Mauthausen Concentration Camp, Austria

Mauthausen concentration camp in Austria, built in the summer of 1940, was a group of concentration camps of Nazi Germany, during World War II.

"Mauthausen" was erected near the villages of Mauthausen and Gusen in Upper Austria, about 20 km east of the city Linz. The history of the camp began in 1938, when several prisoners from the Dachau concentration camp were sent to the town of Mauthausen to build a new camp, which later became one of the largest camp complexes in Nazi Germany. The Mauthausen concentration camp, with its role as a slave labour camp, contributed large revenues to the SS. The first concentration camp inmates were mostly Germans who worked on the major construction sites of the German-Austrian industrial concerns.

The Mauthausen camp carries the reputation of being a horrific place operating on the principle of "extermination through labour". In January 1945 there were about 85,000 camp inmates, but at various times during World War II they numbered between 12,276 and 320,000. The two main camps, Mauthausen and Gusen I, were the only camps in Europe that were categorized as "Class III" camps, where people such as "Intractable Political Enemies of the Reich" were sent.

The camp inmates were subjected to inhuman suffering - those who were sick and weak were left to starve to death and, from 1941, were gassed. Their overseers were given complete freedom to carry out all their sadistic desires.

The name of the Mauthausen camp is also associated with the name of the so-called "Doctor Death", the Waffen SS officer Aribert Heim. Under his supervision, atrocities were committed in the largest laboratory for various researches on humans, such as the injection of chemicals and poisons into the blood, amputations, etc.