The Newly Founded Gunskirchen-Edt Memorial Initiative

The Gunskirchen concentration camp was a satellite camp of Mauthausen about which little was known for a long time; it existed only in the final months of the war and the events there were barely documented. Reports and photos from the liberators were the first and for many years the only evidence of the horrors in the "Hochholz" (high timber). In addition, there are no structural remains that would indicate the existence of the concentration camp.

As a result, the majority of the local population is unaware of what happened here 80 years ago.

The aim of the Gunskirchen-Edt memorial initiative is therefore to collect and impart knowledge about the historical events and to establish a link to current trends in racism and anti-Semitism.

History of commemoration

Just a few years after the end of the war, the first liberation ceremonies were held by Hungarian Jews in Gunskirchen. In 1994, Antifa Wels took over the organization of these ceremonies together with the communities of Gunskirchen and Edt. The Gunskirchen secondary school took part from the very beginning, and soon the pupils began to play an active role in organizing the celebrations.

The Memorial Initiative Gunskirchen-Edt

There have always been many people who cared about remembering and learning about the history of the camp. However, the Gunskirchen-Edt Memorial Initiative was founded only last July. Members of the Mauthausen Committee Austria, Antifa Wels, the Mauthausen Memorial, the municipal administrations of Gunskirchen and Edt, the Gunskirchen secondary school, and interested private individuals from the surrounding area have come together in this association as a diverse group of committed people.

Activities of the Memorial Initiative

This year, our initiative supported the Mauthausen Memorial's "Geh-Denk-Spuren" project, a three-day hike in memory of the death marches from Mauthausen to Gunskirchen with descendants of survivors (from March 31 to April 3, 2025). On the last day, a memorial plaque was unveiled at the old elementary school in Gunskirchen for the concentration camp prisoners who had to build the barracks in the forest and were housed in the school. At the closing ceremony in the forest, a metal Star of David was laid out with stones that had symbolically traveled the route from Mauthausen to Gunskirchen. These stones bear the names of former concentration camp prisoners - survivors and victims - and are supplemented by stones without names as a symbol for the many nameless victims. The star remains on site as a visible sign of remembrance.

The erection of five columns with texts on the history of the concentration camp and links to further information is at an advanced stage of planning. The columns will be placed in the part of the former camp that the MKÖ purchased a few years ago.

A historian and educational guide from the Mauthausen Memorial offers regular guided tours of the former camp grounds. In cooperation with the Programmkino cinema in Wels, film screenings on the topic are planned, such as "Herr Spielmann und der Wald" ("Mr. Spielman and the forest", the film by the Hochstöger brothers about the life of Shaul Spielmann).

The annual commemoration ceremony is organized by the market town of Gunskirchen, the municipality of Edt and the Wels Initiative against Fascism. The ceremony is co-organized by the Gunskirchen Middle School, Gunskirchen and Edt singing groups, a regional music school, the Gunskirchen Music Association, and our Memorial Initiative. Around the time of the liberation ceremony, the public library will feature films about and books by contemporary witnesses. In addition, members of the initiative offer their privately owned books for loan.

For more information, please visit our website www.lager-gunskirchen.at/english/.