Geoff Walden
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Geoff Walden
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Gusen Concentration Camp / Project B-8 "Bergkristall" Tunnel System
Two underground tunnel projects were started in the area of St. Georgen, east of Linz. Inmates from the nearby Mauthausen camp were moved to a satellite camp adjacent to the village of Gusen, where they worked in a stone quarry. Later, a small tunnel system was in place in the hills just north of the Gusen camp. This was called the "Kellerbau" and was used for the manufacture of machinegun parts and submachineguns. A larger underground project was started adjacent to St. Georgen. This was the "Bergkristall" (Rock-Crystal) Project B-8, intended for the mass production of Me 262 jet fighters. This would have been a very extensive project when finished, one of the largest of the German underground manufacturing facilities, having some planned 50,000 square meters of manufacturing space (see also the pages on Thüringen/Kahla/REIMAHG, Nordhausen, and Mühldorf). The B-8 Project was begun in March 1944 and went into production of Me 262 fuselages and parts in early 1945. By the end of the war almost 1000 Me 262 fuselages had been assembled at B-8. The slave laborers from the Mauthausen and Gusen camps suffered one of the highest mortality rates of all concentration camps - nearly 40,000 died there from 1938-45. The B-8 Bergkristall tunnel system was some 85 percent complete when captured by the U.S. Army at the end of the war. On 5 May 1945, the 41st Cavalry Reconnaissance Squadron of the 11th Armored Division overran the site and liberated the remaining prisoners in the Gusen camps. The area was turned over to the Soviet military in the summer of 1945, and they blew up the main tunnel entrances in 1947. The site is accessible today, but is located on private property, and the tunnel openings are sealed. The Gusen I camp crematorium is open as a public memorial. MapQuest map link to Gusen / St. Georgen
Secondary entrance to the Bergkristall system, located just to the southwest of the complex seen above.
KZ-Lager Gusen webpages -- http://www.gusen-memorial.at/index.php
, http://www.gusen.org/gu20101x.htm
, Other concentration camp sites -- Buchenwald, Dora (Nordhausen), Sachsenhausen, Flossenbürg, S/III Jonastal, Ebensee, Mauthausen (Austria)
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Third Reich in Ruins, http://www.thirdreichruins.com/ All contents copyright © 2000-2008, Geoffrey R. Walden; all rights reserved. All photos taken by or from the collection of Geoffrey R. Walden, except where specifically noted. Please respect my property rights, and the rights of others who have graciously allowed me to use their photos on this page, and do not copy these photos or reproduce them in any other way. This page is intended for historical
research only, and no political or philosophical aims should be assumed. This page initially uploaded on 20 July 2000. |
