Location: 20 km (12 mi) East of Linz Map
Established: August 8, 1938
Liberated: May 5, 1945 by the US Army
Perished: 119,000 people
Open:
9am-5pm daily (last admission 15 minutes before closing)
Closed: Dec 24-26, Dec 31, Jan 1
Cost: €2 adults, €1 children
The Mauthausen concentration camp was the largest Nazi concentration camp in Austria, the Ostmark, from 1942 the Alpen- und Donau-Reichsgaue. It was located 20 kilometers east of Linz in Mauthausen and existed from August 8, 1938 until its dissolution after the liberation of its inmates by US troops on May 5, 1945. Around 200,000 people were imprisoned in Mauthausen and its subcamps, from which killed more than 100,000. Since 1947 there has been a memorial of the Republic of Austria on the site of the former concentration camp.
On March 22, 1938, ten days after the
"Anschluss" of Austria, the Reichsfuhrer SS Heinrich Himmler announced
in Linz: "The Führer has approved and ordered that the Austrian
Schutzstaffel may set up two standards, one standard of the available
troops with 3 storm banners and a standard of the Totenkopfverbande with
also three storm banners, which will come to Upper Austria.”
This
was only an indirect announcement of the construction of the
concentration camp, because at that time the SS Totenkopf units were
only deployed in the concentration camps; but also in March 1938
Gauleiter August Eigruber announced: We Upper Austrians will receive
another, special award for our achievements during the combat period.
The concentration camp for the traitors of the people from all over
Austria came to Upper Austria.
Founding of Deutsche Erd- und
Steinwerke GmbH
The history of the Mauthausen concentration camp
began with the founding of a GmbH by the SS. The main reason for this
was the expansion of power and the desired independence of the SS from
the state apparatus.
On April 29, 1938, shortly after the
annexation of Austria to the Third Reich, Deutsche Erd- und Steinwerke
GmbH (DEST) was founded in Berlin. From the time it was founded, it was
an advantage for DEST that the main administration for all concentration
camps was first with the SS Executive Headquarters (SS-FHA) until March
16, 1942 and with the SS Economic and Administrative Main Office (WVHA)
from March 19, 1942 .
From the start, DEST was able to access
cheap labor from the concentration camps. One of DEST's first actions
was the acquisition and commissioning of quarries near Flossenbürg,
Gusen and Mauthausen. This was also decisive for the establishment of
concentration camps near these cities. Important granite quarries were
located near Mauthausen and Gusen. At that time, large quantities of
granite were needed for the so-called Führer buildings, and at
Mauthausen and Gusen there was also the fact that Hitler planned to make
Linz a “Führer city”, for which large quantities of granite were also
needed. Mauthausen and Gusen are only 15 and 12 kilometers east of Linz
on the Danube.
Establishment of the camps
On May 16, 1938, the
SS put the Mauthausen quarry into operation with 30 forced labourers,
and on August 18, 1938 the final handover of the quarries to DEST took
place. The quarrying operations in Gusen were also acquired by DEST on
May 25, 1938 through purchase and later through expropriation and
subsequently formed the center of the Mauthausen granite works with
works group management in St. Georgen an der Gusen.
The first
prisoners in Mauthausen were 300 Austrian and a few German police
preventive detention prisoners. They arrived at the concentration camp
on August 8, 1938 from the Dachau concentration camp. With them came the
first guards from SS Totenkopf units. The first commander of the
Mauthausen concentration camp was Albert Sauer.
On November 27,
1938, the first train with prisoners arrived at Mauthausen station.
Mauthausen main camp – camp level III
From March 1939, the
Mauthausen concentration camp was expanded into an independent camp.
Around 200,000 people were deported to Mauthausen and its subcamps
by 1945. There were people of over 30 nationalities. About 2.5 percent
of the inmates were women. Young people and children were also arrested
and murdered.
For unknown reasons, the Mauthausen concentration
camp was the only category III concentration camp in the territory of
the Reich. Category III meant annihilation through work. One reason for
this may be the isolated location of the camp at the quarries. The
decree by Reinhard Heydrich (Head of the Security Police, the SD and SS
Obergruppenfuhrer) states that camp level III is "...for heavily
burdened, incorrigible and at the same time criminally convicted and
antisocial, i.e. hardly educable protective prisoners of Mauthausen". .
A total of 197,464 prisoners were imprisoned in the concentration
camp. The last prisoner number - 139,317 - was issued on May 3, 1945,
not counting the Soviet prisoners of war who were murdered by the
"Aktion Kugel".
Around 120,000 prisoners perished or were
murdered as a result of forced labor in the countless commandos and
sub-camps of the camp, more than a third of them in the nearby Gusen
concentration camps.
On the orders of Himmler, the first of ten prisoner brothels was
set up in Mauthausen in June 1942. Women who were classified as
"asocial" were forced to do this. Many of these women who were
forced into prostitution came from the Ravensbrück concentration
camp for women. If women contracted a sexually transmitted
disease, they were made available for medical experiments.
Pregnant women were subjected to forced abortions.
Until
the 1990s, those affected were not considered victims of Nazi
rule and received no compensation.
The commandant of the Mauthausen concentration camp was initially
Albert Sauer, who officially held this position from August 1,
1938 to April 1, 1939. From mid-February 1939, Franz Ziereis
acted as camp commander; he remained so until the dissolution in
1945. He was supported by an I., II. and III. Protective custody
camp commander as head of the prisoner camp and commander of the
SS guards. From March 1940 to 1945, SS-Hauptsturmfuhrer Georg
Bachmayer acted as I. Schutzhaftlagerfuhrer, as II.
Schutzhaftlagerfuhrer between 1938 and 1945 SS-Obersturmfuhrer
Johann Altfuldisch, as III. For a time, the leader of the
protective custody camp was SS-Hauptscharführer Anton
Streitwieser, who was later promoted to officer.
