The Mauthausen Camp
Established: 1 August, 1938
Location: in Austria, near Linz
The concentration camp of Mauthausen was constructed in August of 1938, just five months after the Anschulss, the annexation of Austria to the German Reich.
The area of Mauthausen was chosen as the site of a concentration camp for its location, nearby a quarry of granite. The DEST, a company owned by the SS, purchased the quarries not only to take advantage of them commercially, but also in prevision of the strong increment in the utilization of granite in the gigantic monuments planned for the "cities of the Führer" (one of which being Linz).
For the SS, the concentration camp served two functions: it was used in the elimination of political enemies through detention, violence, arbitrary killings (a device which consented to maintain a regime of terror, useful control mechanism for those who opposed Nazism outside the camp); and at the same time it was a source of profit, given the intensive exploitation of labor of the deportees.
Mauthausen, the only concentration camp given the classification of "3rd class" (as a camp of punishment and annihilation by overwork) became one of the most terrible Nazi camps. The prisoners had to endure conditions of inhumane detention and they were forced to work like slaves in the quarries. Violence, brutality, inhumane punishment, hunger and assassination all constituted common elements of daily life. The killings came in many forms: as a direct result of SS violence, by hangings, executions, injections directly to the heart, poisoning and often, by gas. Some deportees were simply wetted with water and left to freeze to death by exposure in the rigid Austrian winter.
The increment in the production of war materials, and the efforts made by the Nazis to transfer the factories damaged by the bombardment of the Allied forces into subterranean galleries brought about an expansion of the camp functions from 1943 onwards. A large number of the prisoners were destined to armaments production in the satellite camps.
Approximately 200,000 people of diverse nationalities were deported to Mauthausen: political opponents, people who were persecuted for religious motives, homosexuals, Jews, gypsies, prisoners of war and even common criminals. Half of the deportees were killed, or their deaths were brought about by the inhumane living and working conditions.
The studies that ex-deportee Hans Marsalek has made about the deportees at Mauthausen have documented the passage through this place of torture and death of 197,464 people: 192,737 men and 4,727 women. At the moment of the camp’s liberation, occurring in May of 1945, approximately 66,500 deportees (of which 1,734 where women) were found in the camps that had Mauthausen as their base. Most of these people were in conditions that did not permit them to survive at length. The Italians deported here numbered more than 8,000.
The 16th of May, before being repatriated, the camp’s survivors made an oath to fight for a "new world, free and just for all".
- Manuela Valletti Ghezzi, Displaced person I 57633 - Desire not to die. A displaced person to Mauthausen and Gusen and his persevering struggle for the life. Read the book (PDF, 10,3 MB)
- Transports to Mauthausen, by Italo Tibaldi, ANED-Research
- For whomever wishes to know more: "The gas chamber of Mauthausen. Witness accounts and stories from Italian deportees", by Bruno Maida
- The information on these pages is partly gathered from the Official site of the Memorial of Mauthausen.
