Mauthausen Concentration Camp

Coordinates: 48°15′25″N 14°30′04″E / 48.25694°N 14.50111°E / 48.25694; 14.50111'(...) In March 1940 I was brought to Mauthausen to build the Gusen camp. The building tempo had to be accelerated, because the 'Aktion gegen die polnische Intelligenz' was designated for the month of April. What no one knew in the home country, we knew – the SS-men who were beating us, told us that we build a camp for our rotten brothers from Poland, who today can still spend Easter uneventfully, without an inkling what awaits them. They called the camp under construction Gusen 'Vernichtungslager fur die polnische Intelligenz' '. — Stefan Józefowicz, bank headmaster, no. 1129 in Mauthausen, 43069 Gusen.Bodies being removed by German civilians for burial, after the liberation of the Gusen concentration campFloor plan of the 'execution cellar' at Mauthausen, with the location of the cremation ovensCremation oven no. 1 at Mauthausen (modern view)Cremation oven no. 3 at Mauthausen (modern view)Zyklon B, the gas used for the gas chambersThe Dissection Table at Mauthausen Concentration Camp Coordinates: 48°15′25″N 14°30′04″E / 48.25694°N 14.50111°E / 48.25694; 14.50111 The Mauthausen–Gusen concentration camp complex consisted of the Mauthausen concentration camp on a hill above the market town of Mauthausen (roughly 20 kilometres (12 mi) east of Linz, Upper Austria) plus a group of nearly 100 further subcamps located throughout Austria and southern Germany. The three Gusen concentration camps in and around the village of St Georgen/Gusen, just a few kilometres from Mauthausen, held a significant proportion of prisoners within the camp complex, at times exceeding the number of prisoners at the Mauthausen main camp. The Mauthausen main camp operated from the time of the Anschluss, when Austria was annexed to Nazi Germany in 8 August 1938, to 5 May 1945, at the end of the Second World War. Starting with the camp at Mauthausen, the number of subcamps expanded over time and by the summer of 1940 Mauthausen and its subcamps had become one of the largest labour camp complexes in the German-controlled part of Europe. As at other Nazi concentration camps, the inmates at Mauthausen and its subcamps were forced to work as slave labour, under conditions that caused many deaths. Mauthausen and its subcamps included quarries, munitions factories, mines, arms factories and plants assembling Me 262 fighter aircraft. In January 1945, the camps contained roughly 85,000 inmates. The death toll remains unknown, although most sources place it between 122,766 and 320,000 for the entire complex. Mauthausen was one of the first massive concentration camp complexes in Nazi Germany, and the last to be liberated by the Allies. The two largest camps, Mauthausen and Gusen I, were classed as 'Grade III' (Stufe III) concentration camps, which meant that they were intended to be the toughest camps for the 'incorrigible political enemies of the Reich'. Mauthausen never lost this Stufe III classification. In the offices of the Reich Main Security Office (Reichssicherheitshauptamt; RSHA) it was referred to by the nickname Knochenmühle – the bone-grinder (literally bone-mill). Unlike many other concentration camps, which were intended for all categories of prisoners, Mauthausen was mostly used for extermination through labour of the intelligentsia – educated people and members of the higher social classes in countries subjugated by the Nazi regime during World War II. The Mauthausen main camp is now a museum. On 9 August 1938, prisoners from Dachau concentration camp near Munich were sent to the town of Mauthausen in Austria, to begin the construction of a new slave labour camp. The site was chosen because of the nearby granite quarry, and its proximity to Linz. Although the camp was controlled by the German state from the beginning, it was founded by a private company as an economic enterprise. The owner of the Wiener-Graben quarry (the Marbacher-Bruch and Bettelberg quarries) was a DEST Company: an acronym for Deutsche Erd– und Steinwerke GmbH. The company was led by Oswald Pohl, who was a high-ranking official of the Schutzstaffel (SS). It rented the quarries from the City of Vienna in 1938 and started the construction of the Mauthausen camp. A year later, the company ordered the construction of the first camp at Gusen. The granite mined in the quarries had previously been used to pave the streets of Vienna, but the Nazi authorities envisioned a complete reconstruction of major German towns in accordance with plans of Albert Speer and other proponents of Nazi architecture, for which large quantities of granite were needed. The money to fund the construction of the Mauthausen camp was gathered from a variety of sources, including commercial loans from Dresdner Bank and Prague-based Escompte Bank; the so-called Reinhardt's fund (meaning money stolen from the inmates of the concentration camps themselves); and from the German Red Cross. Mauthausen initially served as a strictly-run prison camp for common criminals, prostitutes and other categories of 'Incorrigible Law Offenders'. On 8 May 1939 it was converted to a labour camp which was mainly used for the incarceration of political prisoners. The Gusen camps were three different concentration camps in the Perg district of Upper Austria: