Gusen I concentration camp

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Reichsführer SS Heinrich Himmler with camp commandant Franz Ziereis in the "Gusen twin camp"

The Gusen I concentration camp in the village of Gusen , municipality of Langenstein , in the federal state of Upper Austria east of Linz is the second oldest concentration camp (after Mauthausen) of the National Socialists in the entire Gusen / Mauthausen camp complex .

The concentration camps Gusen I, Gusen II and Gusen III together had a higher number of victims than the main camp Mauthausen and, in terms of inmate occupancy, were at times twice as populated with concentration camp prisoners as the "main camp" itself.

overview

"Jourhaus" - the entrance building to KL Gusen I, around 1941

The order for the construction of the Gusen I concentration camp (originally also called “Mauthausen II”) was issued by the Main Office for Households and Buildings on December 22, 1939 to “strengthen the Mauthausen concentration camp”. A part of this "New Camp" in Gusen was built on the land owned by DEST near the "Gusen" and "Kastenhofen" quarries since May 25, 1938, by the "Barackenbau" command, which runs daily from Mauthausen-Wienergraben to Gusen marched. In previous years, prisoners from KL Mauthausen had already marched from the Wienergraben to Gusen every day to work in the DEST quarries there and to open other quarries.

Prisoners building KL Gusen I, 1940

The construction of this new protective custody camp (also called “Poland camp”) took place gradually from the beginning of 1940 in order to kill thousands of Polish intellectuals in connection with the attack on Poland by the German armed forces in Gusen according to the principle of “ annihilation through work ”. From May 25, 1940, the first prisoners stayed overnight in this also provisional camp of the bipolar concentration camp double camp Mauthausen / Gusen, which is also called "KL Mauthausen / Accommodation Gusen" , "KLM / Gusen" , "KL Gusen" or from 1944 on "KL Gusen I" was called when two more concentration camps were set up in the immediate vicinity. Until 1944, the "Gusen Accommodation" was administratively separated from KL Mauthausen in large areas. In KL Gusen, for example, prisoner numbers were assigned and a separate register of the dead was kept. The post and the railroad connection to the warehouse were also made via the nearby market town of St. Georgen an der Gusen .

Dressing up newcomers on roll call square

In order to be able to ensure “extermination through work”, the SS deployed mainly “professional criminals” from German prisons in the core workforce of KL Gusen I. The first transports with Poles to be killed arrived in May and June 1940 from the Dachau , Sachsenhausen and Buchenwald concentration camps . The hard work in the two quarries, the primitive conditions in the makeshift camps and the brutality of the German professional criminals in the prisoner hierarchy quickly made this “new KL” in Gusen a category III concentration camp for prisoners with the Gestapo note “ Return undesirable " .

Prisoner personnel card of the Polish political prisoner No. 382 Jerzy Kaźmirkiewicz

After the murder of thousands of Poles in 1941, the next large group of prisoners were republican Spaniards sent to KL Gusen for extermination through work. From the end of 1941, thousands of Soviet prisoners of war followed, who in 1942 were radically decimated by hard labor, brutality and hunger in a separate “Waffen-SS prisoner-of-war labor camp ” set up within KL Gusen . From 1943 onwards, prisoners in the “ night and fog ” category from Western European countries such as France , Belgium and Luxembourg were increasingly sent to KL Gusen for extermination. From 1944 onwards, large groups of Italians and Jews from Hungary followed , but most of them had already been sent to the then newly established KL Gusen II .

particularities

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SS men with newly arrived Soviet prisoners of war at the KL Gusen I roll call area, October 1941
  • Extensive independence from KL Mauthausen
    • Independent prisoner number system (multiple allocation of prisoner numbers)
    • Independent book of the dead
  • Strategic programs of the WVHA
    • Training center for prisoner stonemasons (including approx. 300 Soviet prisoners between the ages of 12 and 16)
    • Construction of underground production facilities (camouflage name "cellar construction")
  • Scientific institutions
Soviet prisoners of war in Gusen (camp wall and SS kitchen in the background)
  • Methods of mass destruction
    • Dead bathing actions (1941-1942)
    • Gassings in the gas truck (special vehicle) that commuted between KL Gusen and KL Mauthausen (1942)
    • Gassings in the prisoner blocks (1942, 1945)
    • Transports to Hartheim for gassing (1942, 1943, 1944)
    • Plagues and Epidemics (1941, 1942)
    • hunger
    • Cardiac Injections (1940-1945)
    • Drowning in buckets, barrels or excrement pits
  • Camp choir and prisoner orchestra
  • Homosexual excesses by criminal functionaries
  • Extermination program for all prisoners at the end of the war
  • Survivors lynched after liberation

