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Mauthausen Concentration
Camp
Following the Anschluss (union) with
Austria in March 1938, the Nazis immediately began construction of a concentration camp
near Linz. The site was designed to resemble an old fortress, complete
with stone guard towers. Jews and political prisoners from Austria, Holland, Italy, and
Hungary were forced into labor at the huge granite quarry on the site. During the war,
thousands of Russian and Polish POWs were also interned at Mauthausen.
Mauthausen held the record for concentration
camps (as opposed to extermination camps) for executions and deaths, some 36,000 from
January 1939 through April 1945. Many of these died from the exhausting labor in the
granite quarry; others were executed in the gas chamber or shot to death. I believe this
number includes the deaths at the nearby Gusen camps, where more
inmates died than actually at the Mauthausen main camp. Mauthausen was liberated by the
U.S. Army 11th Armored Division on 5-6 May 1945.
MapQuest
map link to Mauthausen
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Entrance gate to the
main compound at Mauthausen. Just inside the entrance gate is a large courtyard, where
prisoner roll-calls were held. (Museum KZ-Lager Mauthausen) |
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| Entrance to the
Mauthausen main camp, then and now. In the left foreground of the modern photo is a large
water reservoir (now empty). (Museum KZ-Lager Mauthausen) |
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| A guard with a
machinegun watches over prisoners in the main courtyard. (Museum KZ-Lager
Mauthausen) |
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| Guards with Russian POWs
in the inner/upper courtyard. The gate tower now houses the Mauthausen book shop. (Museum
KZ-Lager Mauthausen) |
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The Mauthausen quarry.
The period view shows a delegation from the Allied powers visiting the site in May 1945.
(U.S. National Archives) |
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| The infamous Todesstiege,
or Stairway of Death. Prisoners were forced to carry quarried blocks of stone up these 195
narrow uneven steps, and on up to the upper level. (U.S. National Archives, from
the captured SS-Archiv) |
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A Russian soldier guards the Todesstiege
after the liberation in 1945. (U.S. National Archives) |
Mauthausen gas chamber. The poison
gas from the crystals of Zyklon-B was introduced into the room from the
metal tubes. |
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| Former inmates show the
crematorium to U.S. Army soldiers following the liberation. (U.S.
Army Photo, National Archives) |
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| Crippled
prisoners after liberation, in front of an M8 "Greyhound"
armored car of the U.S. Army 41st Cavalry Reconnaissance Squadron, 11th
Armored Division, in the main courtyard. The modern view is from a
slightly different angle. (Hal D. Steward, "Thunderbolt -
History of the Eleventh Armored Division," Washington, DC, 1948) |
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Liberated prisoners
greet a U.S. Army M8 "Greyhound" armored car of the 41st Cavalry
Reconnaissance Squadron, 11th Armored Division, 6 May 1945. The
armored car has climbed up to the inner/upper courtyard. (National
Archives, RG 111-SC)
Click here
to visit an 11th AD webpage concerning this photo. |
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Following the liberation, freed
prisoners pull down the eagle and swastika insignia from above the main entrance gate.
(Museum KZ-Lager Mauthausen) |
The iron bars that once supported
the eagle and swastika still remain above the main gate. |
 Continue
to the page for the subcamps at Gusen, and the Kellerbau and B-8
Bergkristall underground factory sites
KZ-Lager Mauthausen webpage -- http://www.mauthausen-memorial.at/
(one of the most comprehensive web sites I have seen - complete history,
also in English)
Other concentration camp sites -- Dachau,
Buchenwald, Dora (Nordhausen), Sachsenhausen, Flossenbürg, S/III Jonastal, Ebensee (Austria)
11th Armored Division Association -- http://www.11tharmoreddivision.com/index.html
(very detailed unit history page with lots of
information and photos of Mauthausen)
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