GUSEN MEMORIAL COMMITTEE
KZ Mauthausen-GUSEN Info-Pages
ST. GEORGEN-GUSEN-MAUTHAUSEN
Concentration Camp Mauthausen Reconsidered
ABOUT THE AUTHORS
Siegi-Witzany Durda
| Siegi Witzany-Durda, a native of St. Georgen/Gusen, is married with two adolescent children. She teaches German and English at a private Catholic high school. Growing up in the St. Georgen/Gusen area, she developed an interest in the history of the Gusen camps already as a teenager and felt an urge to dig deeper. She has been an active member of the Gusen Memorial Committee (GMC) since 1996. Her field of activity covers contacts with survivors and guided tours with visitors from English speaking countries as well as from Austria. Teaching the Holocaust is an essential part of her educational work. |
Jan-Ruth Mills
| As a native American, Jan-Ruth Mills earned her MFA at Columbia University in 1983. In 1997 Rudolf A. Haunschmied asked her to edit the English on the Mauthausen-Gusen Info-Pages. At that time, she began researching the Gusen Camps at the Air Force Historical Research Agency at Maxwell Air Force Base, Montgomery, Alabama. Jan-Ruth Mills made the first of many trips to the St. Georgen-Gusen-Mauthausen area in 1998. The next year, she also began yearly research trips to the National Archives and Record Administration, College Park, Maryland. In 2003 Mr. Haunschmied invited Ms. Mills to help expand his 1989 article "Zum Gedenken 1938-1945." Towards this end, the Gusen Memorial Committee (GMC) supported six weeks of research at NARA II in the summer of 2005. At the request of the GMC (and with the help of Mr. Robert Wise at Pima Community College), Ms. Mills began constructing the Gusen Memorial Digital Archives. This growing archives are now permanently available through the cooperation of the East Campus of Pima Community College (http://ecc.pima.edu/~gusen) where Jan-Ruth Mills teaches Holocaust History. Since completing St. Georgen-Gusen-Mauthausen - Concentration Camp Mauthausen Reconsidered with Mr. Haunschmied and Siegi Witzany-Durda, Ms. Mills has been writing a play about the Gusen camps. In early 2008, Ms. Jan-Ruth Mills was awarded Honorary Member of the Gusen Memorial Committee for her dedicated support and active contribution in helping to bring the sacrifice of tens of thousands of forgotten inmates of the former KL Gusen I, II & III Concentration Camps to the attention of a wider public and to keep the memory of the victims alive. |
Rudolf A. Haunschmied
Rudolf A. Haunschmied was born in St. Georgen/Gusen. He grew up and lived in the St. Georgen-Gusen-Mauthausen area
for more than 30 years. Even as a youngster, before his education as a mechanical engineer, he researched the
"lost" history of the concentration camp complex St. Georgen-Gusen-Mauthausen.
His initial interest was raised while attending two grades of primary school in the former DEST Kitchen at St. Georgen and walking past
the DEST administrative center for seven years on his way to school. Later on he took several years of music lessons
in the same building. Eventually, he started to ask himself why such an administrative complex existed in St. Georgen.
It did not seem to fit into the rural area. This questioning was encouraged by first explorative trips into Bergkristall
as a school boy.
In the early 1980s, there were no adults in the area who could give comprehensive answers to his questions.
Their responses contained few details but only the monotonous phrases: Messerschmitt, aircraft, concentration camp inmates.
This lack of information motivated him to research the St. Georgen-Gusen-Mauthausen complex on his own.
He contacted Austrian archives and research institutes, but they were not able to give him sufficient answers either.
He was astonished, when academic historians from the "Dokumentationsarchiv des Österreichischen Widerstands (DÖW)"
in Vienna responded to his query with "Gusen - never heard of it." When he wrote to Hans Marsalek about
survivors of Gusen, he answered: The "Österreichische Lagergemeinschaft Mauthausen" (Austrian Society of former Mauthausen Inmates)
does not know any Austrian who survived Gusen.
After these experiences, in 1986 he became a founding member of Arbeitskreis für Heimat-, Denkmal- und Geschichtspflege St. Georgen (AHDG)
- a local association that dedicated part of its research efforts from the first hour to the lost/forgotten history of the camps in St. Georgen and Gusen.
AHDG gave the Gusen Memorial Committee (GMC) a home until January 2008, when Rudolf A. Haunschmied was again among
the founding members of the now independent Gusen Memorial Committee.
In 1989, on request of the Municipality of St. Georgen, he published "Zum Gedenken 1938-1945" the first history of Complex
St. Georgen-Gusen-Mauthausen. In 1990 the Municipality awarded him its first "Kulturpreis" (cultural award for extraordinary achievements)
for this contribution to local and regional history. Fifteen years later, "Zum Gedenken" became the basis
of St. Georgen-Gusen-Mauthausen - Concentration Camp Mauthausen Reconsidered.
