GUSEN - Vorhof zur Hölle

First published in Poland in 1961, these memoirs by Mag. phil. Jerzy Osuchowski to the former KL Gusen complex of concentration camps are now available for the first time in German as a publication by the Gusen Memorial Committee (GMC).

They were translated by his granddaughter Isabelle Hochauer and edited and commented by GMC founding member Professor Rudolf A. Haunschmied in years of effort.

The memoirs of Jerzy Osuchowski are among the most important and essential works in the canon of memorial literature on the former KL Gusen complex of concentration camps and are a harrowing documentation of the conditions, actors and methods in these death camps, which were designed from the start to exterminate entire groups of prisoners in the neighborhood of the former KL Mauthausen concentration camp.

With ruthless openness and remarkable objectivity, Osuchowski describes in this important book the merciless and highly corrupt wolf society that was established by SS in Gusen primarily with German-speaking prisoner functionaries in order to achieve the planned extermination quotas for the various groups of prisoners there.

This is the reason for the striking differentiation between the privileged "Germans" and the prisoners of other nations in this book, which degenerated into an unprecedented lynchorgy in the hours after the liberation of that "Hell of Gusen" in May 1945.

"GUSEN – Vorhof zur Hölle" [GUSEN – Antechamber of Hell] is therefore also a key literature for the study of Nazi concentation- and death camps in general and a very important warning of the diabolical destructive potential that can be unleashed, especially in Inhumans.

The book was officially presented to the public by Prof. Haunschmied along with the international commemoration at Memorial Crematorium KZ Gusen on May 6, 2023.

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Jerzy Osuchowski * Isabelle Hochauer * Rudolf A. Haunschmied (ed.)
GUSEN – Vorhof zur Hölle
Books on Demand, Norderstedt, 2023
396 Pages, 53 Illustrations (including aerial photographs),
Paperback, EUR 29,90 [D]
ISBN: 978-3-7568-7689-1

Find more details about this GMC-publication on the BoD-Website.