| Mauthausen |
| Established: August 8, 1938 Liberated: May 5, 1945 by United States Total Inmates: 200,000 Inmates at one time: 2,600 - 120,000 Total Deaths: 120,000* Subcamps: 60 *40,000 of the 120,000 that perished were Jews |
| Source: Edelheit, Marcuse, Byers, Feig, Levy. Go to Previous Camp - Majdanek Go to Next Camp - Natzweiler Return to Fast Links Return to Home Page Go to Concentration Camps |
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| Mauthausen was located at large granit quarries in Austria so that prisoner labor could be used for construction projects and for the economic benefit of the SS. Mauthausen has been deemed the most brutal of all the Nazi concentration camps. Production at Mauthausen was a byproduct of the killing process: inmates died quickly and in large numbers. Mauthausen included "Parachute Jump," 186 death steps surrounded by steep cliffs from which guards threw groups of prisoners to their deaths below. Prisoners were worked to death in Mauthausen. Prisoners from Dachau built the Mauthausen concentration camp. Austrian citizens were aware of Mauthausen's existence. Work groups from Mauthausen's subcamps worked in industrial, military and public works activities, including iron ore mining, hydropower construction, road and tunnel construction; tank, aircraft, and plane manufacture, and textile manufacture. Laborers also worked on farms, in sawmills, and in brickworks. Prisoners who worked in the quarries of Mauthausen seldom lived longer than three months. Workers died from starvation, tuberculosis, cold, heart failure, exhaustion, accidents, cold-blooded murcer, and torture. |