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Mauthausen was considerably one of the worst concentration camps during the Holocaust. It was built and resided on a hill above the market town Mauthausen.

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A map of the Mauthausen concentration camp environs in April 1945. (Holocaust Museum - See third cited source link)

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The site was on the bank of the Danube River, near the “Wiener Graben” stone quarry.

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4. When did Mauthausen get built? Torn down?

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4. When did Mauthausen get built? Torn down?

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Mauthausen was built and put into use in August of 1938, months after the German annexation of Austria.

On May 5, 1945, the American soldiers liberated the camp.

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In December of 1939, the number of prisoners had increased from 300 prisoners (May 1938) to approximately 2600. Those who resided there were primarily convicted criminals, "asocials," political opponents, and those who refused to participate in the military for religious reasons like Jehovah's Witnesses.

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A pile of corpses at the Russian Camp (Hospital Camp) section of the Mauthausen concentration camp after liberation. Mauthausen, Austria, May 5-15, 1945. (Holocaust Encyclopedia - see 5th link)

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Many killing methods were used. Like many other camps, Mauthausen only began using gas in 1941-42. It was equipped with a stationary gas chamber where they used Zyklon B to kill up to 80 people at a time. In 1942 they were provided with several gassing vans by the Reich Security Main Office.

Thousands were also killed by shooting, hanging, mistreatment, and harsh conditions.

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Other than four women who were brought with 46 men to be shot, the first female prisoners were two dozen women who SS soldiers brought in June 1942 from Ravensbruck to provide sex for favored male prisoners.

The first women who were registered as prisoners arrived October 5, 1943. By the end of September 1944, 459 women were in the main camp. On March 31, 1945 the SS reported 2,252 women in the Mauthausen system. By February 1945 there had been 3 barracks set aside in the main camp for female prisoners.

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Also called the Bullet Decree, this mandated the transport of escaped and recaptured prisoners of war, other than British and US prisoners, to Mauthausen to be shot. This decree applied to all recaptured officers and those recaptured non-commissioned officers deemed no longer capable of work. SS soldiers imprisoned the recaptured soldiers in barrack 20 in Mauthausen and shot some of them, beating or starving the others to death. Approximately 5,000 prisoners of war were incarcerated and killed.

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German doctors subjected prisoners of Mauthausen to "pseudoscientific medical experiments." They tested levels of testosterone, experimented with delousing chemicals (insecticides used to control lice on both humans and fish), medicines for tuberculosis, and nutrition experiments. Hermann Richter, the camp physician, surgically removed significant organs like the stomach, liver, or kidneys from living prisoners solely to determine how long a prisoner could survive without the organ in question. Executive camp doctor Eduard Krebsback killed an undetermined of prisoners between autumn 1941 to autumn 1943 by injecting phenol (a raw material to produce phenolic resins, polycarbonates, epoxies, and nylon) directly into their hearts.

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"The youngest of two children, Henia was born to a Jewish family in the town of Krzepice. By the early 1930s, the Jewish population of Krzepice comprised more than 40 percent of the town's inhabitants. Henia's father made his living trading cattle in the area. Henia attended a public elementary school.

1933-39: On September 1, 1939, the Germans invaded Poland; a day later, they entered Henia's town. Her family tried to escape to Warsaw but the German forces quickly overtook them and ordered them back to Krzepice. Several days later the Germans set up a ghetto in Krzepice. Henia and her family weren't allowed to leave the ghetto on penalty of death. Many people were shot for doing so, but rather than starve, Henia sometimes sneaked out to search for food.

1940-44: In 1941, hearing that the Germans were seizing people for work details, Henia escaped to a nearby village. But she missed her parents so she returned. Searching for them, she was arrested and eventually deported to the Mauthausen camp. While digging a ditch in a field Henia tried to escape into the woods. After two days, SS guards with dogs hunted her down. They beat her ruthlessly, breaking her nose. As she lay on the ground she heard the guards say, "Don't waste a bullet on her, she's dying." Later, Henia crawled back to the barracks.

Henia was then deported to the Bergen-Belsen camp. She was liberated by British troops on April 15, 1945. After recuperating in Sweden, she immigrated to the United States in 1947." (Holocaust Encyclopedia - see 6th link.)

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Drawing by Bernard Aldebert: „Revier de Mauthausen – Le tris des condamnés“ (Sick barrack in Mauthausen – Separating out the condemned), 1945 (Mauthausen Memorial / Collections)

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Mauthausen camp authorities killed specially targeted groups of people sent to be killed. They also killed those who were deemed to weak or sick to work.

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The first Commander of Mauthausen was SS Captain Albert Sauer, who presided over the establishment of the camp on August 1, 1938 and remained commandant until February 17, 1939.

SS Colonel Franz Zieris replaced Sauer and remained the commandant until May 1945.

After March 1940, SS Captain Georg Backmayer was 1st Protective Detention Camp commandant, with responsibility for the prisoners while they were inside the camp.

