Mauthausen

Concentration Camp in Austria

A teacher’s guide from

Today’s map – but at the time Mauthausen was in Germany as Austria had been absorbed and become part of the Third Reich.

Contents

1. When was Mauthausen first set up?2. For what purpose?3. Who were the occupants, nationalities, minority

identities over time?4. Who were the liberators and when?5. Liberator journey6. Video testimonies of liberators 7. Quotes from liberators8. Reflections of someone liberated

When was Mauthausen first set up?

1938 – when mainly Austrian prisoners transferred from another camp to build a new camp at Mauthausen. Pictured above are the notorious “Stairs of death”

where prisoners were forced to carry stone blocks to the top of the quarry.

For what purpose?

•With Germany’s annexation of Austria it was anticipated that there was a need for a concentration camp in Austria to imprison political opponents.•German building plans required a supply of granite and forced labour provided the workforce for the quarry.•Over time it became an extermination camp, in the sense that lives were of no value, and over 95,000 inmates died there.•In the later years it became a supplier of labour to work in the armaments factories of the Mauthausen sub-camps.•In the final weeks, it became the recipient of inmates from other concentration camps which were being evacuated as Allied forces approached. This in turn forced the creation of overflow sub-camps, such as Gunskirchen.

Stone blocks as carried in Mauthausen

Who were the occupants, nationalities, minority identities over time?

• The first inmates were primarily Austrian prisoners transferred from Dachau concentration camp to build the new camp.

• These were followed by primarily convicted criminals, "asocials," political opponents, and religious conscientious objectors, such as Jehovah's Witnesses.

• In 1940 Vichy French authorities turned over, to the German SS and police, thousands of Spanish refugees, virtually all of whom had fought against General Franco during the Spanish Civil War, and who had fled to France after Franco overthrew the Spanish Republic in 1939. At least 7,000 were brought to Mauthausen.

• In 1941 it was designated by the German authorities as a camp where the inmates were unlikely to be of long-term value and so could be worked to death.

• Until 1943 the extermination of "opponents" was the most important priority within Mauthausen.

• In 1944 it became an important centre for the murder of recaptured prisoners of war, predominantly Russians.

• In 1945 the Jewish population rose as transfers of Jews came from other camps.

Who were the liberators and when?

11th Armored Division at Mauthausen

on5 May 1945

761st Tank Regiment at Gunskirchen in support of 71st

Infantry Divisionon

4 May 1945

Mauthausen and its sub-camps (Gunskirchen was one of many) were liberated by US Army forces

Liberator journey

Video testimonies of liberators

Colonel Seibel

Private Dade

Floyd Dade and 761st Tank crew

Quotes from liberators

Capt. J. D. Pletcher, 71st Division Headquarters"None of the inmates of Gunskirchen will ever be the same again. I doubt if any of us who saw it will ever forget it -- the smell, the hundreds of bodies that looked like caricatures of human beings, the frenzy of the thousands when they knew the Americans had arrived at last, the spark of joy in the eyes of those who lay in the ditches and whispered a prayer of thanks with their last breaths. I felt, the day I saw Gunskirchen Lager, that I finally knew what I was fighting for, what the war was all about.“

Major Cameron Coffman, 71st Division“As we entered the first building the sight that met our startled gaze was enough to bring forth a censorable exclamation from a sergeant who had seen the bloodiest fighting this war has offered. He spat disgustedly on the filthv dirt floor and left the building which was originally built for 300 but now housed approximately 3,000. Row upon row of living skeletons, jammed so closely together that it was impossible for some to turn over, even if they could have generated enough strength to do so, met our eyes.”

Quotes from liberators

Cpl. Jerry Tax, 571st Signal Company “It would be fine and thrilling to say that despite their pitiful condition, despite their rags, the years of torture and abject slavery and starvation, hope and joy shone from the eyes of these men. But it wasn't so. To be sure, the eyes were far from blank, but there was no joy, no hope in them. These were not the eyes of men set free. Perhaps the gigantic, impossible fact of liberation was just too big, too miraculous to grasp…”

Engineer William Dippo, 11th Armored Division“What we beheld. What we saw, I’m sure I speak for my comrades, was worse - the conditions of the people and what had transpired prior to our arrival - was worse than the battlefield. They were terrible.”

Reflections of someone liberatedLaszlo, a Jewish boy, (on the right in both pictures) grew up in Oradea, Northern

Transylvania. He was sent on forced labour for two and a

half years and aged 24 found himself imprisoned in Gunskirchen.

At liberation in May 1945, Laszlo was extremely ill with typhus. He wanted to remain where he was and die. His friend Miki (front left in the picture) would not allow him to give up and carried him on his back a great distance to the town of Linz for treatment.Laszlo still lives in Oradea.

Acknowledgments

• Slide 4. Photo courtesy of Bundesarchiv• Slide 6. Photo courtesy of Mauthausen Museum• Slide 8/9. Photos courtesy of US Army and Biggies• Slide 10/12. Videos courtesy of Wright State University and the USC Shoah Foundation• Slide 13. 761st Tank Battalion and Allied Veterans Association• Slide 16. Copyright Asociatia Tikvah

We are grateful to Professor Dan Stone of Royal Holloway, University of London for giving freely of his advice and Barbara Wind of the Holocaust Council of Greater MetroWest . Any errors are entirely our own.

We are also grateful to our funders:

International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance

Bernard Charitable Trust

British Embassy Bucharest

US Embassy Bucharest

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