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Mauthausen-Gusen concentration camp

2007 Schools Wikipedia Selection. Related subjects: Military History and War;
World War II

   The Mauthausen parade ground – a view towards the main gate
   Enlarge
   The Mauthausen parade ground – a view towards the main gate

   Mauthausen (known from the summer of 1940 as Mauthausen-Gusen) grew to
   become a large group of Nazi concentration camps that were built around
   the villages of Mauthausen and Gusen in Upper Austria, roughly 20
   kilometres east of the city of Linz.

   Though initially it consisted of a single camp at Mauthausen, with time
   it was expanded to become one of the largest labour camp complexes in
   German-controlled Europe. Apart from the four main sub-camps at
   Mauthausen and nearby Gusen, more than 50 sub-camps, located throughout
   Austria and southern Germany, used the inmates as slave labour. Several
   subordinate camps of the KZ Mauthausen complex included quarries,
   munitions factories, mines, arms factories and Me 262 fighter-plane
   assembly plants.

   In January 1945, the camps, directed from the central office in
   Mauthausen, 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. The camps formed one of the first massive
   concentration camp complexes in Nazi Germany, and were the last ones to
   be occupied by the Western Allies or the Soviet Union. The two main
   camps, Mauthausen and Gusen I, were also the only two camps in the
   whole of Europe to be labelled as "Grade III" camps, which meant that
   they were intended to be the toughest camps for the "Incorrigible
   Political Enemies of the Reich". Unlike many other concentration camps,
   intended for all categories of prisoners, Mauthausen was mostly used
   for extermination through labour of the intelligentsia, who were
   educated people and members of the higher social classes in countries
   subjugated by Germany during World War II.

History

KZ Mauthausen

   On August 8, 1938, prisoners from Dachau concentration camp were sent
   to the town of Mauthausen near Linz, Austria, to begin the construction
   of a new camp. The location was chosen due to its proximity to the
   transport hub of Linz, but also because the area was sparsely
   populated. Although the camp was, from the beginning of its existence,
   controlled by the German state, it was founded by a private company as
   an economic enterprise. The owner of the Wiener-Graben quarry (the
   Marbacher-Bruch, and Bettelberg quarries), which was located in and
   around Mauthausen, was a DEST Company: an acronym for Deutsche Erd- und
   Steinwerke GmbH. The company, led by Oswald Pohl, who was also a
   high-ranking official of the SS, bought the quarries from the city of
   Vienna 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 the plans of
   Albert Speer and other architects of Nazi architecture, for which large
   quantities of granite were needed.

   The money needed for 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 May 8, 1939 it was converted to a labour camp which was
   mainly used for the incarceration of political prisoners.

KL Gusen

   Aerial view of the Gusen I & II camps
   Enlarge
   Aerial view of the Gusen I & II camps

   In late 1939, the Mauthausen camp, with its Wiener-Graben granite
   quarry, was already overcrowded with prisoners. Their numbers rose from
   1,080 in late 1938 to over 3,000 a year later. About that time the
   construction of a new camp began in Gusen, about 4.5 kilometres away.
   The new camp (later named Gusen I) and its Kastenhofen quarry were
   completed in May of 1940. The first inmates were put in the first two
   huts (No. 7 and 8) on April 17, 1940, while the first transport of
   prisoners - mostly from the camps in Dachau and Sachsenhausen - arrived
   on May 25 of the same year.

   Like nearby Mauthausen, the Gusen camp also used its inmates as slave
   labour in the granite quarries, but they also rented them out to
   various local businesses. In October of 1941, several huts were
   separated from the Gusen sub-camp by barbed wire and turned into a
   separate Prisoner of War Labour Camp (German:
   Kriegsgefangenenarbeitslager). This camp had a large number of
   prisoners of war incarcerated, mostly Soviet officers. By 1942, the
   production capacity of both Mauthausen and Gusen had reached its peak.
   Gusen was expanded to include the central depot of the SS, where
   various goods, which had been stolen from occupied territories, were
   sorted and then dispatched to Germany. Local quarries and businesses
   were in constant need of a new source of labour as more and more
   Germans were drafted into the Wehrmacht.

