Gusen

Gusen - darkometer rating : 7 - Gusen was nominally a satellite camp of Mauthausen concentration camp in Austria , though it eventually was even larger than the main camp. Today, very little of the camp's original buildings/ structures remain or are visitable – except for a recently added small visitor centre next to the memorial at the camp's crematorium. > More background info > What there is to see > Location > Access and costs > Time required > Combinations with other dark destinations > Combinations with non-dark destinations > Photos More background info: Even before the camp at Gusen was set up, inmates from the nearby Mauthausen concentration camp were marched to work in the quarry here. From late 1939 the first camp at Gusen proper was built and opened in May 1940. Up until about mid-1943, the work at the quarry remained the main form of forced labour for the inmates. Then, work turned increasingly to arms production. In particular, new underground tunnels were built (by camp inmates, under atrocious conditions) to house production facilities, esp. for fighter planes. In 1944 vast tunnel systems were dug under the code name "Bergkristall" – especially for the manufacture of the new Messerschmitt Me-262 fighter plane, the world's first jet fighter plane to enter mass production. Also towards the end of WWII , the camp population increased and more nationalities were represented at Gusen. Initially, most inmates had been political prisoners from Germany , Austria and Poland , later also Soviet POWs, but in the last years of the war inmates from other camps closer to the frontlines were deported to Gusen and Mauthausen , many of them Jews. Eventually Gusen consisted of three separate camps and was larger than the main camp at Mauthausen . These camps were also amongst the deadliest.