On May
23, 1944, SS-Obersturmfuhrer Otto Riemer was dismissed as
commandant of the prisoner camp. SS Obersturmfuhrer Anton Ganz
became his successor. He had previously served at Mauthausen,
Ternberg and Wiener Neustadt. In May 1944, four SS leaders, 128
SS subordinates and a 475-strong guard were under his command.
See also: Category:Mauthausen concentration camp staff
escape and manhunt
On the night of February 2, 1945,
about 500 Soviet officers attempted to escape from death block
20; almost all of them were murdered during the three-week
persecution campaign that followed (see also the so-called “post
duty” of the concentration camp guards). This war crime became
well known in 1994 through the film Hare Hunt - There is no
mercy because of sheer cowardice. Some of the eleven survivors
were hidden or cared for by the population until the end of the
war. In May 2001, a first memorial stone was erected in Ried in
der Riedmark. On May 7, 2006, a memorial was ceremoniously
handed over in Gallneukirchen, where around 20 refugees who had
already been miserably abused had been murdered.
Additional incinerators, which had been
dismantled before the crematoria in the Auschwitz-Birkenau
concentration camp were blown up, were to be set up before the
end of the war. It has not been proven whether this plan was
delayed by the SS construction manager himself or by prisoners
until the end of the war.
Shortly before the liberation,
prisoners were murdered in the concentration camp, the exact
number of which is unknown.
In April 1945, the SS began
destroying all files that referred to their crimes in the camp.
This also included the dismantling of the gas chamber that had
been set up in 1941 in the basement of the infirmary. The
technical equipment of the gas chamber such as the gas filler
neck, exhaust air fan and doors were dismantled but were later
secured on the camp grounds. The SS men then fled and the
prisoners were guarded by the Volkssturm and the Vienna Fire
Brigade.
On May 5, 1945, the camp was liberated by the
advancing troops of the 3rd US Army's 11th Armored Division.
Louis Häfliger, who was in the camp as a delegate of the
International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) to accompany a
food transport, played a major role in this.
The
Mauthausen and Gusen I, II and III concentration camps were the
penultimate to be liberated. The Stutthof concentration camp
near Danzig was liberated four days later.
On May 16, 1945, Heinrich Dürmayer read out the following “Mauthausen Oath” for the International Committee on behalf of all former political prisoners of Mauthausen:
“The long stay in the camp has deepened our understanding of the values
of the brotherhood of peoples.
Faithful to these ideals, we swear,
in solidarity and in common agreement, to continue the fight against
imperialism and national incitement. Just as the world was liberated
from the threat posed by Hitler's supremacy through the joint efforts of
all peoples, we must regard this freedom that we have fought for as the
common good of all peoples.
Peace and freedom are the guarantees of
the happiness of peoples, and building the world on new foundations of
social and national justice is the only way towards peaceful cooperation
between states and peoples. After we have achieved freedom and after
fighting for the freedom of our nations, we want to keep the
international solidarity of the camp in our memories and draw the
lessons from it: We will walk a common path, the path of the indivisible
freedom of all peoples, the path of mutual respect, the path of working
together in the great work of building a new, free world that is just
for everyone.
We will always remember the great bloody sacrifices of
all nations that fought for this new world.
In memory of the blood
shed by all peoples, in memory of the millions of brothers murdered by
Nazi fascism, we pledge that we will never leave this path. On the
secure foundations of the international community, we want to erect the
most beautiful monument that we can erect to the fallen soldiers of
freedom: THE WORLD OF THE FREE MAN.
We turn to the whole world with a
call: help us in this work. Long live international solidarity! Long
live freedom!"
The Austrian federal government has
set up a museum in a building of the former concentration camp; the rest
of the camp and the adjoining quarry are now a memorial site.
Many nations and victim groups have created memorials and plaques on the
site for their victims and for the liberation struggle. There is also a
monument of the GDR there with the words of Bertolt Brecht: "O Germany
pale mother / how your sons have treated you / that you are sitting
among the people / a mockery or a fear!"
Since 2003 there has
also been a newly built visitor center outside the site, designed by
Herwig Mayer, Christoph Schwarz and Karl Peyrer-Heimstätt.
In the
largest contemporary witness project of its kind after Steven
Spielberg's Shoah Foundation, the Mauthausen Survivor Documentation
Project questioned 859 survivors from 20 nations according to the same
pattern, also about the time afterwards: "How do the survivors explain
their survival?" There are 2000 hours of interviews on film and
MiniDisc. The memorial's visitor center shows 20 edited videos. The
unevaluated material awaits financing and translation of the mostly
native-speaking surveys.
May 5, the anniversary of the liberation
of the concentration camp by the Allies, has been celebrated in Austria
since 1998 as a national day of remembrance against violence and racism
in memory of the victims of National Socialism.
In January 2007,
hurricane Kyrill caused severe damage to some of the buildings in the
former concentration camp, especially Barrack 1. Emergency measures were
taken to secure the damaged buildings, and the restoration lasted until
2009.
An archaeological project is also being carried out as part
of the redesign of the memorial.
On November 27, 2007, a
commemorative plaque was unveiled at Mauthausen station. On November 27,
1938, the first train arrived here; In the years that followed, tens of
thousands of prisoners had to walk more than three kilometers to the
camp.
With effect from January 1, 2017, the federal institution
"Mauthausen Concentration Camp Memorial/Mauthausen Memorial" (in short:
Mauthausen Concentration Camp Memorial) was established with its own
legal personality. It is intended to contribute to anchoring and
preserving knowledge about the National Socialist mass crimes in the
former Mauthausen concentration camp, in the former Gusen concentration
camp and in all satellite camps in the public memory, to promoting
social reflection on their causes and consequences, on references to all
forms of To educate and counteract racism, anti-Semitism, xenophobia or
genocide.
