![]() ![]() Like nearby Mauthausen, the Gusen camps also rented inmates out to various local businesses as slave labour. Soviet prisoners of war at Gusen, October 1941 7 and 8) on 17 April 1940, while the first transport of prisoners – mostly from the camps in Dachau and Sachsenhausen – arrived just over a month later, on 25 May. The first inmates were put in the first two huts (No. The new camp (later named Gusen I) became operational in May 1940. ![]() At about that time, the construction of a new camp "for the Poles" began in Gusen (Langenstein) about 4.5 kilometres (2.8 mi) away after an order by the SS(Schutzstaffel) in December 1939. The number of inmates rose from 1,080 in late 1938 to over 3,000 a year later. After the German invasion of Poland in September 1939, the as-yet unfinished Mauthausen camp became overcrowded with prisoners. During 19, inmates of the nearby Mauthausen makeshift camp marched daily to the granite quarries at St Georgen/Gusen, which were more productive and more important for DEST than the Wienergraben Quarry. ĭEST began purchasing land at Sankt Georgen an der Gusen in May 1938. For most of its history, this exceeded the number of prisoners at the Mauthausen main camp itself. The three Gusen concentration camps held a significant proportion of prisoners within the Mauthausen-Gusen complex. On it was converted to a labour camp for political prisoners. Mauthausen initially served as a strictly-run prison camp for common criminals, prostitutes, and other categories of "Incorrigible Law Offenders". The money to fund the construction of the Mauthausen camp was gathered from a variety of sources, including commercial loans from Dresdner Bank and Prague-based Böhmische Escompte-Bank the so-called Reinhardt's fund (meaning money stolen from the inmates of the concentration camps themselves) and from the German Red Cross. The granite mined in the quarries had previously been used to pave the streets of Vienna, but Nazi authorities envisioned a complete reconstruction of major German towns in accordance with the plans of Albert Speer and other proponents of Nazi architecture, for which large quantities of granite were needed. A year later, the company ordered the construction of the first camp at Gusen. It rented the quarries from the City of Vienna in 1938 and started the construction of the Mauthausen camp. The company was led by Oswald Pohl, who was a high-ranking official of the Schutzstaffel (SS). The owner of the Wiener-Graben quarry (the Marbacher-Bruch and Bettelberg quarries) was a DEST Company: an acronym for Deutsche Erd– und Steinwerke GmbH. ![]() Although the camp was controlled by the German state from the beginning, it was founded by a private company as an economic enterprise. The site was chosen because of the nearby granite quarry and its proximity to Linz. On 9 August 1938, prisoners from Dachau concentration camp near Munich were sent to the town of Mauthausen in Austria, to begin building a new slave labour camp. Himmler is talking to Franz Ziereis, camp commandant, with Karl Wolff on the left and August Eigruber on the right. The Mauthausen main camp is now a museum.Įstablishment of the main camp Heinrich Himmler visiting Mauthausen in June 1941. Mauthausen was one of the first massive concentration camp complexes in Nazi Germany, and the last to be liberated by the Allies. Half of the 190,000 inmates died at Mauthausen or its subcamps. The conditions at Mauthausen were even more severe than at most other Nazi concentration camps. Mauthausen and its subcamps included quarries, munitions factories, mines, arms factories and plants assembling Me 262 fighter aircraft. In January 1945, the camps contained roughly 85,000 inmates.Īs at other Nazi concentration camps, the inmates at Mauthausen and its subcamps were forced to work as slave labour, under conditions that caused many deaths. Starting with the camp at Mauthausen, the number of subcamps expanded over time. The Mauthausen main camp operated from 8 August 1938, several months after the German annexation of Austria, to, when it was liberated by the United States Army. The three Gusen concentration camps in and around the village of St Georgen/Gusen, just a few kilometres from Mauthausen, held a significant proportion of prisoners within the camp complex, at times exceeding the number of prisoners at the Mauthausen main camp. It was the main camp of a group with nearly 100 further subcamps located throughout Austria and southern Germany. ![]() Mauthausen was a Nazi concentration camp on a hill above the market town of Mauthausen (roughly 20 kilometres (12 mi) east of Linz), Upper Austria. New arrivals after a weeklong trip in open railway carsĮxterior view of the main camp's entranceĪppellplatz at the Mauthausen main camp Wiener Graben quarry in 2016, "Stairs of Death" towards the right ![]()
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