Functional elements

Allied aerial view of KL Gusen I and II (KL Gusen II left, at No. 19)
This prisoner brothel is now a private residence; likewise the “Jourhaus” left behind
  • Protective custody camp (360 × 150 m)
    • Camp wall with electric fence and 6 granite watchtowers (1940–1942)
    • Jourhaus (1942); (Jour is derived from "Jourdienst" = daily service (Jour, French = day).)
    • Roll Call Square (1940)
    • 32 prisoner blocks (1940) as well as additional blocks A, B, C and D (1944–1945)
    • POW labor camp of the Waffen SS within the protective custody camp (1941–1943)
    • Inmate kitchen
    • disinfection
    • Prisoner Brothel (1942)
    • Prisoner Bath (1941)
    • Prisoner precinct (1940)
    • Crematorium with double muffle furnace (1940–1941)
    • Pathological department with museum
    • Archaeological Museum
    • Sewage treatment plant
View of the sewage treatment plant of KL Gusen I
  • Institutions of the SS administration
    • Personal property
    • Workshops for carpenters, tailors
    • Angora breeding
    • Potato rentals
    • Schmidtberger farm (commonly known as "Kastenhofer")
    • Construction office
    • mail department
  • Political Department (branch of the Gestapo Linz)
Partial view of the Gusen SS barracks at the beginning of 1940
  • SS barracks (1939–1940)
    • Guard block
    • 5 accommodation buildings (1939-1940)
    • SS kitchen
    • SS precinct
    • SS-Führerheim and SS-Unterführerheim
    • SS bath with canteen and bowling alley
    • SS brothel
  • DEST operating facilities
    • Operations office
    • Gusen Quarry (1938)
      • Rope crane
      • Masonry shed
      • Wrought
      • Narrow gauge railway
    • Kastenhofen quarry (interruption and upper quarry)
      • Rope crane
      • Stone Crusher (1942–1943)
      • Masonry shed
      • Apprentice hall
      • Explosives chamber
      • Narrow-gauge railways
    • Pierbauer quarry (1941)
      • Narrow gauge railway
    • 9,000 m² factory building for cooperation with Steyr Daimler Puch AG (1943)
    • 9,000 m² factory building for cooperation with Messerschmitt GmbH Regensburg (1944)
    • approx. 11,000 m² underground production facility "cellar building I-III" for Steyr-Daimler-Puch AG and Messerschmitt GmbH Regensburg (1944–1945)
    • Siding (standard gauge rail connection via St. Georgen / Gusen station) (1941–1943)
    • Locomotive shed
    • Danube railway (90 cm gauge) to the Wienergraben operation and to the Donaulände near Mauthausen
    • "Hafenbau" barracks for the "Donauhafen" project (1942–1943).

Work details of the inmates

In front of the construction management of the Waffen SS and Police Gusen
  • for Deutsche Erd- und Steinwerke GmbH (DEST, SS operation):
    • Gusen, Kastenhof and Pierbauer quarry command (1940–1945): 2,800 prisoners
    • Lungitz brickworks command
    • Armaments Command Vienna (1943): 300 prisoners
    • Messerschmitt Armaments Command (BA II) (1943–1945): 6,000 prisoners
    • Armaments command at Steyr-Daimler-Puch AG (Georgenmühle) (1942–1945): 6,500 prisoners
    • St. Georgen housing development command (1940–1942): approx. 300 prisoners
    • Gusen regulation command (1941): approx. 150 prisoners
    • Road construction command
    • Track construction command
  • for the construction management of the Waffen-SS and German Police Gusen near St. Georgen ad Gusen:
    • Construction management command
    • Drainage command
    • Commando lumber yard
    • Railway Construction Command (1941–1943)
    • Donauhafen Command (1942–1943)
  • for SS camp management:
    • Camp command (1940–1945): approx. 400 prisoners
    • Barrack building command (1940–1944): approx. 100 prisoners
    • Potato rental command
    • Shit house command
  • for other clients:
    • Bomb Seeker Command or Dud Command (1944–1945)

Key personnel

  • Command staff (80 to 100 men)
    • Protective Custody Camp Leader I:
    • Protective Custody Camp Leader II:
    • Report leader:
      • SS-HScha Anton Streitwieser , SS-Oscha Kurt Isenberg (1940)
      • SS-OScha Rudolf Brust, SS-Scha Kurt Gangstätter, SS-Oscha Knogl, SS-HScha Kurt Kirchner (1941–1942)
      • SS-OScha Franz Priesterberger, SS-UScha Rennlein, SS-UScha Jörgl, SS-UScha Damaschke
      • SS-OScha Michael Killermann (1943–1945)
    • Labor service leader / labor dispatcher:
      • SS-Scha Kurt Gangstätter, SS-HScha Kurt Kirchner, SS-Oscha Kotzur, SS-UScha Damaschke, SS-OScha Michael Killermann (1940–1941)
      • SS-OScha Kluge, SS-OScha Alfons Gross (1941–1942)
      • SS-Stscha Ludwig Füssl (1943-1945)
  • Guard guard (13 companies of 3,029 men)
    • SS-Hstuf Markus Habben (until 1942)
    • SS-Stbf Alois Obermeier (1943-1945)
  • Function prisoners
    • Camp elders:
      • Hans Kammerer (1940 to January 1941)
      • Helmut Becker (January 1941 to May 1941)
      • Karl Rohrbacher (May 1941 to December 1944)
      • Heinz Heil (December 1944 to March 1945)
      • Martin Gerken (April 1945 to May 1945)
    • Camp Recorder I (Administration):
      • Rudolf Meixner (May 1940 to February 1942)
      • Adolf Jahnke (February 1942 to May 1945)
    • Camp clerk II (work assignment):
      • Erick Timm (until March 1945)
      • Heinrich Lutterbach (April to May 1945)

See also

literature

Movie

  • David Ethan Fisher: 6 Million and One . Germany, Austria, Israel, 2011; Broadcast on arte on April 3, 2013: arte.tv ; Homepage of the author and publisher: fisherfeatures.com

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Memorial Forum

Coordinates: 48 ° 15 '27 .2 "  N , 14 ° 27' 50.1"  E