National Socialism still casts long shadows. With his design of an urn grave in Steyr, architect Bernhard Denkinger has made a dignified memorial to around 800 former concentration camp prisoners. The crematorium and columbarium are idyllically positioned on a hill above the town of Steyr where, thanks to the association "Die Flamme", cremation has a long tradition: in 1927 Austria's second oldest crematorium started operation here. It was designed by architect Franz Koppelhuber and inl938 was taken over by the Ostm?rkische Feuerbestattung. On September 5, 1938 the body of a prisoner was cremated here for the first time, followed up until May 1945 by the remains of probably around 4 500 persons from the concentration camp at Mauthausen and its sub-camps. The exact figure is unknown. In 1948 about 800 urns containing the ashes of concentration camp prisoners were placed in an crypt at the Steyr cemetery. They were only rediscovered in 2011 underneath an asphalted path. Over the decades, along with the earth, a cloak of silence had been spread over them. The Steyr Mauthausen committee under its committed chairperson Mag. Karl Ramsmaier insisted that they be given a suitable grave and commissioned architect Bernhard Denkinger, who had designed the shelter tunnel excavated beneath Schloss Lambert by concentration camp prisoners as a "Tunnel of Remembrance", to produce a design.
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