Throughout World War 2, the concentration camps were established by the Third Reich.
Inside of the barbed wire fences of these camps the true horrors of the Holocaust occurred,
with millions of prisoners being treated terribly and shockingly by the SS guards who worked
at places such as Bergen-Belsen and Stutthof.
One of the largest camps used was Mauthausen, and throughout it’s roughly 7 years in operation,
around 190,000 prisoners passed through the gates, and it was known for being a horrific
place of slave labour under very harsh conditions.
But inside of Mauthausen and it’s sub camps, more than 90,000 people died due to the slave
labour conditions, executions, disease and inhumane living conditions.
After the war there was a series of trials in which a large number of former guards at
Mauthausen were sentenced to death, and were then executed.
Join us today as we look at the justified executions of the guards of mauthausen concentration
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In August 1938, prisoners from the first concentration camp Dachau were sent to the town of Mauthausen
in Austria, where they started to create a new slave labour camp.
The site was selected as it was close to the town of Linz, and also had a nearby granite
quarry.
The granite mined in the quarries had been used to pave the streets in Vienna, but it
was thought of that the resources from this quarry could be used in large building projects
devised by the Nazis.
It was initially planned to have been a prison camp for criminals, but it was then converted
as a camp for political prisoners.
Mauthausen was regarded as the main camp, but it was connected to other camps known
as Gusen I, Gusen II and Gusen II.
The camps would work together and fall under the Mauthausen complex.
Inmates would be marched to the Gusen quarries to work, and over time camps were created
at Gusen themselves.
Mauthausen and the Gusen camps rented prisoners out to local businesses for slave labour,
and made money from this.
But as time went on the camps themselves were expanded heavily to the point where they held
thousands of prisoners.
Gusen II had roughly 15,000 prisoners and many here had no access to basic facilities.
As time went on also, there were a huge number of subcamps which fell under the control of
Mauthausen, and as production increased the number of prisoners and the sub camps grew.
To begin with they served the local quarries, but then different camps made specific things
for the German war effort.
As the Second World War ended, the list of sub camps was over 100 and covered most of
Austria.
In terms of how productive Mauthausen was, it was probably the most valuable and profitable
centres, and it made more money that Auschwitz, Gross-Rosen, and other camps in terms of how
much it could produce.
A huge number of companies used workers from Mauthausen, and as time went on some of the
quarries were converted into different plants for armaments production.
Some companies that used workers included Heinkel and Messerschmitt who used workers
for aeroplane production, Mauser who used workers to create pistols and Bayer who made
medication and medicines.
There were many more, and prisoners were also used to work on local farms and in local construction
projects.
Some production areas began to be moved underground also as the Allies began to bomb strategic
German targets, and in Gusen I prisoners were forced to dig and build a number of tunnels
in the hills around the camp to house factories.
Tunnels were also built near to Gusen II where Messerschmitt would make V2 Rockets under
the protection of the hills.
It was clear that the plan for prisoners at Mauthausen was for them to work until they
died, or could not do anymore.
Following this they would then be killed by a lethal injection, or a mobile gas chamber
or by shooting.
Many prisoners arrived at the camp too sick to work, and were killed straight away or
were given time to recover, but this was rare.
Some were sent to Hartheim Castle to be killed.
As the war continued, many different people came to Mauthausen and the camps, and many
came from different countries.
As time went on further groups of people who the Nazis deemed as undesirable were transported
to Mauthausen, and even large groups of Spanish were transported there.
Soviet POWs also arrived there, and thousands of people were being taken there to be worked
in the hard labour and in the poor and terrible conditions succumbed to their death.
Following different resistance, a number of resistors were sent to the camp.
Auschwitz at one point had to nearly stop taking new prisoners, and with this Mauthausen
received huge transports.
Mauthausen was mostly a camp for men, but there was a women camp opened in September
1944, and prisoners came from Auschwitz.
Children even arrived there, and there were female guards who worked there, and by March
1945 there were around 20% of prisoners who were deemed as juvenile.
There was an increasing use of Polish, Soviet and Czech teenagers to work in the factories,
but the camp became one of the most brutal and tragic concentration camps of the Third
Reich.
Prisoners suffered heavily from malnutrition and were not fed appropriately for the back
breaking work that they performed.
