KZ GUSEN MEMORIAL COMMITTEE

within ARBEITSKREIS FUER HEIMAT-, DENKMAL- UND GESCHICHTSPFLEGE (AHDG)
and Local-International Platform ST. GEORGEN/GUSEN, Austria

KZ Mauthausen-GUSEN Info-Pages

SCOPE OF THESE INFO-PAGES

KZ Gusen I and II in a map prepared by the Allied Combiend Intelligence Units (ACIU) for the strategic bombardement The KZ Gusen I, II and III concentration camp complex was the largest and most brutal within the Mauthausen camp system.

In fact, in 1944 the KZ Gusen complex, with 25,000 inmates, reached double the number of inmates in the central camp of Mauthausen, which had some 12,000 inmates at that time.

New inmates arriving directly by train at KZ Gusen This vast increase of inmates was due to the foundation of KZ Gusen II a few hundred meters west of KZ Gusen I. KZ Gusen II housed some 16,000 inmates deported for the construction and operation of the huge underground plant at St. Georgen/Gusen (B8 BERGKRISTALL-ESCHE 2) and Langenstein (KELLERBAU).

The B8 BERGKRISTALL project involved the first serial assembly of a jet in aviation history, the Me-262. The strategic importance of this project for the Nazi war effort prompted the SS, who managed the construction and operation of the Gusen camps, to create such brutal working-conditions that death rates reached 70 to 90%, depending on the weather conditions.

So few survived the KZ Gusen II "extermination camp", as the KZ Gusen I survivers call it, that nearly all of KZ Gusen II history was forgotten during the last decades.

Thanks to the international cooperation of KZ Gusen survivors and eye-wittnesses from the local population around the three camps, we are now able to make some general information about this giant but forgotten complex available to historians, students and other interested people.

KZ Gusen as it appeared to US liberators and local civilians in May 1945 We also see this KZ Mauthausen-Gusen Info-Pages as the voice of some 40,000 forgotten KZ Gusen victims.

In fact, this forgotten group of victims represents the largest group of victims within the "Mauthausen" system of more than forty camps spread all over "Austria" in that awful period between 1938 and 1945.

Note as well that more people died in KZ Gusen I , II and III than in the related Mauthausen central camp. All in all, the 40,000 KZ Gusen victims represent nearly one-third of all the concentration camp victims on "Austrian" territory!

Furthermore, nearly 80% of all Germans and Austrian sent to "Mauthausen"e; actually died at Gusen. The deaths attributable to KZ Gusen should also include several thousand KZ Gusen inmates who were re-transferred to the "Sanitaets-Lager" outside of the Mauthausen central camp to die from the horrible conditions at KZ Gusen II.

The high mortality rate at KZ Gusen has left us very few survivors. Thus, the history of these camps has been more or less unknown for decades.

However, the official transfer by former KZ Gusen inmates of the Memorial Crematorium KZ Gusen to the Republic of Austria may help to stimulate more professional academic research on this very important, but forgotten, concentration and "extermination" camp complex.

Please also be aware that we collect any information/materials available about the KZ Mauthausen-Gusen camps. So, should you have some, please don´t hesitate to contact us.

We will make all proper material available via our archives to any interested students or researchers in rememberance of the tens of thousands of forgotten KZ Gusen victims.


The following academic thesis were done with material from our archives meanwhile:

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For additional information, comments or suggestions, please contact:

KZ GUSEN Memorial Committee
Most recent updates of this page were made on
2006-03-07 by Rudolf A. HAUNSCHMIED,
Martha GAMMER, Siegi WITZANY-DURDA and
Jan-Ruth MILLS