HISTORY

Unlike in most concentration camps, there is almost no documentation on the history of the subcamp Gunskirchen. The prisoners were not registered on arrival, for instance. 
Thanks to survivors´ and liberators´ reports we can still gather quite some knowledge about the camp.

The building of the camp in the forest 
Dec. 1944 - March 1945

In December 1944, several hundred inmates were transfered from Mauthausen to the former primary school in Gunskirchen. They were assigned to build a camp in the forest of Edt bei Lambach. 11 primitive wooden barracks were erected, intended to house about 300 people each. The only half-finished barracks offered no protection to speak of against rain, wind or cold. 

The Death Marches
April 1945 

Because of the advance of the Russian Army in the final stages of the war, tens of thousands of inmates were transfered to Mauthausen from the east. A big number of these were Hungarian Jews, who had been forced to build the so-called "Südostwall" along the south-eastern border of the Reich. 
Consequently the barracks in Mauthausen were extremely overcrowded, and the inmates were put in the "Zeltlager" (tent camp). Very soon, however, this part of the camp couldn´t take the growing number of inmates any more, so Commander Ziereis ordered the evacuation of the Zeltlager in April 1945. The mainly Jewish prisoners were sent to the camp in the forest near Gunskirchen.
On various days in April 1945, several thousand inmates were sent off to march the approximately 37 miles to the subcamp via Ennsdorf, Enns, Kristein, Asten, St. Florian, Ansfelden, Pucking, Weißkirchen and Wels. They got neither provisions nor water on the way.
Everyone who couldn´t walk on and collapsed due to exhaustion was shot or slain by the guards and left lying on the spot where they had been murdered.
The death toll of the marches from Mauthausen to Gunskirchen was the highest of all Death Marches. 
Various monuments along the route of the Death March pay tribute to the victims; it can be assumed though, that many have not been put to rest in a proper or marked grave.
 
  

The Camp
April - May 1945 

Prisoners were not registered in Gunskirchen Lager, so we don´t have any precise numbers nor lists of names. 17,000 to 20,000 people are estimated to have reached the camp, more than 1,000 of them women and children.
Conditions in the camp were unbearable. There was hardly any food and water. The barracks were far too small to take up so many people; so the prisoners had to sleep on top of each other or stacked one behind the other with their legs drawn up.
Those who found no room inside had to sleep out in the open. It rained a lot, and hygiene in the camp was almost non-existent, so typhoid fever spread quickly and took many lives. Every day up to 200 people died of hunger, illness or maltreatment. It was impossible to keep pace burying the dead, so the forest floor was covered with bodies.
  

The Liberation 
May 4th, 1945 

Merely a few days before the end of the war, on May 4th 1945, US American troops discovered the camp. The watch guards had already left the site.
The soldiers of the 71st Infantry Division faced gruesome pictures. They found thousands of inmates, many of whom were closer to death than to life. Some lived to see the liberators only to die soon afterwards from the consequences of suffering and the inhumane conditions in the camp.
Some of those still able to walk got on their way home on their own, many sick inmates were taken to hospitals in Wels, Hörsching and Steyr.

According to liberators´ reports, about 3,000 dead had been buried in mass graves.
In 1979, 1277 bodies were exhumed and interred at Mauthausen Memorial.
We can assume that not all victims of Gunskirchen Lager found a dignified burial place.


Video US-Army, May 1945