EU authorities in Brussels were not showing more solidarity with the people who were actually having to cope with the refugee problem.

Faymann quits as Austrian chancellor following far right's election victory

The big turning point came when gangs of migrants sexually abused women on New Year's Eve in Cologne. The news increased Austrians' fears.

But the then Austrian chancellor, Werner Faymann, and Schönborn continued to insist that the open-door policy would work and that borders must remain fully open. By the end of 2015, more than 90,000 people had applied for asylum in Austria, more per capita than Germany or Sweden (and more than the US and Canada put together). Faymann was forced to change his policy and Austria closed its borders.

Now Europe and European bishops are more divided than ever on the migrant issue in which religion seems to play an ever more dominant role. EU countries in eastern Europe refuse to take in Muslim refugees. The open-door policy of pope Francis and Merkel is meeting stubborn resistance in Hungary, Poland, the Czech Republic and Slovakia, while Austria has decided to erect border fences and restrict the number of asylum seekers this year to 37,500. The bishop of Burgenland, Austria's easternmost province, recently refused to let Austrian authorities erect a border fence on church land, saying erecting borders was against the Gospel message - but only this week he warned that Europe must not be "too naive" regarding plans to Islamise Europe.

Vienna has long been a cultural melting pot and a centre for international cooperation and inter-religious dialogue. It's to be hoped that in its function as a bridge between east and west it can contribute towards stabilising the truly dangerous situation the EU now finds itself in. It is crucial to stem the surging support for far-right parties, which play on fears of uncontrolled inflows of migrants - but also to bring the starry-eyed idealists, who insist on keeping the doors wide open, back down to earth.

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Austria has a proud history of helping refugees - but for how much longer? | Christa Pongratz-Lippitt

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Austria is a small country of only 8.4 million people in the heart of Europe. Post offices tend to confuse it with Australia, prompting Australia to once issue a special rubber stamp requesting that letters be "redirected to Austria in Europe".

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Nearly 11,000 migrants walked into Austria on Sunday adding to the 10 and a half thousand who'd made the same journey the day before.

Aid agencies and the Red Cross were on hand to provide food, drink and medical help.

With so many people arriving the Austrian police have tried go guide the refugees away from the border town of Nickelsdorf on to trains and buses. Most appeared to be headed for Germany said a police officer.

Migrants arrive in Austria: On a grim march through countries that do not want them, the tens of thousands of ... http://t.co/2jKmKN33xd
- VOFN Austria (@VOFNAustria) September 20, 2015

Euronews's reporter spoke to one man - a Syrian from Aleppo - who described his perilous sea journey to get to Europe.

"Smugglers manipulate us, leave us no choice and they expose our lives to danger. we were nearly sixty people in the boat and it was over flowing when water began to seep in," he said.

Meanwhile the migrants are being shuttled from one country to the next .
Faced with growing crowds on its territory after Hungary barricaded its border with Serbia against migrants heading north, Croatia has begun bring people to its border with Hungary, which has been shuttling them to reception centres near Austria.

European leaders who are bitterly divided will seek to find a credible response to the continent's worst migration crisis since World War ll at an emergency summit this week.

Yesterday ( September 20) German chancellor Angela Merkel called on her counterparts to accept joint responsibility.

Reporting for euronews from the Hungarian side of the Beremend border crossing, Andrea Hajagos said at least transport was being organised by the Hungarians to take the refugees from Croatia to Austria but its unclear how long this organised travel will last.

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Nearly 11,000 migrants walked into Austria on Sunday adding to the 10 and a half thousand who'd made the same journey the day before. Aid agencies and the Red Cross were on hand to provide food, drink and medical help.

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Austria and Germany threw open their borders to thousands of exhausted migrants on Saturday, bussed to the frontier by a right-wing Hungarian government that tried to stop them but was overwhelmed by the sheer numbers of people.

Left to walk the last yards into Austria, rain-soaked migrants, many of them refugees from Syria's civil war, were whisked by train and shuttle bus to Vienna, where authorities promptly arranged for thousands to travel on to Germany.

The German state of Bavaria said 2,000 of up to 7,000 Syrian refugees expected in the country on Saturday had arrived on special trains in Munich. Queues snaked towards tents where the new arrivals were being registered.

Austrian police said more than 6,000 people had entered the country by midday with more expected in what has become Europe's most acute refugee crisis since the Yugoslav wars of the 1990s.