In 2018, a Mauthausen Memorial Research Prize will be
awarded for outstanding research work on the history of the Mauthausen
concentration camp complex and related topics for the first time. This
is intended to stimulate research into the history of the National
Socialist camps in Austria, with particular attention being paid to
promoting young researchers. The research prize is endowed with 5000 €
and can be split between two prizewinners.
In January 2006 it became
public that members of the Braunau Bulldogs football fan club had posed
in front of the concentration camp memorial with the Hitler salute. Some
of them were sentenced to suspended prison terms in the same year for
being involved in Nazi activities.
On the night of February 11th
to 12th, 2009, on the evening before the start of the Austrian Civil War
in 1934, the outer wall of the memorial was daubed with right-wing
extremist slogans for the first time. In February 2010, election
candidates from the Wels citizen list “Die Bunten” posed in the area of
the former extermination rooms. In March 2010, 13,000 people in a
Facebook group called for the reopening of the Mauthausen concentration
camp for "child molesters". In May 2014, the memorial was the target of
a neo-Nazi smear campaign for the third time. This time a 20 meter long
slogan was sprayed on a wall.
On the night of May 7th, 2015, the
70th anniversary of the end of World War II and two days before the
celebrations of the 70th anniversary of the liberation, the official
website of the Mauthausen Memorial was attacked and hacked. The content
was replaced with child porn images and derogatory sayings. The Ministry
of the Interior, which oversees the memorial, immediately had the
website, which is managed by an external company, taken offline until it
was restored to its original condition. Investigations were launched
against the perpetrators.
In November
2018, a former concentration camp guard was indicted by the Berlin
public prosecutor's office for being an accessory to murder in more than
36,000 counts. Accordingly, Hans H. is said to have worked in the
Mauthausen concentration camp between the summer of 1944 and the spring
of 1945. According to the public prosecutor's office, he wanted to
promote or at least facilitate the thousands of killings of camp inmates
by the main perpetrators through his security work. The background to
the indictment is the case law of the Federal Court of Justice that a
conviction for being an accessory to murder in a concentration camp does
not necessarily require proof of participation in specific killings, but
that mere involvement in the killing machine can also be sufficient.
On August 9, 2019, a list of the Spanish prisoners murdered in the
Mauthausen-Gusen concentration camp was published by the Spanish
Ministry of Justice.
Even before charges could be brought against
him, a former security guard died in May 2021 at the age of 95, who was
accused of having shot 19 prisoners of war. After his death, the case
was discontinued.
Dmitry
Karbyshev was a Lieutenant General of Engineer Corps in the Soviet Army.
During World War II he was sent to the front line to stop advancing
German troops. In August 1941 Karbyshev participated in the fighting at
the Dnieper River in Mogilev Region. Here was hit by an artillery
barrage and suffered post- concussion syndrome. He was captured by the
Nazi German forces while unconscious. He was held in several
concentration camps including Hammelburg, Flossenburg, Majdanek,
Auschwitz, Sachsenhausen and finally Mauthausen.
Nazi officials attempted to elicit his cooperation with tortures and continuous intimidation, but failed to achieve any collaboration. Despite his advanced age he became one of the most active leaders of the camp resistance movement in the Mauthausen Concentration Camp. Unfortunately underground movement was discovered. On February 17, 1945 Karbyshev along with other 500 Soviet soldiers were kicked out on the street from their barracks. Here they were doused with cold water and left over night. The next morning they were found frozen. Karbyshev was awarded the title of the Hero of the Soviet Union on August 16, 1946. This incident became one of the most famous examples of violence in this concentration camp. Today his memory is commemorated in Mauthausen with a statue on the open courtyard.
Construction of the camp
The task of the first prisoners was to
build the first four barracks and to work in the quarry. A few months
later the camp already had 14 barracks and most of the prisoners were
employed in the quarry.
The camp was later divided into three
parts: Camps I, II and III:
Camp I was built first. These first
20 barracks were built between 1938 and 1940. Camp II consisted of
barracks 21 to 24 and was built in 1941, and Camp III consisted of six
barracks and was built in the spring of 1944.
There was also the
deliberately misleadingly called sick camp, which was located south of
Camp I. This sick camp was initially also called the "Russian camp"
because it was actually built in October 1941 for Soviet prisoners of
war. This part of the camp consisted of ten barracks. On March 14, 1943,
684 sick people were transferred from the special infirmary to the
"Russian camp", which now served as a death asylum and was regularly
prepared by selections or "actions" to take in further emaciated and
sick prisoners. In the spring of 1944, 9,000 prisoners were counted in
the main camp, almost half of whom were vegetating in the medical camp
without being cared for. At the end of January 1945, most of the
prisoners who had been “evacuated” from the Auschwitz concentration
camp, and in the course of February from Gross-Rosen and Sachsenhausen,
came to the medical camp. The arrival of the evacuated prisoners from
the Vienna camps and the Lower Danube in April made the situation even
worse.
In addition to the sick camp, there was also the tent
camp, which was located north of Camp I. It consisted of six large and
eight small military tents, was occupied in December 1944 and belonged
to the main camp until April 8, 1945.
There was also a detention
building that was built between 1939 and 1940 and contained 33 cells of
5.4 m² each. Then there was the so-called infirmary, a stone building in
Camp II that was not completed, but the left half of which could be
occupied in 1944. A third crematorium oven was put into operation there
in April 1945.
Finally, there were the laundry and kitchen
barracks, which were built between 1938 and 1941. A normal barracks in
the camp was 52.61 meters long and 8.22 meters wide. It was also divided
into two parts: Room "A" on the left and Room "B" on the right. Each
parlor consisted of two rooms, the living room and a bedroom. However,
most of the prisoners were only allowed to stay in the sleeping room,
since the living room was also reserved for the prisoner functionaries
as a sleeping room.