They also suffered heavily from overcrowding inside of the barracks which led to disease
spreading heavily, and also guards regularly inflicted violent beatings inside of the camp.
Inside of the quarries, the extreme temperatures would led to high death rates.
In summer the heat was blistering, and in winter the temperatures fell to around minus
30 degrees celsius.
Prisoner’s weighed on average around 40kbs, and as time went on in the war the amount
of calories they consumed a day fell heavily to just over 1000 calories which was not sufficient
for the heavy work they did.
In the final moments of the war, some workers were given just 600 calories.
There was access to medical care, but there was no medication offered and only very basic
first aid meaning that if a serious accident happened then there was no chance that a victim
would survive.
One of the most striking parts of Mauthausen was the Stairs of Death, 186 stairs in which
prisoners were forced to carry sometimes up to 50kg pieces of stone.
Prisoners walked one by one, and many collapsed such was the extreme task, and sometimes prisoners
fell onto the next prisoner and many would fall down the stairs becoming very injured
and sometimes dying fro their injuries.
SS guards often forced prisoners who had worked for hours and had hardly any food and water
to race up the stairs carrying blocks of stone.
The ones who survived were then taken to the edge of a cliff which became known as ‘the
parachutists wall.’
They pushed prisoners at gunpoint to the edge of the cliff and they were lined up.
They were given a chance to push the person off the cliff in front or receive gunshots
themselves.
Prisoners were also executed if they were unfit to work, and often SS guards beat prisoners
to death with their weapons, and performed public hangings and mass shootings, as well
as also starving to death specific bunkers of prisoners.
Human experiments also took place, but as the camp came to a close, the files were destroyed.
It’s been estimated though that 90,000 prisoners were killed in Mauthausen or the sub camps.
As the war turned against the Germans, prisoners were sent to build anti tank obstacles to
the east of the camp.
Many struggled to do this as they were suffering, and things got worse as food parcels stopped.
Prisoners were feeding off scraps, and as the US Army approached, some prisoners were
sent on a death camp.
The US approached on the 5th May 1945, and the guards were disarmed but many had already
fled.
30 were killed by prisoners, and the camp was liberated.
After the war a series of trials were conducted to bring those who were guilty of war crimes
at Mauthausen and the sub camps to justice.
As time went on it was clear to the Allied that these war crimes needed punishing, and
the first trial of personnel from Mauthausen occurred between March 29th and May 13th 1946.
On trial were 60 former members of the camps administration and also August Eigruber, the
former Gauleiters of Upper Austria.
There were doctors on trial, medics, cooks, those responsible for using Zyklon B inside
of the gas chambers, and many more evil guards.
The defendants were charged with violations of the laws and usages of war, and this included
murder, beating inmates, starving them and also torturing them.
After 6 weeks of evidence, 58 people were sentenced to death with 9 being later changed
to life imprisonment.
Some of those who were executed included August Eigruber, Friedrich Entries, Adolf Zutter
and Eduard Krebsback.
All of those executed were found guilty of being sadistic inside of Mauthausen.
The executions were so plenty in their number that they needed to be carried out over two
days on the 27th and 28th May 1947 inside of Landsberg Prison.
The gallows in Landsberg saw the executions of hundreds of nazi war criminals over the
post war years.
At Landsberg these happened in a very standard way.
The condemned would be held inside of the cells before their time of execution came,
some were held alongside other prisoners inside of barracks.
They would be fetched on their day of executions by a number of military policeman and US soldiers.
They were brought out into the courtyard of the prison where two gallows had been created,
and they were accompanied by a priest.
They were then led up to the gallows before they were handed over to an executioner.
The condemned were led up the stairs and were then shuffled over the trapdoor before a black
hood and a noose were placed over their heads.
Quickly after this the executioner pushed the lever and the trapdoor opened with the
condemned plunging to their deaths.
As mentioned following the first Mauthausen trials a large number of executions took place,
and then in the Second Mauthausen trials, there were four more executions of former
workers at the camp that took place the following year.
More trials of SS workers too place in the following years.
Mauthausen was one of the deadliest concentration camps of the Second World War.
It was where 90,000 prisoners died being worked to death, subject to execution and starvation
and they suffered greatly.
It was a brutal site of hard labour and was one of the first huge concentration camps
complexes set up by Nazi Germany.
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