Sankt Georgen an der Gusen (also ''St. Georgen an der Gusen'' and ''St. Georgen/Gusen''; lit.: "

Saint George Saint George (Greek: Γεώργιος (Geórgios), Latin: Georgius, Arabic: القديس جرجس; died 23 April 303), also George of Lydda, was a Christian who is venerated as a saint in Christianity. According to tradition he was a soldier ...

's town on the Gusen River") is a small market town in

Upper Austria Upper Austria (german: Oberösterreich ; bar, Obaöstareich) is one of the nine states or of Austria. Its capital is Linz. Upper Austria borders Germany and the Czech Republic, as well as the other Austrian states of Lower Austria, Styria, a ...

Austria Austria, , bar, Östareich officially the Republic of Austria, is a country in the southern part of Central Europe, lying in the Eastern Alps. It is a federation of nine states, one of which is the capital, Vienna, the most populous ...

, between the municipalities of Luftenberg and Langenstein. , the town had 3,779 inhabitants.

History

The town traces back to the 1600s, descendants of settlers like the Stettner and Hödlmayr families moving southwest near Perg and throughout Upper Austria. During

World War II World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposin ...

the town was selected to be the

DEST German Earth and Stone Works (german: Deutsche Erd- und Steinwerke GmbH, ) was an SS-owned company created to procure and manufacture building materials for state construction projects in Nazi Germany. DEST was a subsidiary company of ''Amtsgru ...

-business administration center for exploiting

slave labour Slavery and enslavement are both the state and the condition of being a slave—someone forbidden to quit one's service for an enslaver, and who is treated by the enslaver as property. Slavery typically involves slaves being made to perf ...

in the quarries and later the industries of the

Gusen concentration camp Gusen was a subcamp of Mauthausen concentration camp operated by the SS () between the villages of Sankt Georgen an der Gusen and Langestein in the Reichsgau Ostmark (currently Perg District, Upper Austria). Primarily populated by Polish pris ...

, a

subcamp Subcamps (german: KZ-Außenlager), also translated as satellite camps, were outlying detention centres (''Haftstätten'') that came under the command of a main concentration camp run by the SS in Nazi Germany and German-occupied Europe. The Nazi ...

of the nearby

Mauthausen concentration camp Mauthausen was a Nazi concentration camp on a hill above the market town of Mauthausen, Upper Austria, Mauthausen (roughly east of Linz), Upper Austria. It was the main camp of a group with List of subcamps of Mauthausen, nearly 100 further ...

. In early 1944 the town became the site of " Gusen II", the most brutal sub-camp of Mauthausen. In roughly 40.000 m² of tunnels and caverns dug beneath St. Georgen for the

Messerschmitt Messerschmitt AG () was a German share-ownership limited, aircraft manufacturing corporation named after its chief designer Willy Messerschmitt from mid-July 1938 onwards, and known primarily for its World War II fighter aircraft, in partic ...

company a huge and most modern underground assembly plant for

Messerschmitt Me 262 The Messerschmitt Me 262, nicknamed ''Schwalbe'' (German: "Swallow") in fighter versions, or ''Sturmvogel'' (German: "Storm Bird") in fighter-bomber versions, is a fighter aircraft and fighter-bomber that was designed and produced by the Germa ...

fuselages was operated until May 1945 under the code-name ''B8 Bergkristall - Esche II''. Rudolf A. Haunschmied, Jan-Ruth Mills, Siegi Witzany-Durda: ''St. Georgen-Gusen-Mauthausen - Concentration Camp Mauthausen Reconsidered''. BoD, Norderstedt 2008, In some trials of the

Nuremberg Military Tribunal The subsequent Nuremberg trials were a series of 12 military tribunals for war crimes against members of the leadership of Nazi Germany between December 1946 and April 1949. They followed the first and best-known Nuremberg trial before the Int ...

the relatively unknown term ''St. Georgen granite works'' was used to prevent the use of locations like ''Mauthausen'' or ''Gusen''.

Population

References

Cities and towns in Perg District Mauthausen concentration camp {{UpperAustria-geo-stub