By Christian Dürr, Mauthausen Memorial
The Gusen Camp
The Gusen concentration camp began construction in December 1939 and officially opened on 25 May 1940, with the arrival of over 1,000 Polish prisoners. From the start, it was part of the SS’s plans for the economic exploitation of the granite quarries in the region through the forced labour of concentration camp prisoners. The camp held a special position within the system of concentration camps named after its main camp, Mauthausen, which included over 40 subcamps. More than a subcamp, Gusen was considered a twin camp to Mauthausen.
Especially between 1940 and 1942, Gusen also functioned as an extermination centre within this system. For certain groups, such as members of the Polish intelligence, Spanish Republicans or Soviet prisoners of war, transfer to Gusen often meant a death sentence. Of the over 4,700 Spanish victims of the Mauthausen/Gusen camp complex, more than 3,800 died in Gusen.
Starting in the summer of 1943, the quarry industry lost importance in favour of arms production. Most prisoners were used as slave labour for the construction of factories and armament production. The company Steyr-Daimler-Puch AG (SDPAG) manufactured rifle parts, and the aircraft manufacturer Messerschmitt began producing the Me 109 in Gusen. In response to increasing Allied air attacks, in early 1944 the SS built the tunnel complex known as “Bergkristall” in the neighbouring village of St. Georgen, one of the largest underground armament factories in the Reich.
Prisoners transferred to Gusen for construction work were housed in a new barracks camp known as Gusen II. On 27 and 28 February 1945, the Gusen complex, including subcamps Gusen I and II, as well as Gusen III in Lungitz, which had just opened in December 1944, reached a peak of over 26,000 prisoners.
On 5 May 1945, the Gusen concentration camp was liberated first, followed by Mauthausen, by a reconnaissance unit of the 3rd U.S. Army. Of the at least 71,000 people imprisoned in Gusen I, II, and III between 1939 and 1945, at least 35,800 lost their lives.
Gusen as a Space of Memory
At the end of July 1945, the U.S. Army withdrew from Gusen and Mauthausen, and the two former camps became part of the Soviet occupation zone. What happened to both places in the post-war period was very different. In the case of the former Mauthausen concentration camp, in June 1947 the Soviets handed it over to the Republic of Austria, obligating the Austrian state to preserve it as a space of memory. The Soviet decision was crucial in ensuring that large parts of the former Mauthausen concentration camp have been preserved in their original state to this day.
Meanwhile, at the site of the former Gusen concentration camp, Soviet occupying forces continued to exploit the quarries by creating a new state-owned company called USIA. By the late 1940s, most of the former camp and its facilities had been destroyed through looting or the sale of barracks and construction materials. In the autumn of 1947, the Soviets attempted to disable the “Bergkristall” tunnel system through explosions.
After the withdrawal of the Soviets from Austrian territory in 1955, most of the former camp became property of the Republic of Austria. Some lots were returned to their former owners, but most of the properties of the former Gusen I and II camps were parcelled out and sold as building land. Residential developments were literally built over the foundations of the former camps and still exist today.
Some original buildings from the camps have been preserved to this day. These include the main entrance building and the commandant’s office, known as “Jourhaus“; the prisoners’ brothel building; two two-story brick buildings for prisoners; two barracks used by the SS for administrative purposes and the stone crusher, which was one of the largest in Europe at the time and was built with slave labour from Spanish prisoners, among others. After 1955, all these buildings became privately owned and were used as private residences or for commercial and industrial purposes.
The quarries of the Gusen concentration camp continued to be used for industrial purposes in the decades following 1955. Meanwhile, the victims’ cemetery established immediately after liberation by the Americans was abandoned by the late 1950s, and the remains of the deceased were exhumed.
The only tangible and recognisable remnant of the concentration camp was the old crematorium oven amidst the new residential area. For local and national authorities, it represented a nuisance. The transfer of the oven from its original location could only be prevented thanks to the intervention of international survivor organisations. In the 1960s, they purchased the land on which the remnants of the oven were located and erected a memorial monument at the site. The so-named“Gusen Memorial,” inaugurated in 1965, remains today the main commemorative site for Gusen survivors and the families of deportees from different parts of the world. The Austrian state finally took responsibility for the preservation of the memorial in 1997.