In Salzburg, the last city before the German border, teams from aid organisations and spontaneous volunteers rushed to pass warm clothes, shoes and cigarettes through the doors of trains stopped at platforms.

Munich police said Arabic-speaking interpreters were helping refugees with procedures at the emergency registration centres. The seemingly efficient Austrian and German reception contrasted with the disorder prevalent in Hungary.

"It was just such a horrible situation in Hungary," said Omar, arriving in Vienna with his family.

German interior ministry spokesman Harald Neymanns said Berlin's decision to open its borders to Syrians was an exceptional case for humanitarian reasons. He said Europe's so-called Dublin rules, which require people to apply for asylum when they arrive in a first EU country, had not been suspended.

"The Dublin rules are still valid and we expect other European Union member states to stick to them," he said.

In Budapest, almost emptied of migrants the night before, the main railway station was again filling up with new arrivals, a seemingly unrelenting human surge northwards through the Balkan peninsula from Turkey and Greece.

At the station, people handed out clothes, shoes and blankets while children laughed and played football.

But with trains to western Europe cancelled, hundreds set off by foot, saying they would walk to the Austrian border, 170 km (110 miles) away, like others had tried on Friday.

After days of confrontation and chaos, Hungary's government deployed more than 100 buses overnight to take thousands of people to the Austrian frontier. Austria said it had agreed with Germany to allow the migrants access, waiving the asylum rules.

Wrapped in blankets and sleeping bags, long lines of weary people, many carrying small, sleeping children, got off buses on the Hungarian side of the boundary and walked through the rain into Austria, receiving fruit and water from aid workers. Waiting Austrians held signs that read "Refugees welcome".

"We're happy. We'll go to Germany," said a Syrian man who gave his name as Mohammed, naming Europe's biggest and most affluent economy that is the favoured destination of many. Another, who declined to be named, said: "Hungary should be fired from the European Union. Such bad treatment."

Hungary insisted the bus rides were a one-off even as hundreds more migrants gathered in Budapest.

By contrast, the Austrian state railway company OeBB said it had added 4,600 seats for migrants by extending trains and laying on special, non-scheduled services.
Desperate migrants force Hungary's hand
Hungary, the main entry point into Europe's borderless Schengen zone for migrants, has taken a hard line, vowing to seal its southern frontier with a new, high fence by September 15th.

Hungarian officials have portrayed the crisis as a defence of Europe's prosperity, identity and "Christian values" against an influx of mainly Muslim migrants.

Prime Minister Viktor Orban said on Saturday Hungary would deploy police forces along its border with Serbia after Sept. 15 and the army too if parliament approves a government proposal.

"It's not 150,000 (migrants coming) that some (in the EU) want to divide according to quotas, it's not 500,000, a figure that I heard in Brussels, it's millions, then tens of millions, because the supply of immigrants is endless," he said.

For days, several thousand people camped outside Budapest's main railway station. Trains to western Europe were cancelled as the government insisted all entering Hungary be registered with asylum applications processed there as per EU rules.

But the logjam broke on Friday when, in separate rapid-fire developments, hundreds broke out of a teeming camp on Hungary's frontier with Serbia, escaped a stranded train, and took to the highway by foot chanting "Germany, Germany!"

The government appeared to throw in the towel, mobilising a fleet of buses to take them to the Austrian border.

The scenes were emblematic of a crisis - about 350,000 refugees and migrants have reached the border of the European Union this year - that has left the 28-nation EU groping for solutions amid dysfunctional squabbling over burden-sharing.

At an EU foreign ministers meeting in Luxembourg on Saturday, the usual diplomatic conviviality unravelled as they failed to agree on any practical steps out of the crisis. Ministers are especially at odds over proposals for country-by-country quotas to take in asylum seekers.

"Given the challenges facing our German friends as well, all of Europe needs to wake up. (The time for) reverie is over," Austrian interior minister Johanna Mikl-Leitner said.

"Now the continent of Europe is challenged. In this great challenge the entire continent has to give a unified answer. Whoever still thinks that withdrawal from the EU or a barbed wire fence around Austria will solve the problem is wrong."

British finance minister George Osborne said Europe and Britain must offer asylum to those genuinely fleeing persecution but must also boost aid, defeat people-smuggling gangs and tackle the Syrian conflict to ease the crisis.
Aylan Kurdi
Pressure to take effective action rose sharply this week after pictures flashed around the world of a drowned 3-year-old Syrian Kurdish boy washed up on a Turkish resort beach, personalising the collective tragedy of the refugees.