   In March of 1944, the former SS depot was converted to a new sub-camp,
   and was named Gusen II. Until the end of the war the depot served as an
   improvised concentration camp. The camp contained about 12,000 to
   17,000 inmates, who were deprived of even the most basic facilities. In
   December of 1944, another part of Gusen was opened in nearby Lungitz.
   Here, parts of a factory infrastructure were converted into the third
   sub-camp of Gusen — Gusen III. The rise in the number of sub-camps
   could not catch up with the rising number of inmates, which led to
   overcrowding of the huts in all of the sub-camps of Mauthausen-Gusen.
   From late 1940 to 1944, the number of inmates per bed rose from 2 to 4.

Mauthausen-Gusen camp system

   Map showing location of some of the most notable sub-camps of
   Mauthausen-Gusen
   Enlarge
   Map showing location of some of the most notable sub-camps of
   Mauthausen-Gusen

   As the production in all of the sub-camps of Mauthausen-Gusen complex
   was constantly rising, so was the number of detainees and the number of
   the sub-camps themselves. Although initially the camps of Gusen and
   Mauthausen mostly served the local quarries, from 1942, and onwards,
   they began to be included in the German war machine. To accommodate the
   ever-increasing number of slave workers, additional sub-camps (German:
   Außenlager) of Mauthausen began construction in all parts of Austria.
   At the end of the war the list included 101 camps (including 49 major
   sub-camps) which covered most of modern Austria, from Mittersill south
   of Salzburg to Schwechat east of Vienna and from Passau on the pre-war
   Austro-German border to the Loibl Pass on the border with Yugoslavia.
   The sub-camps were divided into several categories, depending on their
   main function: Produktionslager for factory workers, Baulager for
   construction, Aufräumlager for cleaning the rubble in Allied-bombed
   towns, and Kleinlager (small camps) where the inmates were working
   specifically for the SS.

Mauthausen-Gusen as a business enterprise

   The production output of Mauthausen-Gusen exceeded that of each of the
   five other large slave labour centres, including: Auschwitz-Birkenau,
   Flossenbürg, Gross-Rosen, Marburg and Natzweiler-Struthof, in terms of
   both production quota and profits. The list of companies using slave
   labour from the Mauthausen-Gusen camp system was long, and included
   both national corporations and small, local firms and communities. Some
   parts of the quarries were converted into a Mauser machine pistol
   assembly plant. In 1943, an underground factory for the
   Steyr-Daimler-Puch company was built in Gusen. A similar factory for
   the Messerschmitt aeroplane-producer was opened near the village of St.
   Georgen. Altogether, 45 larger companies took part in making KZ
   Mauthausen-Gusen one of the most profitable concentration camps of Nazi
   Germany, with more than 11,000,000 Reichsmark of the profits in 1944
   alone. Among them were:

                                                   Sub-camp inmate counts
                                                   Late 1944 – Early 1945
                                     Gusen (I, II and III combined) 26,311
                                                            Ebensee 18,437
                                                        Gunskirchen 15,000
                                                               Melk 10,314
                                                               Linz  6,690
                                                          Amstetten  2,966
                                                     Wiener-Neudorf  2,954
                                                          Schwechat  2,568
                                                   Steyr-Münichholz  1,971
                                                  Schlier-Redl-Zipf  1,488

     * DEST cartel
     * Accumulatoren-Fabrik AFA (the main producer of batteries for German
       U-Boats)
     * Bayer (main German producer of medicines and medications)
     * Deutsche Bergwerks- und Hüttenbau
     * Linz-based Eisenwerke Oberdonau (a major World War II steel
       supplier for the German Panzer tanks)
     * Flugmotorenwerke Ostmark (aeroplane engine manufacturer)
     * Otto Eberhard Patronenfabrik (munitions works)
     * Heinkel and Messerschmitt (aeroplane factories, also a V-2 rocket
       fuselage factory)
     * Hofherr und Schrenz
     * Österreichische Sauerwerks (arms producer)
     * PUCH (vehicles)
     * Rax-Werke (machinery and V-2 rockets)
     * Steyr (small arms factory)
     * Steyr-Daimler-Puch cartel (arms and vehicles)
     * Universale Hoch und Tiefbau (construction of tunnels in the Loibl
       Pass)

   Prisoners were also 'rented out' as slave labour, and were exploited in
   various ways, such as working for local farms, for road construction,
   reinforcing and repairing the banks of the Danube, and the construction
   of large residential areas in Sankt Georgen as well as being forced to
   excavate archaeological sites in Spielberg.

