Mauthausen, Austria. The Gusen subcamp (NebenLager) is built, 4 km from Mauthausen (4,000 prisoners at the end of the year). It is the first of 56 subcamps, distributed throughout the industrial area adjacent to Vienna and the central Upper Austria region. Prisoners are employed in war production (in many cases with machinery placed in tunnels, such as Messerschmidt aircraft, due to Allied bombing raids) and in infrastructure construction (tunnels, plants). In March 1940, the first foreign deportees (i.e., those not from Reich territory) arrive at Mauthausen: 448 Poles. They are followed by Spanish Republican fighters exiled in France (invaded by the Nazis), approximately 8,000 (1,600 survive), Czechs (approximately 4,000), and Dutch Jews (approximately 2,000). Over the years, the majority national group turned out to be Polish, including many Catholic priests. Also in 1940, the first very young people (between 13 and 18 years old) arrived, generally relatives of Spanish Republican fighters. Between the camp and subcamps, the number of prisoners reached approximately 8,200. As we have seen, they were predominantly “political”, destined to grow in number as the war progressed: strikers, resistance fighters of all kinds, partisans, Soviet prisoners of war. In anticipation of the growing number of internees and an increase in mortality (also due to the particularly rigid conditions of discipline and exploitation), the camp was equipped with a crematorium, which was later added to by two more; crematoria would also be provided, later, in the subcamps of Gusen (1941), Ebensee (1944) and Melk (1944).