In 2003, a small visitor centre was added to the monument, where a permanent exhibition on the history of the camp was inaugurated in 2005. In the early 2000s, the Republic of Austria also took responsibility for the remains of the “Bergkristall” galleries. A section of about 800 meters in length was technically equipped so that it can now be opened to visitors several days a year.
The Participatory Process
In recent years, the Republic of Austria has negotiated with private landowners linked to the concentration camps in Gusen. In 2021/22, it finally acquired several plots in the area of the former Gusen I camp. Several buildings of special historical value are still preserved there, such as the two SS barracks, architectural remnants of the former formation square (Appellplatz) and the stone crusher. An agreement could not be reached with the owners of the former command centre, the “Jourhaus,” and the two prisoners’ buildings. The Republic also acquired land in St. Georgen, where the main entrances to the “Bergkristall” tunnel system were originally located.
In the coming years, these newly acquired parcels will be transformed into new memorial spaces and will be linked to the Gusen Memorial and other existing commemorative interventions, such as the visitor centre with its permanent exhibition on the history of the camps. In this way, the memorial site of Gusen will be considerably expanded.
To provide the project with the broadest possible democratic basis, the Mauthausen Memorial, the institution tasked with carrying it out, initiated a participatory process inviting various interest groups at the international, national and regional levels, as well as experts from various disciplines. Among them were survivor organisations and family members of victims, diplomatic representatives from countries with citizens deported to Gusen, commemorative initiatives from the Mauthausen/Gusen/St. Georgen region, and residents of the municipalities of Langenstein and St. Georgen.
From mid-2022 to mid-2023, a wide variety of participation formats were organised. These ranged from all-day workshops to focus interviews, informational events for the local population, and a special roundtable discussion with experts from various scientific fields. All discussions in the different participation formats were recorded by the art:phalanx team, which was in charge of the process, and analysed using qualitative methods.
In parallel with the participation formats, a team of architects from the heri&salli studio worked on the foundations of the planning for the future memorial space in the form of a master urban plan, continuously incorporating all the results of the discussions. The final report of the process was published in October 2023 and presents the opinions, expectations and concerns of all participants in the process as a whole. It highlights the topics discussed and reflects, at the same time, the broad consensus on the decisions and guidelines reached by the participants.
The master plan, in turn, provides clear and well-founded recommendations for future design measures. It divides the entire space into different zones, assigns functions to them, proposes specific uses for the existing buildings, recommends the construction of certain new buildings, defines necessary infrastructures and establishes design guidelines. Thus, it will serve as the basis for an international architecture and design competition, which will be the next step of the project.
At the time of writing this text, final preparations are being made for the announcement of the competition, with results expected to be published in the second half of 2025. From then on, the project will enter the implementation phase, which is currently estimated to last until 2031. The result will be a new memorial space that serves both as a commemorative site and as an educational centre.
The focus will be on presenting the historical site, its architectural remnants and its archaeological vestiges. The goal is to make them legible to visitors through design methods and place them in their historical context. In the former SS barracks, a new permanent exhibition on the history of the Gusen concentration camp will be created, which will also provide ample space for educational programs with groups. At the same time, the current visitor centre will house a new exhibition on the history of the site from 1945 to the present.
Additionally, a new building will serve as an information centre and will offer space for offices and a generous storage area for museum objects. In the area adjacent to the stone crusher, a new commemorative space titled “Room of Silence” is planned, while the current Gusen Memorial will remain the central site of commemoration.
On 11 October 2023, the Austrian Federal Government decided to present a draft amendment to the Commemorative Monuments Act to the National Council. The amendment ensures funding for the design process based on the master plan and assigns its implementation to the Mauthausen Memorial. The expansion of the Gusen Memorial is the largest memory project in Austria since the founding of the Mauthausen Memorial in 1949. The international dimension of National Socialist persecution, which is also inscribed in the history of the Gusen camp, demands that the interests of all affected groups at the international, national and regional levels be taken into account.