Mauthausen was a camp established in 1938 in Austria, about 6 miles outside the city of Linz.. Up until 1942, the camp was primarily a camp and killing center for "undesirable political elements" in Germany, as well as a liquidation center for opposition elements in occupied countries. In 1942, the decision was made to expand military industry in the camps. From the fall of 1943, most of the prisoners were engaged in the construction of subterranean tunnels to house factories for rocket assembly and production of plane parts. The camp population grew from about 15,000 in early 1943 to 84,000 in March, 1945. Large numbers of Jews did not begin to arrive until the middle of 1944. About 200,000 prisoners are estimated to have passed through the camp of which 119,000 died, including about 38,000 Jews. The camp was not an "extermination" camp as defined by the Nazis, but rather a camp where prisoners were worked to death. The camp was liberated on May 8, 1945, by Patton's troops. The reaction of the liberators was described in Konnilyn Feig's book, Hitler's Death Camps, P. 124, as follow:
"They were simply appalled. As one soldier rolled through the gate in his jeep, he saw before him 'the raw material of this torture factory- human beings by the thousands, including women and a few children, ... in all degrees of health, some in very good condition, but the vast majority mere walking skeletons. They were mostly sitting or lying in the bright spring sunlight, or simply milling about.' An American Officer, George Dyer, considered Mauthausen one of the worst camps uncovered anywhere. He found '16,000 political prisoners representing every country in Europe all reduced to living skeletons and ridden with disease.' The Americans found the crematorium out of action and the communal grave bursting with 10,000 bodies."
Erik Lordahl, German Concentration Camps 1933-1945, History and Inmate Mail (2000). Referred to as Lordahl.
Feig, Hitlers Death Camps (1979)
http://remember.org/camps/mauthausen/
http://www.nizkor.org/hweb/camps/mauthausen/
http://www.linz.at/archiv_e/ekapitel6.html
http://www.us-israel.org/jsource/Holocaust/mauthtoc.html
Copyright © 2002 Edward Victor