At the former roll call area of the Gusen concentration camp in the Mühlviertel municipality of Langenstein, official Austria is commemorating the victims of the concentration camps tonight. Around 71,000 people from almost 30 nations were held captive in the Gusen concentration camp, a subcamp of Mauthausen, until it was liberated by the US Army on May 5, 1945. 36,000 of them did not survive.
The prisoners had to pay an enormous price in blood to construct an underground tunnel system in which the Nazis operated secret armaments production under the code name “Bergkristall”.
The commemoration in Gusen had been neglected for decades. After heavy criticism from home and abroad, the republic bought up parts of the area last year and is now holding an official commemoration there for the second time. In addition to the President of the National Council Wolfgang Sobotka, Chancellor Karl Nehammer (both ÖVP) and several representatives of the Federal Government, ambassadors of the victim nations, the head of the International Holocaust Memorial Jad Vashem, Dani Dayan, and the Gusen survivor Stanislaw Zalewski are expected.
