Interviews with Gusen Survivors

It is of particular importance for the participation process on expanding and redesigning the Gusen Memorial that the opinions and ideas of survivors are properly taken into account. For this reason, in December members of the Mauthausen Memorial team carried out interviews with two Gusen survivors. The results of these interviews will feed into the participation process and the subsequent findings.

In Slovenia Bernhard Mühleder, a member of the education team at the Mauthausen Memorial, interviewed Dušan Stefančič. He had been active in the Slovenian resistance, among other things, and was forced to work as a slave labourer in the ‘Bergkristall’ tunnel complex.

On any future Gusen Memorial, Stefančič said: ‘It will not be entirely as it was. It can’t be. But something that remembers this time should remain.’

Robert Vorberg and Christian Dürr, curators at the Mauthausen Memorial, interviewed Stanisław Zalewski, who now lives in Poland. As a 14-year-old, Zalewski had also been active in the underground in Warsaw. He was deported, imprisoned in several concentration camps, and was finally liberated from the Gusen II camp on 5 May 1945.

Zalewski’s wish for an expanded Gusen Memorial: ‘I wish for this memorial site to be resistant to the winds of history, meaning to the socio-political changes taking place all around the world. And for all current and future nations and generations to understand this place.’