The main camp was secured by a 2.5 meter high
enclosing wall with a length of 1668 meters. The wall was crowned by a
380 volt electrically charged fence. The exception was the northern part
of camp I, where the rear of barracks 5, 10 and 15 was only an electric
fence. The infirmary was secured by a double barbed wire fence that was
charged with high-voltage electricity. The total area of camps I, II
and III, including the roll call area, was about 25,000 m², the sick
camp was about 15,000 m² and the tent camp was 16,000 m².
atrocities of the SS
Everyday life in the camp was designed to
"destroy" the prisoner, rob him of his dignity and torment him as much
as possible. The prisoners had to obey every order, and the SS men had
an inexhaustible imagination when it came to “destroying” and
humiliating the prisoners. The prisoners had to For example, standing at
attention for hours or jumping out of windows 10 to 20 times during the
night and rolling in the dirt and then washing their clothes.
During the Mauthausen typhoid epidemics of 1940-1941, vexatious lice
checks were carried out every evening. Often a prisoner was simply
beaten to death or drowned if he had lice. The inscription on the
posters posted in the Mauthausen barracks (a large black louse on a
yellow background) could hardly have been more drastic: A louse – your
death.
One of the particularly serious atrocities was the so-called “Death Stairs”, a stone stairway that connected the “Wiener Graben” quarry with the actual Mauthausen concentration camp. Several times a day, those involved in the stone carrier commando dragged blocks of granite up the 186 steps of the stairway, 31 meters up. The "Death Staircase" was the site of numerous accidents and murders of prisoners, committed by kapos and the SS guards.
Inscription at the foot of the stairs of death:
"At the time of
the concentration camp, its steps, which are uniform today and of normal
height, were randomly arranged, unequally sized boulders of the most
varied shapes. The boulders, which are often half a meter high, required
a great deal of effort to climb. Among other things, the SS amused
themselves by kicking and blowing butts in the last rows of a descending
column, so that when they fell, they tumbled down the steps in a wild
heap, dragging those in front of them with them. At the end of a working
day, when the march to the camp began with a stone on their shoulders,
the SS men who formed the end of the march spurred on stragglers with
punches and kicks. Anyone who couldn't come along ended up on this death
ladder."
"Parachuting Wall"
The path from the top of the
stairs of death up to the camp sometimes leads just past the slope of
the quarry. A 50 meter high, almost vertical rock face was used by the
SS to throw prisoners down, where their bodies were either crushed by
impact with the rock or they drowned in the rainwater pond.
Inscription at the foot of the “Parachuting Wall”:
“Many hundreds of
prisoners were thrown down this steep wall in the quarry. They crashed
at the foot of the wall or drowned in the deep pools of water. Inmates
who could no longer endure the torture often threw themselves down this
wall. The SS dubbed these doomed men with gruesome jokes ‘parachutists’.
The first group of Dutch Jews who came to Mauthausen in the summer of
1942 were thrown down this wall by the SS.”
Simon Wiesenthal
reports:
“Jews in Mauthausen were rarely shot. The Wiener Graben was
intended for them. On a single day, on March 31, 1943, 1,000 Dutch Jews
were thrown down from a height of more than 50 meters before the eyes of
Heinrich Himmler. The SS called them 'parachutists'. The brown folk
enjoyed themselves!”
camp penalties
The daily routine of the
camp was different from the daily routine of other concentration camps,
which was mainly due to the fact that the SS group leader Theodor Eicke
had his very special methods of running a camp - especially when it came
to his list of punishments. These punishments accompanied the entire
daily routine. Eicke had previously gained "experience" in the Dachau
concentration camp. He also adopted the penal decrees issued in the
Dachau concentration camp.
The official penal measures in the
Mauthausen concentration camp were administrative penalties (food
deprivation, detention), imprisonment, imprisonment in the dark and
corporal punishment. The fines generally included penal labor under the
supervision of an SS Unterfuhrer, a "ban on writing letters" or
receiving letters, deprivation of food when working full-time and, in
the worst case, induction into the concentration camp's penal company
(until autumn 1943 and for almost all foreigners ), which was tantamount
to a death sentence. The punishment company had to do the hardest work,
e.g. B. carrying the heavy granite blocks up the so-called "death
stairs". This was the name given to the stairs that led from the quarry
up to the camp, although the condition did not correspond to that of a
staircase, since they were very steep and the step spacing was very
different. Today the 186 steps of the stairway are easier to climb as
the stairway has been renovated. The arrest penalties were usually
combined with beatings with a stick; the tightened arrest was carried
out in the darkroom, without the possibility of lying down or sitting.
The main form of corporal punishment was beating with a bullwhip. The
number of hits was between 5 and 75. If there were more than 25 hits,
the prisoner, regardless of nationality, had to count out loud in
German, and if he miscounted or made a mistake, the prisoner started
over. According to regulations, the criminal act should only take place
in the presence of an SS doctor, which was never the case.
According to an instruction from Heinrich Himmler dated December 2,
1942, corporal punishment should only be used as a last resort. As a
result, corporal punishment always had to be reported to the
concentration camp inspector, which was often far too complicated for
the camp commander. From that date on, caning was used very rarely in
the camp. As a further disciplinary treatment, there was the so-called
goal or punishment. The prisoners affected had to stand near the camp
gate for hours, days and nights while passing SS men hit or kicked them
“for fun”. One of the worst abuses or punishments was the "hanging on
the pole", which was often committed in Mauthausen. The prisoner's hands
were tied behind his back with a rope about the thickness of a finger.
The victim was then hung from this rope on the crossbeam of a barracks
at a height of about 2 meters so that the body was floating freely in
the air. The entire body weight rested on the joints that were bent
backwards.” This torture caused severe stretching pains in the muscles,
clouding of consciousness and, after 30 minutes, loss of consciousness.