In 1938-1939, the 4th Regiment of the SS Death's-Head Units guarded th perimeter of the Mauthausen concentration camp as well as prisoners work detachments deployed outside the camp.

in 1940-1941, the guard unit, renamed the SS Death's-Head Battalion and upgraded in strength to battalion size, was administratively subordinated to the Waffen SS, though the camp commandant still issued all operational orders to the battalion.

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Since the beginning. camp authorities deployed Mauthausen prisoners at forced Labor, constructing the camp itself or at back-breaking work in the Wiener Graben stone quarry. As labor became increasingly scarce and the fored labor of camp inmates beame increasingly important, especially in war-related industries, the number of prisoners incarcerated at Mauthausen and its sub camps steadily increased.

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Aft er the SS Economic-Administration Main Office assumed control of the Inspectorate of the Concentration Camps and the camp system in March 1942, the SS established hundreds of sub camps throughout the so-called Greater German Reich. Between 1940 and 1945, the SS authorities established nearly 50 sub camps in the Mauthausen concentration camp system.

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Gusen (1940-1945)

Steyr-Munichholz (1942-1945)

Ebensee (1943-1945)

Wiener Neudorf (1943-1945)

Wiener Neustadt (1943, 1944-1945)

Melk (1944-1945)

Detention camp Gunskirchen (1945)

Amstetten (1945)

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As early as 1943, Spanish Republicans incarcerated inside Mauthausen, drawing upon their expertise as communist fighters and their contacts to Czech, French, and German members of the International Brigades, established small clandestine networks of resistance inside the camp. By winter of 1944-45, these groups had established underground formations armed with weapons stolen from the camp arsenal.

During the course of 1944, French, Czech, and Austrian camp inmates, primarily communists, formed networks of self-help and resistance. In winter 1944-45 the formation of another resistance network of Czech, Polish, German, and Austrian inmates is documented for the "infirmary" camp.

Their most effective activities involved providing food for starving prisoners, hiding prisoners temporarily, often in the infirmary, and protecting prisoners against arbitrary torture and mistreatment from Kapos.

Self-resistance groups developed a long lines of nationality. During the night of February 1-2, 1945, more than 400 Soviet prisoners of war incarcerated in barrack 20 killed the SS appointed administrators and broke out of the camp.

On March 23, 1945, several hundred female prisoners of sub camps Amstetten, whom the SS authorities had withdrawn to Mauthausen after the Allies bombed the train station in Amstetten and killed 34 women, refused to return to Amstetten, despite the threats of Protective Detention Camp Commandant Bachmayer. This was the first and only case of mass refusal to deploy to work.

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17. Liberation of Mauthausen Camp and Subcamps

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17. Liberation of Mauthausen Camp and Subcamps

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As Allied and Soviet forces advanced into Germany, the SS forcibly evacuated concentration camps near the front lines the prevent Liberation of large numbers of prisoners. Prisoners evacuated by truck, train, and by forced March from Auschitz, Sachsenhausen, and Gross-Rosen began arriving at Mauthausen in early 1945. As a result, the camp---as well as most subcamps---became lethally overcrowded, with existing dreadful conditions deteriorating still further. Thousands died from starvation or disease. Typhus epidemics further reduced the camp's population.

On May 3, 1945, the SS abandoned the camp to the custody of a guard unit of 50 Viennese firefighters, who remained on the perimeter of the camp. Members of an "International Committee" formed by the prisoners in the last day of April administrated the camp as units of the US Army arrived at the camp and secured the surrounding area on May 5. Further units, including the 11th Armored Division of the Third Army, arrived in the succeeding days.

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US troops captured Mauthausen camp commandant Franz Ziereis was shot in the abdomen during a reported attempt to escape and died a day or two thereafter. Before his death, former camp prisoners interrogated him in the Gusen protective Detention camp; this deathbed testimony was available to prosecutors at the Nuremberg Trial. Protectivedetention camp commandant Georg Bachmayer chose suicide as a means of escaping justice on May 8, 1945, after he shot his wife and two children.

Numerous members of the camp administrative staff and the guard nits were prosecuted on the site of the Dachau concentration camp, a US Military Tribunal prosecuted deputy preventative detention camp commandant Hans Altfuldisch and 60 other defendants associated with Mauthausen in the spring of 1946. The Tribunal convicted all 61 defendants, sentenced 58 to death and three to life imprisonment May 13, 1946. On appeal, nine of the death sentences were commuted to prison sentences. US authorities executed 49 of the defendants and released the remaining twelve convicts in 1950 and 1951.

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19. Benjamin (Beryl) Ferencz describes evidence collected at the Mauthausen camp (Oral History)

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19. Benjamin (Beryl) Ferencz describes evidence collected at the Mauthausen camp (Oral History)

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Survivors of Mauthausen cheer American soldiers as they pass through the main gate of the camp. The photograph was taken several days after the liberation of the camp. Mauthausen, Austria, May 9, 1945.

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20. American soldiers pass through the main fate of the Mauthausen camp

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20. American soldiers pass through the main fate of the Mauthausen camp