The former concentration camp Gusen
Gusen is located between St. Georgen and Langenstein east of Linz in Austria and seems to be a normal settlement with detached houses and gardens. Where the village of Gusen is today, there was previously the Gusen concentration camp, for a long time one of the largest concentration camps in Austria and in the immediate vicinity of the main Mauthausen concentration camp.
Camp II was burnt down by the US army shortly after liberation because of the danger of epidemics, and the municipality sold parts of the barracks of Camp I. Wood and stones were used as building material. Ten years after the end of the war, the site was offered and sold as building land. Only the crematorium ovens were integrated into a memorial.
The traces of the concentration camp have all but disappeared – only those who look closely can still recognise the Jourhaus, the former entrance gate to the camp, in the villa on the thoroughfare.
The fact that the memory of the camp has not disappeared is also thanks to the Austrian artist Christoph Mayer chm, who designed the Gusen audio trail here. Equipped with headphones, you are guided through the former camp by a voice. Former SS members, Wehrmacht soldiers, residents and survivors of the camps have their say and tell what would otherwise have remained unspoken. A remarkable project. As Aleida Assmann wrote, the audio trail cuts through the layers of forgetting that had covered the place for years and brings back into consciousness what has been repressed and kept silent. The links to it can be found below.