Crematoria
Until May 1940, the corpses of the Mauthausen
prisoners were burned in the Steyr and Linz crematoria. Camp crematoria
were set up in Mauthausen and Gusen from 1940, and later also in the
Melk and Ebensee satellite camps. The Kori and J. A. Topf & Sons
companies built a total of three furnace systems in the Mauthausen main
camp, which were located in the basement area of the detention
building and infirmary and ultimately consisted of three cremation
furnaces of different designs. They were not in use at the same time,
since the double-muffle incinerator (No. 3) was not put into operation
until April 1945, when incinerator No. 2 had already been shut down due
to a lack of fuel oil. Up to eight corpses were cremated in the furnaces
at the same time, the ashes were mostly dumped over the embankment at
the so-called "ash heap" or scattered on various construction sites.
Insufficient food
Meals in Mauthausen:
"Morning: About 5
deciliters of extract soup with some fat or 5 deciliters of mostly
unsweetened black substitute coffee. Midday: 7 to 10 decilitres of swede
stew, which consisted of about 200 g of grated fodder turnips, 50 g of
potatoes, 20 g of fat, 20 g of meat, some flour or foodstuff and water.
In the evening: 300 to 400 g brown bread and 25 g sausage or less often
25 g margarine. On Saturday evening or Sunday there was a tablespoon of
jam and a tablespoon of curd cheese instead of the sausage.”
– Hans
Marsalek
The energy content of the food was nowhere near
sufficient for the heavy work that the prisoners had to do. The
situation was better in some satellite camps. Nevertheless, most of the
prisoners were undernourished. From 1942, sick people received only half
the ration of workers.
“Out of hunger, in the Revier, i. H. in
the camp hospital 'corpses grown'. If a prisoner died in the
hard-to-reach upper bunks, the neighbors would hide his death and “catch
up” for him. They might even sleep with the corpse all night. My
neighbor on the 20th block cultivated a corpse for 2 days.”
– Milos
Vitek: former Mauthausen prisoner (AMM V/3/1)
Work assignment
The workload was always 11 hours. An exception to this were the
stonemason apprentices who worked 9 hours. The prisoners were woken at
4:45 a.m. in summer and at 5:15 a.m. in winter. The same procedure then
took place every morning: the prisoners had to get up immediately and
make their beds perfectly, then quickly get dressed and queue for the
toilets and bath (8 toilets and 5 minutes for 250 to 600 prisoners),
then quickly the Organize the locker and then queue again - this time
for the food. Then the procession for roll call took place in front of
the barracks. This was always the same: the prisoners, arranged in rows
of 20 barracks on the right and left, waited on the roll call area for
the SS men to appear. After a report and a "Caps off, caps on" the roll
call was over and the camp elder called out: "Form a work detail". After
a short time, the columns could then march to their respective
workplaces. Until the spring of 1944 there were three roll calls a day,
in the morning, in the afternoon and one last time in the evening. After
that there were only two, morning and evening. The inmates who worked in
the workshops and inside the main camp still had to report for roll call
at noon, except for the service personnel who worked in the SS quarters
and infirmaries. In the evening, after the prisoners returned from work,
from 6:00 p.m. or 7:00 p.m., depending on the time of year, the evening
roll call took place. This roll call was always carried out precisely,
since the time required for it was deducted from the prisoners' free
time. If things went well, the roll call lasted only 30 minutes,
sometimes an hour or two and in special cases, such as e.g. B. an
execution or escape, up to three hours. After roll call, the food was
distributed. Theoretically, the prisoners were free until 8:45 p.m., but
that hardly ever happened because you had to queue for a long time for
the toilets and washrooms. By 8:45 p.m., all the prisoners had to be in
their respective barracks, and from 9:00 p.m. it was bed rest. However,
lice, clothing or locker checks were very often ordered in the evenings
in order to harass the prisoners and shorten their nights' sleep. As a
result, the prisoners were often only able to sleep for six hours.
Leisure
The prisoners were free on Sunday afternoon. They used
their free time to straighten the prisoners' clothes, do mending work,
darn socks (if they had any, most of the prisoners only had footcloths),
cut their hair and shave. There were seldom performances by the inmate
band or boxing or soccer tournaments on Sundays. However, few inmates
had the strength to participate. From 1943 there were also football
teams from the individual ethnic groups in Mauthausen.
Murders of prisoners by means of poisonous gases were committed
between 1941 and 1944 in Hartheim, between 1941 and 1942 with a gas van
between Mauthausen and Gusen and from 1942 to 1945 in a gas chamber on
the site itself.
camouflages
The execution sites set up in the
Mauthausen concentration camp (gallows, shooting sites, gas chambers),
crematoria and brothels were designated as special buildings. In
official parlance, the gas chamber was camouflaged as a "disinfection
facility", and transports to the Hartheim gassing facility were labeled
"Dachau sanatorium", "Ybbs an der Donau sanatorium and nursing home",
"rest home", "rest camp" and "Bad Ischl" veiled.
gas chamber
The gas chamber was set up in the immediate vicinity of the crematorium
in the fall of 1941 in the basement of the shell of the infirmary. In a
small adjoining room was the device with which the Zyklon B gas was fed
into the chamber. The gassings were mainly conducted by the commando
leader of the crematorium, SS Hauptscharführer Martin Roth, but other SS
leaders such as the garrison doctor Eduard Krebsbach also led such
murders and operated the gas filling device. Between 30 and 80 people
were murdered in the gas chambers, in some cases up to 100 people.
Researchers disagree on the completion and beginning of the gassings,
but no SS leader in the post-war trials denied the existence of a gas
chamber. When questioned on May 24, 1945, the camp commander Franz
Ziereis stated:
"In the Mauthausen camp, by order of the SS garrison
doctor, Dr. Krebsbach built a gassing facility disguised as a bathroom.
In this camouflaged room, prisoners were gassed with Zyklon B..."
