Foreword

May 2025 marks the 80th anniversary of the liberation of the Mauthausen-Gusen concentration camp system. The day of liberation symbolises the end of the crimes committed during the Nazi regime, and every year in May we remember the victims at the sites of the former concentration camps. But for us, commemoration is not limited to a few places and days; rather, it is an ongoing process and form of exchange. We are therefore taking the 80th anniversary as an opportunity to place the liberation at the centre of our activities for 365 days and to take it beyond the memorial sites and out into Austria as a whole – as exemplified by our cooperation project Liberation, Objects!, for which we have created a network with 52 institutions throughout Austria and exchanged information about objects in their collections that relate to Mauthausen and its subcamps. The results are presented in the museums themselves, digitally and in the form of a catalogue.

With our film retrospective in Mauthausen attracting more and more visitors every year, during this Memorial Year we are once again showing feature films related to the history of National Socialism in Vienna as well. Starting in February, each month we will present one film on a Sunday afternoon in cooperation with the Austrian Film Museum. All the films deal with the question: ‘What does a new beginning mean after the horrors of mass extermination?’

The light and sound installation #eachnamematters, which we have been organising together with Ars Electronica since 2021, moves to Vienna for the first time for its fifth year. Over three evenings, names will be projected onto the facade of the Hofburg, from the balcony of which Adolf Hitler announced the ‘Anschluss’ of Austria on 15 March 1938. Against this backdrop, the names of more than 84,000 victims of the Mauthausen-Gusen concentration camp system will be read out during the installation.

Supported by representatives of the victim nations, embassies, and survivor and victim associations, we are organising a joint exhibition of international commemorative symbols, which will be on display in the Memorial Park of the Mauthausen Memorial from May. Commemorative symbols related to Mauthausen and its subcamps that were erected in the countries of origin of those murdered in the concentration camp system will give visibility to the memory work done outside of Austria.

Syrian artist Judy Mardnli has been working at the Mauthausen Memorial since 2023, processing his impressions of the historical site through his paintings. The special exhibition Paths to Freedom opens in January and forms the starting point for an outreach programme that offers schoolchildren the opportunity to talk to and work with the artist.

In addition, we have also significantly expanded the range of themed tours on offer in order to shed light on as many aspects of the liberation as possible and give participants the chance to discuss them with us. Two longer commemorative walks will take place in memory of the ‘Mühlviertel Hare Hunt’ and the death marches to Gunskirchen.

Working with our cooperation partners, we will also use public space to explore the topic of liberation, with the aim of reaching as many people as possible and involving them as active participants in remembrance. This is intended, on the one hand, to show the broader context and make the extent of the camp system comprehensible. On the other hand, remembering our history concerns each and every one of us; it is only together that we can preserve it for the future.

Involving many of our long-standing partners in all of the activities taking place during the Memorial Year also sends a strong signal. I would like to thank everyone for their willingness to walk this path together, because it is only as a strong community that we can give remembrance a future.

We warmly invite you to join us during the Memorial Year – for our activities, projects and events.

Be part of our community of remembrance!

DDr.in Barbara Glück
Direktorin KZ-Gedenkstätte Mauthausen/Mauthausen Memorial

Dr. Barbara Glück
Director, Mauthausen Memorial