Aylan Kurdi had drowned with his mother and brother while trying to cross by boat on a tiny rubber dinghy to a Greek island.

Hungary has lashed out at Germany, which expects to receive 800,000 asylum seekers this year, for declaring it would accept Syrian requests regardless of where they enter the EU.

Budapest says this has swelled the influx, and like some others in ex-Communist east European states - unused to taking in notable numbers of foreigners - it is resisting calls by some western EU leaders for each member to accept a quota of refugees.

"What happened is the consequence of the failed migration policy of the European Union and the irresponsible statements made by European politicians," Hungarian Foreign Minister Peter Szijjarto said on arrival at the Luxembourg meeting.

The flow of people risking rickety boats to cross the Mediterranean, or baton-wielding police on Balkan borders, shows no sign of abating despite more trips by sea ending in disaster.

More than 2,000 have died at sea so far this year, including 30-40 on Friday who were reported drowned off Libya's coast.

The Greek coastguard said on Saturday that about 13,370 migrants and refugees had been ferried from Greece's eastern islands to Athens since Monday.

A record 50,000 people hit Greek shores in July alone and were ferried from islands unable to cope to the mainland by a government floundering in financial crisis and keen to dispatch them into Macedonia, whence they enter Serbia and then Hungary.
Reuters

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Thousands of exhausted migrants and refugees arrive in Austria and Germany

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Austria and Germany threw open their borders to thousands of exhausted migrants on Saturday, bussed to the frontier by a right-wing Hungarian government that tried to stop them but was overwhelmed by the sheer numbers of people.

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Migrants waited Saturday at Croatia's Harmica border crossing, hoping to be allowed into Slovenia and, eventually, Austria. Credit... Sergey Ponomarev for The New York Times

LONDON - Thousands of migrants poured into Austria on Saturday after being bounced around countries overwhelmed by their arrival and insistent that they keep moving.

Hungary - which had taken the most draconian and visible measures to turn back the exodus, notably the construction of a razor-wire fence along its border with Serbia - partly caved Friday evening. It grudgingly allowed at least 11,000 migrants to enter from Croatia, and then sent them by bus and train to processing centers along its border with Austria.

The Austrian authorities said that about 10,000 people entered the country on Saturday, from Slovenia and Hungary.

"I feel a deep feeling of relief," said Rita Mohager, a Syrian student, after entering Austria from Slovenia on Saturday.

Ms. Mohager, 20, said her treacherous four-week journey had taken her from her hometown, Latakia, through Turkey, Greece, Macedonia, Serbia, Croatia and Slovenia.

Her trip was far from complete: She hoped to make her way to the Netherlands or Norway, to apply for asylum and enroll in school.

The humanitarian crisis in Central Europe threatens to become a geopolitical one. Diplomatic niceties were tossed aside as governments pointed fingers at one another.

In Croatia, which has recorded the arrival of 20,000 migrants since Wednesday - most from Serbia after being blocked from entering Hungary - Prime Minister Zoran Milanovic mocked Hungary's attempt to refuse the migrants. "We forced them by sending people up there, and we'll keep doing it," he said at a news conference.

Hungary's foreign minister, Peter Szijjarto, said of Croatia: "Instead of honestly making provision for the immigrants, it sent them straight to Hungary. What kind of European solidarity is this?"

In Slovenia, which has become the latest epicenter of the crisis, Prime Minister Miro Cerar raised the possibility of a "corridor" that would allow migrants safe passage from the Balkans to points further north and west.

"If the pressure of refugees becomes too severe, we will talk about corridors in the light of joint European agreements," Mr. Cerar said. "If the flow becomes greater, we will encourage actions in such direction."

But there was little indication that European leaders, who have been unable to reach any kind of coordinated and orderly response to the crisis, would embrace such an approach. Germany, the dominant power in Europe, initially laid out a welcome mat for asylum seekers, but then, overwhelmed by a surge of migrants, imposed controls along its border with Austria.

Germany favors a plan that would compel European Union members to take in the newcomers in proportion to their wealth and population, but that proposal has found little support.

Under what are known as the Dublin regulations, migrants seeking to apply for asylum within the European Union must do so in the country through which they first enter the bloc. Austria no longer recognizes Hungary as a valid entry point under those rules; in contrast, Austria said it would turn back anyone entering from Slovenia who had already applied for asylum there.