The dates of completion and commissioning are either March or May
1942. The gas chamber was initially used almost exclusively for
officially ordered executions and only in the final phase of the war for
the murder of the sick or those unfit for work. The exact number of
victims could not be ascertained, but based on the available documents
and witness statements, a minimum number of 3,455 was named who were
murdered in the Mauthausen gas chamber. In April 1945, 1,200 to 1,400
people were murdered in the Mauthausen gas chambers. The last gassing in
a Nazi concentration camp took place on April 28, 1945 in the Mauthausen
gas chamber.
The structures of the gas chamber have largely been
preserved, but today's visitor will not find the original condition.
Before the camp was liberated, the SS had the technical equipment of the
gas chamber, such as doors, exhaust air fans and gas filling nozzles,
dismantled and stored on the premises. They were found there by the US
Army, described and illustrated in the "Taylor Report", but were lost
except for the fan. When the memorial was set up in 1948/1949, the gas
chamber was reconstructed with different doors and the wall of the
adjacent gas cell was rebuilt. The surviving inmates were concerned with
illustration and a dignified memorial, not with scientific
documentation. Revisionists took advantage of this deficiency, denying
the previous existence of a gas chamber or speaking of a "dummy".
However, the archaeological finds found in the building in 2009
substantiate the earlier statements about the gas chamber.
gassing wagon
In Mauthausen there was a gassing wagon that was
manufactured in 1941 by the camp locksmith. According to witness
statements, it was used from the fall of 1941 to the summer or fall of
1942. The vehicle drove the approximately five-kilometer route to the
Gusen subcamp, during which prisoners who were unable to work or sick
and weak were murdered. According to witness statements, there were up
to 40 trips, which means a number of victims of at least 900 prisoners.
Gas chamber in Hartheim Castle
After the end of Action T4 in
August 1941, the existing facilities in Schloss Hartheim and the
associated personnel were used seamlessly to murder and cremate
prisoners classified as unable to work for Action 14f13, which began in
April 1941. Up until the last transport of prisoners on December 11,
1944, an estimated 12,000 prisoners from Mauthausen, Gusen and other
concentration camps were killed there.
The concentration camp had over 40 satellite camps, the largest being
in Gusen, Ebensee and Melk. Many of the prisoners in the satellite camps
had to work for the armaments industry, e.g. B. in the construction of
aircraft parts, guns, tanks or in the construction of underground tunnel
systems for armaments production. A large part of the satellite camps
were located in Upper Austria and near Vienna. Shortly before the end of
the war, more than three quarters of the prisoners in the Mauthausen
camp system were imprisoned in the satellite camps. Of the at least
90,000 victims of the Mauthausen camp system, around a third probably
died in the main camp in Mauthausen, a third in Gusen and a third in the
other satellite camps.
Gusen I, II and III
The construction of
the Gusen I subcamp began in 1939, at that time still under the name KL
Mauthausen/Gusen accommodation. Gusen was 4.5 kilometers west of
Mauthausen. The camp was initially set up by two work details,
consisting of 400 Austrian and German prisoners, who had to march from
the Mauthausen concentration camp to Gusen every morning. The
construction of this part of the Gusen concentration camp double camp
system Mauthausen/Gusen became necessary because the daily work done by
concentration camp prisoners in Gusen already in 1939 clearly exceeded
the daily work done by prisoners in the DEST operation Wiener Graben. In
March 1940 the first barracks were ready and immediately occupied by the
members of the two work details. But as early as May 24 of the same
year, 200 prisoners were transferred back to the Mauthausen
concentration camp as “sick”. And so the next day the remaining
prisoners were registered as the first Gusen prisoners. However, 1082
Poles arrived from the Dachau concentration camp on the same day. In
Gusen, the prisoners were told that they would now be "retrained to
become useful people in the Third Reich". In the months that followed,
another 4,000 Polish intellectuals came to Gusen for "retraining".
The Gusen I concentration camp consisted of 34 barracks, of which 24
were prisoner barracks, two workshop and storage barracks and six sick
barracks, which were followed by four more in the winter of 1943/44.
There were also two stone buildings. In the winter of 1940/41, a
permanent crematorium was built in Gusen I, in which the corpses of
prisoners were burned from January 29, 1941. The prisoners of KL Gusen I
had to work, among other things, in the Gusen quarries, in tunnel
construction and in the arms industry (Hirtenberger Patronenfabrik),
where, for example, they made parts for carbines, submachine guns or
Daimler-Benz aircraft engines for the DEST cooperation partner
Steyr-Daimler-Puch manufacture AG. The code name for this production was
z. B. "Georgen Mill".
On March 9, 1944, the Gusen II camp was
opened. It was built for up to 16,000 inmates who had to work in tunnel
expansion for the top-secret Luftwaffe project “B8 Bergkristall” for the
assembly line production of Messerschmitt Me 262 jet fighters. Other
cover names for the top secret production in Gusen II were "Esche II" or
"Linz 2".
About ten months later, in December 1944, Gusen III was
opened for another 262 prisoners. The prisoners of Gusen III had to work
on the construction of the Lungitz bakery and in a spare parts store for
the Messerschmitt GmbH manufacturing plants in St. Georgen and Gusen.
Since the maxim of the Gusen I, II and III concentration camps was
"extermination through work", all prisoners there who were sick or weak
were quickly murdered or killed. A total of 67,677 prisoners were
imprisoned in the Gusen concentration camps, of whom 31,535 were
officially killed. If you add to this number z. For example, if you add
the countless prisoners who were not even registered in Gusen, who were
murdered in the Hartheim Nazi killing center or transferred to the
"Mauthausen medical camp" to die, or who died after the liberation,
44,602 victims can be attributed to the Gusen concentration camps. The
Gusen camps were liberated by the US Army on May 5, 1945.
Part of
the quarrying operations were continued into the 1950s by the Soviet
state company Granitwerke Gusen. The Gusen Memorial was inaugurated in
1965 and the Gusen Visitor Center was added in 2004. Since 2007, the
Gusen Audio Trail has also been leading through the areas of the former
Gusen I and Gusen II concentration camps.
