3,400-Year-Old Prehistoric Artifacts from Gusen Presented for the First Time to the Public

November 9th, 2025

The exhibition “Widerstand – Tod – Überleben. Zu den archäologischen Ausgrabungen des Konzentrationslagers Gusen (Resistance – Death – Survival: On the Archaeological Excavations of the Gusen Concentration Camps)” was opened at the House of Remembrance in St. Georgen an der Gusen along with the 9th International Human Rights Symposium at St. Georgen-Gusen-Mauthausen on November 6, 2025.

This exhibition features significant artifacts, some being up to 3,400 years old and presented publicly for the first time in history along with the conditions under which the concentration camp inmates excavated them and the nonchalance with which Nazi scientists used these findings for their own purposes in the period between 1940 and 1943. Even the Reichsführer SS, Heinrich Himmler, visited this Archaeological SS Museum in Gusen in October 1942 and ordered in October 1943 that this important SS collection be moved to an underground and bombproof depot in Germany.

These extraordinary important artifacts serve as a reminder that civilized people inhabited the area of today's Mauthausen-Gusen-St. Georgen Region of Awareness as early as 3,400 years ago and that these people were already engaged in intensive cultural exchange with other cultures at that time.

The exhibition can be visited at the House of Remembrance in St. Georgen until December 31, 2026.

The exhibition catalog is also available in English and can be downloaded.

The exhibition opening was accompanied by a 2-day, high-profile archaeology symposium at the House of Remembrance in St. Georgen and in the region of the former Gusen concentration camp complex on November 7th and 8th, 2025.

We are proud, that GMC founding member Professor Rudolf Haunschmied has contributed significantly to the development of this exhibition the last years, and his active contribution to the archaeology symposium with two presentations and a one-day bus tour on the traces of the former Gusen complex of concentration camps and the former excavation sites where inmates of former Concentration Camp Gusen I had to work in a very special detail. Prof. Haunschmied also contributed the biographies of the three leading former Gusen inmates who made these excavations a success in the in the exhibition catalogue and the three films produced by Prof. Hubert Chudzio at the University of the National Education Commission in Krakow, Poland (UKEN) about Dr. Wladyslaw Gebik, Prof. Kazimierz Gelinek and Dr. Jozef Iwinski. All three films and an additional film about Dr. Johann Gruber can be watched courtesy of the Mauthausen-Gusen-St. Georgen Region of Awareness at its YouTube channel.

With the participation of the GMC, the symposium and the exhibition are a collaborative project between the Mauthausen-Gusen-St. Georgen Region of Awareness, Plattform Johann Gruber, the Museum of Natural History in Vienna, the Austrian Federal Monuments Authority and the University of Vienna.

Please take a look at the exhibition catalogue, which is available online in Polish, English and German via the website of the Mauthausen-Gusen-St. Georgen Region of Awareness, and plan a visit to this exhibition on your next visit to Gusen.

One of the most significant finds from the former SS Museum in Gusen is a bronze cup dating from around 1300–1200 BCE. Known as the "Gusen-type cup," it is an important representative form of the Late Bronze Age and is among the oldest bronze-sheet vessels in Europe. It was also included in the "Liberation Objects" catalog of the Mauthausen Memorial in 2025.

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