MEMORIAL CREMATORIUM KZ GUSEN
transferred to Republic of Austria!
On May 3, 1997, the story of KZ Gusen I, II and III entered Austria´s official history
when the Memorial Crematorium at KZ Gusen was transferred to the Republic of Austria during
the Local-International Commemoration.
On behalf of Comite International du Souvenier du Camp de Gusen and Amicale Francaise de Mauthausen,
former KZ Gusen I prisoner Pierre Serge Choumoff presented what is undoubtedly the most important
memorial on Austrian territory to Sektionschef Dr. Wolf Szymanski of the Austrian Federal Ministry
of the Interior.
In the early 1960´s, survivors and families of KZ Gusen victims sponsored the memorial with
98,551.91 French francs to prevent the KZ Gusen incinerators´ removal to the Mauthausen Museum.
The initiative to create this international monument for all victims of KZ Gusen I and II
dates back to an International Mauthausen Committee conference in March 1961 in Budapest.
Dr. Ermete Sordo, of Milano, Italy, bought an area of 1750 square meters around the KZ Gusen
incinerators to commemorate his brother who died at Gusen.
Then, in January 1962, the Italian and French Mauthausen Associations founded the
Comite International du Souvenier du Camp de Gusen.
Prof. Roger Heim, a former KZ Gusen inmate and member of the French Academy
of Sciences, Paris, was the first president. Amicale Francaise de Mauthausen led effort
to realize the KZ Gusen Memorial.
Simultaneously, the world-renowned Professor of Architecture Ludovico di Belgioioso,
a KZ Gusen survivor from Milano, Italy who also lost his brother
in KZ Gusen, joined with Professors of Architecture Enrico Peressutti and
Ernesto N. Rogers to design the KZ Gusen
Memorial that Austria has today.
Erected on May 8, 1965, the concrete simplicity of the KZ Gusen Memorial recalls the
devastation of 37,000 human beings in the largest and most brutal concentration camp
on "Austrian" territory.
The memorial´s labyrinthian entrance symbolizes the martyrs´ last path and alludes
to the labyrinths in the KZ Gusen II
underground installations. While the concrete refers, as well, to that huge
tunnel system, the cube-shape echoes the big stone-crusher that marked another dimension
of industrial work and death in KZ Gusen I, II and III, which held more prisoners and
claimed more victims than the Mauthausen central camp.
Errected without a single Austrian contribution twenty years after the liberation of the camps,
the KZ Gusen Memorial is one of the most precious monuments the Republic of Austria will
ever receive.
Since 2004 the KZ Gusen Memorial is acompanied by a visitors´ center
which gives some insight into the history of the former KZ Gusen I, II and III concentration camps.
Today the KZ Gusen Memorial is open to the public during the opening hours of the visitors´center.
For decades the key to the Gusen Memorial was available via the inn Restaurant GUSENER-WIRT
just 100 meters in distance from the memorial building.
Information credit:
- Amicale Francaise de Mauthausen, Pierre Serge Choumoff
- Kuehn Christian, Das andere Bauen, Die Presse, Spectrum 17./18. Juni 2000, Wien
- Local Archives
- Smretschnig Christian, Memorial de Gusen, Bautenkatalog, Seminararbeit zur Gebaeudelehre-Pruefung
unter em. o. Univ. Prof. Arch Anton Schweighofer, Institut fuer Gebaeudelehre der Technischen Uinversität Wien, Wien 2000
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