In the interim, together with Volkshochschule der Arbeiterkammer (an adult educational organization of Upper Austria)
he has led excursions to the remnants of the Gusen camps in St. Georgen and Gusen as well as study circles.
Many local people have participated in these activities, seeking a more comprehensive understanding about the
tragedies that took place in the area.
Such efforts on the part of the local population were recognized by survivors of Gusen in the early 1990s,
especially by Mr. Pierre Serge Choumoff. Together with Mr. Choumoff, Rudolf A. Haunschmied organized the first
local-international commemoration at Gusen in 1995. For this purpose, he was among the founders of
"Plattform 75 Jahre Republik" (a platform with more than 30 organizations in the communities of Luftenberg,
St. Georgen/Gusen and Langenstein). This local-international cooperation enabled him in the ensuing years to come
into contact with the many survivors and liberators of Gusen worldwide.
This boosted his learning and research efforts. He was able to collect numerous experiences, memoirs, documents,
photographs, music pieces, interviews, videos, and movies about Gusen.
To establish an exchange platform for this emerging local-international Gusen family, he founded the Mauthausen-Gusen Info-Pages (www.gusen.org) in 1997
(with currently 500.000 visitors each year).
Along with this activity, he first came into contact with Ms. Jan-Ruth Mills who helped him to get this
online exchange-platform into a suitable English. Later, she became a research fellow to him and finally
co-author of the current book.
In addition to his personal research efforts (e.g. Austrian Archives, IfZ Munich, NARA, USAF, NASM, USHMM),
he encouraged others to check different archives on behalf the GMC (e.g. Bundesarchiv Berlin, BStU, IfZ Munich,
NARA, NASM, again). He also collected countless of books about Gusen from all over the world.
So, he was able to build comprehensive documentation about the St. Georgen-Gusen-Mauthausen complex
and make its contents regularly available to students, researchers and other interested persons.
In the years 1995 to 1997 he advised students of the Austrian Academy of Applied Arts Vienna during the initial
planning for a commemorative path between St. Georgen and Gusen. Ten years later, he had the privilege of
advising Mr. Christoph Mayer chm., a young artist now living in Berlin, as this project was finalized.
In May 2007, the resulting "Audiowalk Gusen" (http://audiowalk.gusen.org) was inaugurated by
the President of the Austrian National Assembly, Ms. Barbara Prammer.
In 1996, together with Italo Tibali (a survivor of the Mauthausen/Gusen complex) he organized the first
city partnership between Empoli, Italy, and St. Georgen/Gusen. In 1997 a second between Sesto San Giovanni, Italy,
and Langenstein. (Many Italians were deported from these towns to Gusen in 1944/1945).
In 2000 and 2001, Austrian Federal Minister for the Interior Dr. Ernst Strasser invited Mr. Haunschmied
to participate in the "Reforminitiative Mauthausen" (Austrian state reform initiative on CC Mauthausen).
For instance, one recent achievement would appear to be the opening of the new visitors´ center at Gusen
(http://en.gusen-memorial.at) - for which the GMC and Haunschmied fought for years, hoping to secure a place
to display the GMC´s work with survivors, camp artefacts donated to the GMC for safekeeping, and documents
of its various collections to the full St. Georgen-Gusen-Mauthausen complex.
In the last 20 years Rudolf A. Haunschmied contributed to many publications and documentations on radio and TV.
Examples are:
Publications:
Currently Mr. Haunschmied requests Austrian authorities to get the former underground plant "Bergkristall"
open to the public and to get it an integral part of the official Austrian conception of the "Mauthausen" Museum.
All the work he had done on the St. Georgen-Gusen-Mauthausen complex in the last 25 years was done in his spare-time or leave.
A few weeks ago the Provincial Government of Upper Austria awarded him and other members of the GMC "Verdienstmedaille des Landes Oberösterreich"
(a medal of merit of the Province of Austria) for his dedicated commemorative activities within "Arbeitskreis für Heimat-, Denkmal- und Geschichtspflege St. Georgen/Gusen"
and the "Gusen Memorial Committee".
Mr. Haunschmied hopes that his most recent publication with Jan-Ruth Mills and Siegi Witzany-Durda
will soon help to find competent academic science/research-partners that can help to overcome all
the traditional restrictions along with researching the full story of the St. Georgen-Gusen-Mauthausen complex.
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Rudolf A. Haunschmied * Jan-Ruth Mills * Siegi Witzany-Durda ST. GEORGEN-GUSEN-MAUTHAUSEN Concentration Camp Mauthausen Reconsidered Books on Demand, Norderstedt, 2008 292 Pages, 49 Illustrations (including maps), Paperback, EUR 23,20 [A] ISBN: 978-3-8334-7440-8 |
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