page_title: Gusen concentration camp
section_title: Liberation
hierarchical_section_title: Gusen concentration camp / Liberation
caption_attribution_description: English: A survivor of Gusen shortly after liberation
context_page_description: Gusen was a subcamp of Mauthausen concentration camp operated by the SS between the villages of Sankt Georgen an der Gusen and Langestein in the Reichsgau Ostmark. Primarily populated by Polish prisoners, there were also large numbers of Spanish Republicans, Soviet citizens, and Italians. Initially, prisoners worked in nearby quarries, producing granite which was sold by the SS company DEST.
  Conditions were worse than at the Mauthausen main camp due to the camp's purpose of extermination through labor of real and perceived enemies of Nazi Germany. The life expectancy of prisoners was as short as six months, and at least 35,000 people died there from forced labor, starvation, and mass executions. From 1943, the camp was an important center of armaments production for Messerschmitt and Steyr-Daimler-Puch. In order to expand armaments production, the camp was redesignated Gusen I, and additional camps, Gusen II and Gusen III, were built. Prisoners were forced to construct vast underground factories, the main one being the Bergkristall, intended for the production of Messerschmitt 262 jet fighter aircraft. Nearly a thousand fuselages were produced there by the war's end.
context_section_description: In late January 1944, there were 7,312 prisoners, which increased to 24,250 in all three subcamps at the end of 1944 and decreased to 20,487 by 4 May 1945.  About 4,000 Warsaw Uprising prisoners were sent to Gusen in late 1944 and additional inmates arrived due to the evacuation of concentration camps in early 1945 as Allied armies approached. By the end of March, there were about 24,000 prisoners in the three Gusen camps. In April, additional prisoners were transferred to Gusen from subcamps closer to the front line.  Many prisoners had become Muselmänner (emaciated), many suffered from typhus, dysentery, tuberculosis, or pneumonia, and some lacked clothes. Overcrowding meant that there were three people to a bunk, and conditions were even worse in Block 31, where those suffering from dysentery were thrown on the floor and denied food.
  In April 1945, Ziereis contemplated murdering the 40,000 prisoners at Gusen by trapping them in the tunnels and detonating them with dynamite. He passed the order on to Seidler and an ammunition depot was set up nearby by 28 April. Two of the five entrances of the Sandkeller tunnels at Gusen I were walled off and explosives placed at the entrances of the Kellerbau and Bergkristal tunnels. This "murderous brainstorming", in the words of historian Daniel Blatman, was never carried out due to the collapse of Nazi authority. Individual SS members began to desert in large numbers on the night of 2–3 May. More SS left the camp in groups on 3 May 1945, with the pretext of fighting the Soviet army, although most, in fact, hid in the surrounding woods and hills. Over the next day, the prisoners gradually realized that they were free; able-bodied prisoners left the camp. Most of the SS had left by the time elements of the United States 11th Armored Division arrived in the early morning of 5 May.
  Staff Sergeant Albert J. Kosiek, in charge of a platoon in the 41st Cavalry Squadron, was ordered to investigate a suspected enemy strongpoint near Mauthausen, and to check the bridge near Gusen which was intended to be used by American tanks. He first reached Gusen III, where the newly recruited guards, formerly firemen from Vienna, were very willing to surrender. Only two American soldiers were left behind to escort them to the American brigade's headquarters. North of St. Georgen, Kosiek encountered a Red Cross representative who told him that there was a concentration camp at Mauthausen and 400 SS who wanted to surrender. Because he did not have enough men to accept the SS surrender, Kosiek tested the bridge and bypassed Gusen II and Gusen I on the way to Mauthausen. Over the next twenty-four hours, the remaining SS burned all documents relating to the Messerschmitt 262 in the Gusen crematorium. Kosiek accepted the surrender of the 800 SS at Gusen while returning to headquarters the next day. More American forces arrived at Gusen later the same day. They found a situation of complete chaos, as prisoners killed each other with weapons abandoned by the fleeing SS. Many of the sickest prisoners had been sealed in barracks without food or water; when the American soldiers opened them it was rare to find more than one or two still alive. A group of kapos responsible for atrocities barricaded themselves in Block 32. Some committed suicide while others were torn apart by the mob.
caption: A survivor
exif: {}