"Unfortunately, we are not able to exchange information with the Hungarian authorities as we would like to in order to coordinate," Alexander Marakovits, a spokesman for the Austrian Interior Ministry, said on Saturday, adding that Vienna was bracing for thousands more people to enter the country.

Many of the arrivals had been transported from a reception center in Nickelsdorf, Austria, near Hungary, to emergency shelters in Vienna and Graz.

Mr. Marakovits said he was aware of rumors of a plan for a corridor, the idea mentioned by Slovenia's prime minister, but declined to comment on it.

Across the lands of the former Austro-Hungarian and Ottoman Empires, migrants kept marching. At least 1,500 entered Slovenia from Croatia on Friday and Saturday, according to an official at the Slovenian Interior Ministry, Bostjan Sefic. About 1,000 of them were from Syria and Afghanistan, and about 150 from Iraq, Mr. Sefic said at a news conference in Ljubljana, the capital.

In Obrezje, Slovenia, a town on the border with Croatia, migrants braced for another night outdoors. Some wrapped their infants into thick blankets; others erected tents on the grass along the highway; still others made their beds under cargo trucks, which were waiting, like the migrants, to move on.

In Hungary, despite angry anti-immigrant rhetoric from the right-wing government of Prime Minister Viktor Orban, the authorities were evidently resigned to the influx of migrants from Croatia. Hungarian officials brought migrants to Vamosszabadi, Szentgotthard, and Hegyeshalom, near the border with Austria. They were unmolested as they walked toward Austria.

In Beremend, Hungary, on the Croatian border, dozens of buses sent by the Hungarian authorities waited by a cornfield in the baking sun to receive migrants; some 300 arrived in the early afternoon. Aid workers were present, and the migrants were put on buses headed to the Austrian-Hungarian border.

Three military vehicles were parked nearby. It was an orderly scene, in contrast to Wednesday, when Hungarian riot police officers used water cannons and tear gas at a crossing on the border with Serbia, a crackdown condemned by the United Nations secretary general and other world leaders.

But as it granted the migrants passage, Hungary suggested it was only a temporary move. Its soldiers raced to build a razor-wire fence to block more people from entering from Croatia. Crossing the border through that fence or damaging it will be a criminal offense, as Hungary declared on Tuesday with respect to migrants entering from Serbia. At least 17 people have been arrested, charged and sentenced to expulsion since then.

On Saturday, Hungary called up part of its military reserves to replace troops who had been ordered to the borders.

In three locations around Edirne, Turkey, hundreds of migrants are stranded, awaiting news from Ankara, the capital, where several representatives of the migrants hope to meet with Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu. The migrants want to enter Greece or Bulgaria by land; they are fearful of crossing the Aegean Sea, where a number have drowned.

On the Bulgarian side of the border, the police peppered journalists with questions: "Where are the Syrians now?" "What's the situation in Turkey?" and "Are they coming this way?"

A man named Abdullah, from Deir al-Zour, Syria, entered Slovenia on Friday night from Croatia. Earlier in the week, he had spent three days on the border between Serbia and Hungary, now sealed off. With a group of friends, he started walking toward Austria Saturday morning. After 90 minutes at the border crossing, they entered Austria around 3 p.m. and were greeted, with applause, by residents and several aid organizations.

"I spent six weeks on the road," Abdullah said. "I have never been so tired in my life. But I feel safe and happy now. I'm in Austria. Next stop - Germany."

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Thousands of Migrants Flood Into Austria

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LONDON - Thousands of migrants poured into Austria on Saturday after being bounced around countries overwhelmed by their arrival and insistent that they keep moving. Hungary - which had taken the most draconian and visible measures to turn back the exodus, notably the construction of a razor-wire fence along its border with Serbia - partly caved Friday evening.

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In September 2015 a huge refugee wave "hit" Europe and Austria. The most migrants came from Syria, Afghanistan, Iraq and Africa. Civil wars, riots, torture by the system but also poverty made people leave their countries. Thousands of migrants arrived with trains, cars, by foot or by boat. Many people even made profit of the situation and made money by illegal trafficking.

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I created this padlet to give a better insight on the past migrant influx in year 2015. I myself saw day after day all these people sitting at the Vienna Hauptbahnhof waiting. And I will never forget that atmosphere.