Melk
The Melk satellite camp in the Birago barracks was opened on April
21, 1944 for 500 prisoners and existed for exactly one year. It was
housed in the buildings of the pioneer barracks above the village and
had its own crematorium. Like the prisoners in the Ebensee subcamp, the
prisoners in Melk, who included many children and young people, had to
drive tunnels into the mountain. The Melk subcamp ran under the code
name "Quarz" because most of the tunnels were driven through quartz
rock. The prisoners had to work in three shifts without safety
precautions and with the tunnels being insufficiently secured. As a
result, there were often fatalities, and transports from Mauthausen
regularly had to bring “prisoner supplies”. In the winter of 1944/45,
six tunnels were completed, all for Steyr Daimler Puch AG, which had
ball bearings produced there.
During the entire existence of the
concentration camp, 5000 prisoners lost their lives. As in other camps,
many of them were either killed with heart injections, "shot while
trying to escape" or gassed in Hartheim Castle. As in the other camps,
many of them were also murdered by their guards. The camp was cleared in
mid-April 1945 as Allied troops were approaching. The children and young
people came to Mauthausen, the adults to Ebensee.
Guntramsdorf/Wiener Neudorf
The concentration camp subcamp was
founded on August 2, 1943 under the name "KL Wiener Neudorf". It was
mostly in what is now the municipal area of Guntramsdorf. The entire
camp consisted of about 80 wooden barracks (including foreign and forced
labor camps), 34 of which were buildings on the actual concentration
camp site, which was surrounded by an electrically charged fence.
With additional workers, the construction and production of the
aircraft engine works should be accelerated. Prisoners from the
Mauthausen concentration camp who had experience in metal processing and
construction work were the most requested.
Between 1943 and 1945,
up to 3,170 concentration camp prisoners (peak in September 1944) were
imprisoned in the aircraft engine works, the companies
Steyr-Daimler-Puch AG, Rella & Co., Hofman and Maculan, Himmelstoss and
Sittner, Ing. Czernilowski and Saurerwerke Zehethofer as well as used as
forced laborers in small businesses and in agriculture in the
municipalities of Guntramsdorf, Wiener Neudorf, Laxenburg, Achau and
Vienna.
Other prisoners are listed under the category "Death Victims in
Mauthausen Concentration Camp".
Heinz Apenzeller, born 1918; † 2007,
until recently active on the board of the Austrian camp community
Mauthausen (ÖLM).
Francisco Aura Boronat, born 1918; † 2018, Catalan
anti-fascist and CNT member.
Yehuda Bacon, Israeli artist
Otakar
Batlička, Czech radio amateur, globetrotter, writer and resistance
fighter
Bruno Baum, German KPD and SED functionary
August
Baumgarte, German communist and chairman of the VVN Lower Saxony
Józef Bednorz, Polish politician and journalist
Georg Benjamin,
German physician and resistance fighter
Richard Bernaschek,
resistance fighter and leader of the Schutzbund
Friedrich August
Bockius, German lawyer, politician of the German Center Party and member
of the Reichstag
Francisco Boix, Spanish republican and photographer,
witness at the Nuremberg trials, hid and thereby saved many images of
camp life
Hanuš Bonn, Czech poet, literary critic and translator
Jan Buzek, Polish politician
Lucien Bunel, known as Père Jacques de
Jésus, French Father (Gusen I)
Adolf Burger, Slovak printer, author
and journalist
Edmund Bursche, Polish Protestant theologian, church
historian and pastor (Gusen I)
Paul Le Caër, French dentist and
resistance fighter
Marcel Callo, Catholic youth worker from France,
beatified in 1987 (Gusen II)
Oscar Caminneci, Italian-German
equestrian athlete and author
Roberto Castellani, former President of
ANED Prato (National Association of Former Political Deportees)
Jean
Cayrol, French poet, essayist and novelist (Gusen I)
Josef Cebula,
Polish priest, martyr
Józef Cyrankiewicz, later Prime Minister of
Poland
Józef Czempiel, Polish Catholic priest and martyr, beatified
Antoni Czortek, Polish boxer
Franz Dahlem, German politician
Theodor Decker, German trade unionist
Melvine German, see Anna
Friessnegg - Ludwig Friessnegg - Anna Manzer - Edi Stecher
Stanisław
Dobosiewicz, Polish writer (Gusen I)
Joseph E. Drexel, German
publisher
Heinrich Dürmayer, Chairman of the International Committee
Władysław Dworaczek, Polish educator
Witold Dzierżykraj-Morawski, a
colonel in the Polish Army, posthumously promoted to the rank of general
Peter Edel, German graphic artist and writer
Edith Eger,
Hungarian-American psychotherapist and writer
Jenő Elephant,
Transylvanian painter of the classic modern era
Adam Englert, master
tailor (ladies tailor) from Sommerau (Eschau). Prisoner number 725. Born
on December 16, 1876 in Sommerau, murdered on September 8, 1941. A
plaque in the Sommerau cemetery commemorates him.[60]
Hanuš Fantl,
Czech poet
Adolf Fierla, Polish poet and writer
Leopold Figl,
later Austrian Chancellor and ÖVP co-founder
Stefan Filipkiewicz,
Polish painter (Gusen I)
Noach Flug, Polish economist and diplomat
Roman Frister, Polish journalist
Manuel Garcia-Barrado, Spanish
Republican, Director of the Mauthausen Memorial
Frederick
Geussenhainer, physician, German resistance fighter of the Hamburg White
Rose
Edward Godlewski, Colonel in the Polish Armed Forces and one of