   When the Allied strategic bombing campaign started to target the German
   war industry, German planners decided to move production to underground
   facilities that were impenetrable to enemy aerial bombardment. In Gusen
   I, the prisoners were ordered to build several large tunnels beneath
   the hills surrounding the camp (code-named Kellerbau). By the end of
   World War II the prisoners had dug 29,400 m² to house a small arms
   factory. After 1944, similar tunnels were also built beneath the
   village of Sankt Georgen by the inmates of Gusen II sub-camp
   (code-named Bergkristall). They dug roughly 50,000 m² so the
   Messerschmitt company could build an assembly plant to produce the
   Messerschmitt Me 262 and V-2 rockets. In addition to planes, some 7,000
   m² of Gusen II tunnels served as factories for various war materials.
   In late 1944, roughly 11,000 of the Gusen I and II inmates were working
   in underground facilities. An additional 6,500 worked on expanding the
   underground network of tunnels and halls. In 1945, the Me 262 works was
   already finished and the Germans were able to assemble 1,250 planes a
   month. This was the second largest plane factory in Germany after the
   Mittelbau-Dora concentration camp, which was also underground.

Extermination through labour

   The political function of the camp continued in parallel with its
   economic role. Until at least 1942, it was used for the imprisonment
   and murder of Germany's political and ideological enemies, both real
   and imagined. The camp served the needs of the German war machine and
   also carried out exterminations through labour. When the inmates were
   totally exhausted, after having worked in the quarries for 12 hours a
   day; or if they were too ill, or too weak to work, they were then
   transferred to the Revier ("Krankenrevier", sick barrack) or other
   places for extermination. Initially, the camp did not have a gas
   chamber of its own and the so-called Muzulmans, or prisoners who were
   too sick to work, after being maltreated, under-nourished or totally
   exhausted, were then transferred to other concentration camps for
   extermination (mostly to the infamous Hartheim Castle, which was 40.7
   km (25.3 miles) away), or killed by lethal injection and cremated in
   the local crematorium. The growing number of prisoners made the system
   too expensive and from 1940, Mauthausen was one of the few camps in the
   West to use a gas chamber on a regular basis. In the beginning, an
   improvised mobile gas chamber – a van with the exhaust pipe connected
   to the inside – shuttled between Mauthausen and Gusen. By December of
   1941, a permanent gas chamber that could kill about 120 prisoners at a
   time was completed.

Liberation and post-war heritage

                                      A chart representing the nationality
                           of the surviving inmates of Gusen I, II and III
                                          click the image for more details

   Some of the bodies being removed by German civilians for decent burial
   at Gusen concentration camp after its liberation
   Enlarge
   Some of the bodies being removed by German civilians for decent burial
   at Gusen concentration camp after its liberation
   Tanks of U.S. 11th Armored Division entering the Mauthausen
   concentration camp; the photo was taken on May 6, 1945
   Enlarge
   Tanks of U.S. 11th Armored Division entering the Mauthausen
   concentration camp; the photo was taken on May 6, 1945

   During the final months before liberation, the camp's commander Franz
   Ziereis prepared for its defence against a possible Soviet offensive.
   Most of the inmates of German and Austrian nationality "volunteered"
   for the SS-Freiwillige Häftlingsdivision, an SS unit composed mostly of
   former concentration camp inmates and headed by Oskar Dirlewanger. The
   remaining prisoners were rushed to build a line of granite anti-tank
   obstacles to the east of Mauthausen. The inmates unable to cope with
   the hard labour and malnutrition were exterminated in large numbers to
   free space for newly-arrived evacuation transports from other camps,
   including most of the sub-camps of Mauthausen-Gusen located in eastern
   Austria. In the final months of the war, the main source of calories,
   that is the parcels of food sent through the International Red Cross,
   stopped and food rations became catastrophically low. The prisoners
   transferred to the "Hospital Sub-camp" received one piece of bread per
   20 inmates and roughly half a litre of weed soup a day. This made some
   of the prisoners, previously engaged in various types of resistance
   activity, begin to prepare plans to defend the camp in case of an SS
   attempt to exterminate all the remaining inmates. It is not known why
   the prisoners of Gusen I and II were not exterminated en-masse, despite
   direct orders from Heinrich Himmler; Ziereis' plan assumed rushing all
   the prisoners into the tunnels of the underground factories of
   Kellerbau and blowing up the entrances. The plan was known to one of
   the Polish resistance organizations which started an ambitious plan of
   gathering tools necessary to dig air vents in the entrances.