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In the small Austrian border town of Spielfeld there are still vivid reminders of the 2015 European migrant crisis, when tens of thousands of people crossed on foot from Slovenia.

Metal barriers and huge tents were erected at the border, where refugees and migrants were sheltered and fed while their asylum claims were processed.

The Austrian government that has come to power in the wake of the crisis has made migration a priority of its European Union presidency.

This week, along with Brexit, migration is set to dominate the informal summit of European Union leaders that starts in Salzburg on Wednesday evening.

As political tensions on migrants run high in the EU, Austria has emerged as one of the hard-line voices.

Rise of Austria's right

The tents of Spielfeld lie empty today, and deserted containers are still equipped with computers and finger-printing machines.

They were last used on 6 March 2016, just after the Balkan route for refugees was closed, says Leo Josefus of Austrian police.

The border management camp is still here "just in case", he says.

"We need about 24 hours to get it working if the refugees come, but nobody knows."

Some 90,000 people applied for asylum in Austria in 2015, about 1% of the country's population.

But while the number of asylum seekers has now dropped dramatically, migration remains key for an Austrian coalition made up of conservatives and the far right.

Taking a tough line on migration has helped conservative Chancellor Sebastian Kurz as much as his Freedom Party partners at the ballot box.

Mr Kurz has been at the forefront of calls to shift the focus, from relocating asylum seekers inside the EU to defending Europe's outer borders.

The young Austrian leader sharing power with the far right

Austria to cut benefits for immigrants

Peter Launsky-Tieffenthal, spokesman for the Austrian presidency, says they hope to see progress in Salzburg on the issue of strengthening Frontex, the European coast and border guard.

"Frontex's mandate should be strengthened, its ability to act on the ground and in the waters of the Mediterranean," he said. "Its resources should be strengthened and its personnel should be increased."

But while there may be movement on Frontex, other splits on migration are all too evident in the EU.

Last week at a conference in Vienna, Italy's far-right Interior Minister Matteo Salvini likened African immigrants to slaves - leading to a spat with Luxembourg's Foreign Minister, Jean Asselborn.

'I can't sleep at night'

An hour's drive north of the border, in a sunny square in Graz, I met a man named Friedrich, who told me migration and integration would never work.

"It's good we have this new government. The left-wing government we had before was a catastrophe," he said.

"We are taking far too many people in, and they don't want to integrate. They want to live at the cost of the taxpayer."

But critics of the government accuse it of deliberately stoking populist fears about migrants and refugees.

Opposition politician Peter Pilz says border controls such as those at Spielfeld "are not about security, but about propaganda."

Migration to Europe in charts

Juncker plans big EU border guards boost

Reality Check: Has the EU reduced migrant deaths?

Since it came to power last year, the government has moved to cut benefit payments to refugees and foreigners as well as to some of the institutions that support them.

In Graz, I visited Somm, an organisation that works to help women refugees and asylum seekers get to know and integrate into Austrian society. Among its activities, it offers German classes and provides translation help at the doctor's or in hospitals.

But its head, Khatera Sadr told me they have had to reduce their programmes because of a lack of funding.

"With the new government, we feel the cuts because fewer German classes are being offered for migrants who don't have asylum status," she said. "We think this is a great shame because the first step towards integration is learning the language."

One of her students, Saleha Yaghubi from Afghanistan, came to Austria in 2016 with her son. They applied for asylum and are waiting to hear if they will be granted the right to stay.

She is nervous.

"When I hear about the new government, I can't sleep at night," she told me. "I wake up and pray that all these problems will go away."

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Austria leads anti-migrant drive at EU summit

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In the small Austrian border town of Spielfeld there are still vivid reminders of the 2015 European migrant crisis, when tens of thousands of people crossed on foot from Slovenia. Metal barriers and huge tents were erected at the border, where refugees and migrants were sheltered and fed while their asylum claims were processed.

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71 people died because illegal human traffickers tried to smuggel them over the boarder and they suffocated in the sealed truck.

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No-one will ever know exactly where the 71 refugees and migrants from Iraq, Syria and Afghanistan died.

The grisly discovery of their bodies in the back of a lorry on an Austrian motorway last August sent shockwaves across Europe. One of the victims, Lida Rahm, was a baby, less than a year old.

They were part of a wave of migrants and refugees heading across the Western Balkans towards Germany and their deaths provided one of the catalysts for borders being opened to allow the influx through.
Europe's migrant crisis:

Rising numbers in Greek camps

Hungary sends in army to push migrants back to Serbia

Migration fears spark Austria border row

Full report

Although most of the bodies have been returned to their families, 13 have been buried at the Muslim cemetery at Liesing on the outskirts of Vienna.

