“Anyone who stopped for a moment was shot and their body thrown onto the cart. I walked because the others walked, trudging after them with an empty mind. I no longer thought about whether I wanted to live or not. Nor did I know when this march would end or where they would take us. I was completely apathetic.” In his memoirs, Joseph Fisher recalls the period from 1937 to his liberation from the forest camp at Gunskirchen, having survived the ghetto and the concentration camps of Auschwitz, Gusen I and II, Mauthausen and finally Gunskirchen.
In the final phase of evacuation from late March 1945, concentration camp prisoners were driven on “death marches” to the few camps that remained. Many people were shot on these marches or died of exhaustion. At various points along the routes, the Volkssturm took part in the shootings, including the Eisenerz Volkssturm at Präbichl. The vast numbers of prisoners driven to Mauthausen on death marches overwhelmed the camp's infrastructure. Most were placed in the tent camp and were not registered by name. Like the tent camp at Mauthausen, Gunskirchen satellite camp was established as a temporary reception camp. Between 7 and 25 April 1945, between 17,000 and 20,000 concentration camp prisoners, regardless of gender, age or registration, were forced to undertake the death march on foot from Mauthausen to Gunskirchen. Gunskirchen concentration camp was located in the forest outside the town, isolated from the rest of the population. By contrast, the endless columns of the death marches were visible and left a much stronger impression on local people's perceptions and memories.
