" ( ... ) In March 1940 I was brought to Mauthausen to build the Gusen camp . The building tempo had to be accelerated , because the " Aktion gegen die polnische Intelligenz " arrest and murder of Polish intellectuals was designated for the month of April . What no one knew in the home country , we knew – the SS-men who were beating us , told us that we build a camp for our rotten brothers from Poland , who today can still spend Easter uneventfully , without an inkling what awaits them . They called the camp under construction Gusen " Vernichtungslager fur die polnische Intelligenz " extermination camp for Polish intellectuals " . — Stefan Józefowicz , bank headmaster , no. 1129 in Mauthausen , 43069 Gusen . DEST began purchasing land at St Georgen/Gusen in May 1938 . During 1938 and 1939 , inmates of the nearby Mauthausen makeshift camp marched daily to the granite quarries at St Georgen/Gusen , which were more productive and more important for DEST than the Wienergraben Quarry . After Germany invaded Poland in September 1939 , the as-yet unfinished Mauthausen camp was already overcrowded with prisoners . The numbers of inmates rose from 1,080 in late 1938 to over 3,000 a year later . At about that time , the construction of a new camp " for the Poles " began in Gusen about away . The new camp ( later named '' ' Gusen I ' '' ) became operational in May 1940 . The first inmates were put in the first two huts ( No. 7 and 8 ) on 17 April 1940 , while the first transport of prisoners – mostly from the camps in Dachau and Sachsenhausen – arrived just over a month later , on 25 May
Aktion gegen die polnische Intelligenz
Intelligenzaktion
Mauthausen-Gusen concentration camp complex