It does not take long to find their graves: the cemetery was only opened in 2008 and is not very full. The graves all show the same final date: 27 August 2015.

Crammed into the back of the small Volvo meat truck, standing room only, the 71 could not have survived for long.

The lorry, emblazoned with pictures of sausages and a chicken's head, had been sealed airtight.

Police believe they may have suffocated within an hour of the lorry starting its journey at Roszke, on the Hungarian-Serbian border early on 25 August 2015.

At the wheel was a man named Mitko, a Bulgarian living in Hungary, with a long police record.

Why was the lorry sealed shut?

Mitko's usual driver was sick that day, so he decided to drive the lorry himself.

But he did not understand how to keep the doors only partially shut, in a way that air could still come in. When he set out from Roszke just before dawn for the 850km (530 mile) journey to Munich, he inadvertently sealed the migrants in.

This is the version of the story told by acquaintances of Mitko in Lom, his hometown, on the shore of the Danube in north-west Bulgaria.

Mitko, 29, started in the used-car business, first repairing, then driving minibuses of Bulgarians to workplaces in Western Europe.

Unpaid speeding fines and the loss of his licence, then a prison term for robbing a filling station, pushed him deeper into trouble. There was always money to be made smuggling cheap cigarettes across the Serbian border into Bulgaria.

When the influx of refugees and migrants gained momentum in 2014 and 2015, organised groups like the one Mitko was involved in shifted to human trafficking.

"Arabs in Turkey organise everything," a Bulgarian smuggler from a rival gang told the BBC. "They have their own people everywhere. Mitko was very close to one of them."

It is not clear when Mitko became aware that his cargo of refugees had died.

On the day he drove across Hungary into Austria, the temperature was baking-hot.

The first thing he may have noticed was the stench of decomposing bodies.

The lorry was found abandoned on 27 August in a lay-by on the A4 motorway near the town of Parndorf in the province of Burgenland, just 30km to the west of the Hungarian border.

That same day the Austrian capital was hosting a summit of European leaders called to discuss a dramatic spike in the migrant numbers heading through the Western Balkans. Among those in Vienna was German Chancellor Angela Merkel.

As they met, police in white forensic suits combed the lay-by near Parndorf for evidence.

A police spokesman said they initially thought the vehicle had been involved in an accident. But there was no sign of a driver.

They then noticed blood and other bodily fluids seeping out of the back of the lorry. When they opened it up they discovered dozens of bodies in an advanced state of decomposition.

How Parndorf changed the migrant crisis

The German chancellor said the leaders in Vienna were "all shaken by this terrible news" and she called on Europe to act together to solve the migrant crisis.

Austria's then-interior minister spoke of a dark day and called on Europe to fight people smuggling together.

"The best way is to build legal ways through Europe. With legal ways we can protect the refugees and the criminals have no chance for the business," said Johanna Mikl-Leitner.

The lorry, meanwhile, was taken to a shed in a lorry park at Nickelsdorf on the Austrian border with Hungary. Officials began the terrible task of extracting the bodies and identifying the victims.

It was only a few days later that Austria opened its border at the Nickelsdorf lorry park, to allow thousands of migrants who had become blocked in Hungary to continue their route towards Germany.

Unwittingly, the migrants walked past the lorry as they crossed into Austria. The forensic work was still going on.

The victims' story

Identifying the victims has proved difficult. One of the 71 is yet to be named. But some of their stories have emerged.

Five of the victims came from Iraqi Kurdistan, according to a Reuters investigative report.

Two of them, Semian Nasser Mohammed, 25, and Nashwan Mustafa Rasoul, 28, were cousins from a well-off family in Dohuk, some 50km south of the Turkish border.

Although their families had tried to dissuade them, the two men took the bus from Dohuk to Istanbul on 11 August.

Both had fought in the Kurdish Peshmerga army against jihadist group Islamic State. Both were disillusioned and frustrated by conditions in Iraq, according to Rasoul's older brother, Sarbast. They wanted to get to Europe, and start a proper life.

Mustafa sold his car to finance his trip.

In Istanbul, the story goes, they met Sediq Sevo, another Iraqi Kurd from Zakho, to whom they had each paid $7,500 (£5,600; €6,600) for the through-trip to Munich.