   On April 28, under cover of a fictional air-raid alarm, some 22,000
   prisoners of Gusen were rushed into the tunnels. However, after several
   hours in the tunnels all of the prisoners were allowed to return to the
   camp. Stanisław Dobosiewicz, the author of a monumental monograph of
   the Mauthausen-Gusen complex explains that one of the possible causes
   of the failure of the German plan was that the Polish prisoners managed
   to cut the fuse wires. Ziereis himself stated in his testimony written
   on May 25 that it was his wife who convinced him not to follow the
   order from above. Although the plan was abandoned, the prisoners feared
   that the SS might want to massacre the prisoners by other means.
   Because of that the Polish, Soviet and French prisoners prepared a plan
   for an assault on the barracks of the SS guards in order to seize the
   arms necessary to put up a fight. A similar plan was also devised by
   the Spanish inmates.

   On May 3, the SS and other guards started to prepare for evacuation of
   the camp. The following day, the guards of Mauthausen were replaced
   with unarmed Volkssturm soldiers and an improvised unit formed of
   elderly police officers and fire fighters evacuated from Vienna. The
   police officer in charge of the unit accepted the "inmate
   self-government" as the camp's highest authority and Martin Gerken,
   until then the highest-ranking kapo prisoner in the Gusen's
   administration (in the rank of Lagerälteste, or the Camp's Elder),
   became the new de facto commander. He attempted to create an
   International Prisoner Committee that would become a provisional
   governing body of the camp until it was liberated by one of the
   approaching armies, but he was openly accused of co-operation with the
   SS and the plan failed. All work in the sub-camps of Mauthausen stopped
   and the inmates focused on preparations for their liberation - or
   defence of the camps against a possible assault by the SS divisions
   concentrated in the area. The remnants of several German divisions
   indeed assaulted the Mauthausen sub-camp, but were repelled by the
   prisoners who took over the camp. Out of all the main sub-camps of
   Mauthausen-Gusen only Gusen III was to be evacuated. On May 1 the
   inmates were rushed on a death march towards Sankt Georgen, but were
   ordered to return to the camp after several hours. The operation was
   repeated the following day, but called off soon afterwards. The
   following day, the SS guards deserted the camp, leaving the prisoners
   to their own fate.
   The survivors of Ebensee sub-camp shortly after their liberation
   Enlarge
   The survivors of Ebensee sub-camp shortly after their liberation

   The camps of Mauthausen-Gusen were the last to be liberated during the
   World War II. On May 5, 1945, the camp at Mauthausen was approached by
   soldiers of the 41st Recon Squad of the US 11th Armoured Division, 3rd
   US Army. The reconnaissance squad was led by S/SGT Albert J. Kosiek.
   His troop disarmed the policemen and left the camp. By the time of its
   liberation, most of the SS-men of Mauthausen had already fled; however,
   some 30 who were left were lynched by the prisoners; a similar number
   were lynched in Gusen II. Until May 6 all the remaining sub-camps of
   the Mauthausen-Gusen camp complex, with the exception of the two camps
   in the Loibl Pass, were also liberated by American forces.

   Among the inmates liberated from the camp was Lieutenant Jack Taylor,
   an officer of the Office of Strategic Services. He had managed to
   survive with the help of several prisoners and was later a key witness
   at the Mauthausen-Gusen camp trials carried out by the Dachau
   International Military Tribunal. Another of the camp's survivors was
   Simon Wiesenthal, an engineer who spent the rest of his life hunting
   Nazi war criminals.

   Following the capitulation of Germany, the Mauthausen-Gusen complex
   fell within the Soviet sector of occupation of Austria. Initially, the
   Soviet authorities used parts of the Mauthausen and Gusen I camps as
   barracks for the Red Army. At the same time, the underground factories
   were being dismantled and sent to the USSR as a war booty. After that,
   between 1946 and 1947, the camps were unguarded and many furnishings
   and facilities of the camp were dismantled, both by the Red Army and by
   the local population. In the early summer of 1947, the Soviet forces
   had blown the tunnels up and were then withdrawn from the area, while
   the camp was turned over to Austrian civilian authorities. However, it
   was not until 1949 that it was declared a national memorial site.
   Finally, 30 years after camp's liberation, on May 3, 1975, Chancellor
   Bruno Kreisky officially opened the Mauthausen Museum. Unlike
   Mauthausen, much of what constituted the sub-camps of Gusen I, II and
   III is now covered by residential areas built there after the war.

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