the leaders of the Polish Home Army
Gusztáv Gratz, Hungarian
publicist, journalist, politician, historian, economist
Jose Carlos
Gray Key or Carlos Greykey, Afro-European and anti-fascist resistance
fighter from Spain (see below)
Johann Gruber, Austrian resistance
fighter (Gusen I)
Stanisław Grzesiuk, Polish poet and singer, author
of Five Years Concentration Camp (Gusen)
Adam Grzybowski, Polish
political prisoner
Israel Gutman, Polish historian
Alfred Haag,
German KPD MP
Hans von Hammerstein-Equord, Austrian writer and
politician
Rudolf Hartmann, German writer and communist politician
Sebastian Haselsberger, Austrian Catholic priest, shot "while trying to
escape" on April 4, 1944
Wilhelm Heckmann, German concert and
entertainment musician
Otto Heller, Austrian KPÖ theorist, writer,
journalist and resistance fighter
Otto Hirsch, German lawyer and
politician
Felix Hurdes, Austrian lawyer, politician and co-founder
of the ÖVP
Harry Hüttel, resistance fighter, communist and political
leader of the Red Aid Berlin Prenzlauer Berg
Iakovos Kambanellis,
Greek writer (wrote a novel about Mauthausen as well as the lyrics for
the Mauthausen songs by Mikis Theodorakis)
Dmitri Mikhailovich
Karbyshev, Lieutenant General of the Red Army
Ivan Katz, German
politician
Jerzy Kaźmirkiewicz, Polish scientist
Wilhelm Kling, German politician
Heinrich Kodré, Austrian officer
and resistance fighter
Gottfried Könzgen, German workers' secretary
of the KAB
August Kraft, Country Director of Jehovah's Witnesses in
Austria
Lovro Kuhar, stage name Prežihov Voranc, Slovenian writer and
politician
Leo Kuhn
Erich Kuttner, Austrian resistance fighter
Włodzimierz Laskowski, Polish Catholic priest and martyr, beatified
(Gusen)
Jan Łęga, Polish politician and cultural figure
Hermann
Lein, Austrian resistance fighter
Bruno Max Leuschner, German trade
union leader
Gábor Ligeti, brother of György Ligeti
Hans Maršálek,
Austrian resistance fighter and camp clerk
Heinrich Maier, Austrian
Roman Catholic priest, educator, philosopher and resistance fighter
Luigi Massignan, Italian psychiatrist
Franz Josef Messner, Austrian
resistance fighter
Curt Mezger, German-Jewish entrepreneur and head
of the Milbertshofen Jewish camp in Munich.
Conny Hannes Meyer
(doubtful), Austrian writer and director
Walter Munke, German writer,
journalist and resistance fighter
Antonín Novotný, Czech communist,
President of Czechoslovakia from 1957 to 1968
Miklós Nyiszli,
Romanian-Hungarian physician and author
Leopold Obermayer, Swiss
lawyer
Jan Stanisław Olbrycht, Polish physician and university
lecturer
David Olère, Polish artist
Wiktor Ormicki, Polish
geographer and university professor (Gusen I)
Rajmund Pajer,
Slovenian-Italian youth
František Pecháček, Czechoslovakian gymnast
Peter van Pels, known as Anne Frank's roommate
Otto Peltzer, German
journalist, athlete and coach
Mario Piccioli, President of ANED
(National Association of Former Political Deportees to Nazi
Concentration Camps), Florence
Karol Piegza, Polish writer, teacher
and folklorist
Hans Pollnow, German psychiatrist
Martin Pötzinger,
German Jehovah's Witness, later a member of the Governing Body of
Jehovah's Witnesses
Kazimierz Prószyński, Polish photographer and
inventor of one of the first film cameras
Gustaw Przeczek, Polish
writer and teacher
Heinrich Rau, German politician
Jacques
Renouvin, French resistance fighter
Lionel Romney, African from Sint
Maarten as of June 25
Kazimierz Rusinek, Polish Minister of Labor and
Social Affairs 1945–1952
Hans Schiftan, German resistance fighter
Hans Seigewasser, German politician
Ota Šik, Czech-Swiss painter and
economist
Henryk Sławik, Polish politician, diplomat and social
worker who saved more than 5000 Jews during the war (Gusen I)
Ludwig
Soswinski, Austrian lawyer, communist
Stanisław Staszewski, Polish
poet and writer, father of musician Kazik Staszewski
Rudi Steffens,
German Communist (KPD) and KJVD official
Gustav Steinbrecher,
Brunswick SPD politician
Josef Streit, German politician
Mike
Staner, Polish writer
Karol Śliwka, Polish politician
Italo
Tibaldi, Italian writer and historian
Grzegorz Timofiejew, Polish
poet (Gusen I)
Josef Teufl, state chairman of the illegal KPÖ Upper
Austria
Eduard Urx, editor of Rudé právo
Andrzej Wantuła, Polish
Lutheran theologian and Bishop of the Evangelical-Augsburg Church in
Poland (Gusen I)
Heinrich Weber (1885–1944), German trade unionist
Lois Weinberger, protagonist of the democratic Catholic resistance,
later federal minister, vice mayor of Vienna and city councillor;
Co-founder of the ÖVP, the ÖAAB and the ÖGB
Edgar Weil, German
dramaturge, husband of the writer Grete Weil
Johann Baptist Welsch,
German homosexual drag artist from Cologne
Simon Wiesenthal, Austrian
architect, publicist and writer
Otto Wiesner, German writer
Othmar
Wundsam, Wehrmacht soldier, Austrian resistance fighter ("enemy
favoring" of the parachute agent Josef Zettler)
Leon Zelman,
Polish-Austrian publicist
On March 6, 2017, a study by B.
Fuchslehner et al. presented as a preliminary result identifying 157
prisoners (including 3 women) of African descent. There are only photos
of 3 people, including Jose Carlos Gray Key from Barcelona (parents came
from Equatorial Guinea), who fought for the Republic in the Spanish
Civil War and was then a member of the French Resistance. From 1942 in
the Mauthausen concentration camp, he was assigned to work as a servant
to the camp commander and survived.