He arranged transport to the Turkish-Bulgarian border and they walked for at least seven hours across the mountains, before being met by Bulgarian smugglers on the far side, who took them to Sofia.

After several days in a Sofia apartment, they were driven to the Serbian border, trekked through more mountains and were registered by the Serbian police at Dimitrovgrad.

From there, a bus took them to Belgrade, and after several days in an apartment they were driven by car to Horgos on the Hungarian border.

At around midnight on 24 August they walked down the railway across the unguarded Hungarian border at Roszke, past the fence the Hungarian authorities were building, accompanied by an Iraqi Kurd called Bewar.

Bewar was supposed to take them to Germany himself, according to Reuters. Instead, he handed them over to an Afghan based in Budapest, who is now awaiting trial with Mitko.

Back in Iraq, when Sediq Sevo discovered that his clients had perished in the truck at Parndorf, he rang Bewar to complain. Eventually, one of Bewar's men explained the risks of such journeys.

"Explain that to the families [of the victims]...tell them not to complain about Bewar."

Facing trial in Hungary

Mitko is currently in pre-trial detention in Hungary, along with five other suspects, four of them from Bulgaria and one from Afghanistan.

The trial will begin in Kecskemet this autumn, once the police investigation is completed, according to Gabor Schmidt, spokesman for the prosecutor's office in Bacs-Kiskun county.

Mitko's family hopes that his defence lawyer can prove that he was only a small cog in a very long chain - reaching all the way from Afghanistan to Germany.

Hungarian police are confident that he and his accomplices will get close to the maximum 16-year sentence foreseen by laws deliberately tightened last year, to deter potential smugglers.

"This was not the first nor the last human shipment organised by this group," says Zoltan Boross, head of the anti-trafficking unit of the Hungarian police. "That vehicle required a very serious logistical background, with very serious money and a very serious circle of people."

Catching the smugglers

The Nickelsdorf lorry park is no longer full of refugees. Over the past year, first Hungary, then Austria and Western Balkan countries shut their borders to migrants and refugees travelling up from Turkey via Greece.

In April, a border management system, run by the police and supported by the army, was introduced to stop smugglers and illegal immigration.

These days, long queues on the motorway and on the side roads leading from Hungary to Austria are common, as police check cars, vans and lorries at the border for people smuggling migrants.

The police have a scanmobile, which can X-ray lorries for human cargo.

Opposite the shed where the lorry was kept, around 40 cars, used by smugglers, have been impounded by the police. Among them are number-plates from Romania, Poland, Italy and the UK.

Police in this part of Austria say they arrested 84 smugglers here in the first six months of this year.

It was their job to identify the victims in the lorry found at Parndorf, and forensic investigators succeeded with 70 of the 71.

"It was very important for the police to establish who these people were and to inform their relatives about the terrible deaths of their brothers, sisters fathers and sons," said Burgenland police spokesman Helmut Greiner.

Remembering the victims

Most were taken back to their families, including the bodies of Semian Nasser Mohammed and Nashwan Mustafa Rahoul, which were flown home in late September 2015 during the Muslim Eid al-Adha, the Feast of the Sacrifice, and are buried in a hillside cemetery in Dohuk.

But 15 of the bodies were laid to rest in Vienna: the unidentified victim and one other person in the city's Central Cemetery and the rest in the Muslim cemetery in Liesing.

Carla Amina Baghajati from the Muslim community in Vienna, attended one of the funerals. "It was one of the most emotional moments in my life. It is horrible to see the coffins go one by one into the ground."

She has seen a dramatic change in sentiment in Austria toward refugees, and towards Islam, since the lorry was discovered last year.

"While we saw a tremendous wave of help after this tragic accident, things changed. People felt that refugees had come into the country in too large numbers," she said. "It is a very difficult time."

If you drive past the lay-by at Parndorf on the road from Nickelsdorf to Vienna, you can still see a small memorial to the 71 who died.

Flowers and a candle in a glass lantern had been placed close to the site.

"There are always candles there," says Helmut Greiner. "Some people remember."

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Austria's migrant disaster: Why did 71 die?

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No-one will ever know exactly where the 71 refugees and migrants from Iraq, Syria and Afghanistan died. The grisly discovery of their bodies in the back of a lorry on an Austrian motorway last August sent shockwaves across Europe. One of the victims, Lida Rahm, was a baby, less than a year old.