KZ Mauthausen

Only the unloved hate; the unloved and the unnatural.
Charles Chaplin, The Great Dictator (1940)

Not very far from the quaint city of Linz is the smaller, more quaint, picture postcard town of Mauthausen.

Mauthausen is a beautiful patch of rural scenery and Austrian village charm. It is also an unforgiving place to build a slave labor camp. The summers are hot and stifling. The winters are painfully cold.

Linz is an easy city to find. Several train lines arrive from Vienna every day. Mauthausen is a little harder. They do not put it on the tourist maps and the locals are not all that keen in pointing it out. I had no idea how to get there when I got to Linz. I knew it was nearby but I did not know in which direction. I did not know if there were any trains or buses that went there from Linz or from anywhere else.

At the Linz train station I looked up the schedules but found nothing about Mauthausen. I then went to an information desk and quickly found that the kick ass Berlin/Bavarian German I had been using in Vienna was completely foreign to the people of Linz. After a long and cryptic conversation and much drawing on post-it notes I eventually found that there was a train that left Linz once a day, in ten minutes no less. It did not go to Mauthausen, but rather to some other quaint little town. From there I could catch a bus, probably the only bus of the day, to my destination. If I was lucky the one train and the one bus would have compatible schedules.

When I went to the ticket counter I had a solid eight minutes before the train was scheduled to depart. This being Austria, I knew it would leave on time. This was not the largest train station in the world, so I felt fairly certain that I could catch this train. That was until I saw the line at the ticket counter. I would be lucky to reach the front of the line in 20 minutes.

So I took a taxi.

When I got in the cab I told the driver I wanted to go to Mauthausen. He looked at me like the average American high school student taking a calculus exam. So I said, “KZ Mauthausen.” Nothing. “Todenlager.” Still nothing. Then I said “Juden” while sliding my finger across my neck. His face lit up and he said something that sounded like a cross between a ribald joke in Czech and what Kermit the Frog might sound like if he were gargling chloroform. I felt comfort in the knowledge that the universal symbol for killing transcends all language barriers.

After 30 minutes in this taxi I was beginning to hope that the driver actually knew where I wanted to go. While driving in a quaint little town that could have been Mauthausen or could have been Sakahattanee, Minnesota for all I knew, the driver made a few u-turns and changed course more than once. I was beginning to think that maybe he did not know where to go. He asked the one passing motorist we had seen in a good 15 minutes for directions and quickly assured me that everything was on track. Then he dropped me off at what might have been a bus station. This did not seem like a concentration camp to me, but what did I know. Maybe this was where one bought tickets. Maybe this was the starting point.

It was not.

Inside this tiny building was not much of anything. There was a counter with a window, so that seemed like a good place to start. There was also a sign on the window that told me that whoever worked there, if anybody, would be back in half an hour. If I was lucky. I saw no payphone anywhere nearby and there were no other patrons in the building. Things did not look promising.

I noticed that there was an actual human being somewhere behind that window. He was eating his lunch and was in no mood to be disturbed. As true as that may be, I was an American, and when my kind are stranded in the middle of nowhere with no means of communicating with the outside world we are bound to interrupt anyone we might see, regardless of whether they are on the clock or not.

He was not very helpful, but I was not going to take nein for an answer. Eventually I got him to point in the general direction of a phone. I thanked him for his assistance with a hearty, “Danke vielmals, Arschloch”. Outside, where it was just about as cold as it was inside, I looked in the direction of this mystery phone and saw nothing. I was about to go back inside and confront my nemesis when I noticed in the distance, down the hill, and really kind of far away there was indeed a payphone. I walked down the hill hoping that this phone worked and that I would not have to walk back up the hill.

Conveniently, the payphone was fully functional and there was a tiny business card in the booth with the number of a taxi service. When the voice on the other end answered with what sounded like vomiting noises, I told it (in English for some reason) that I needed a taxi. He asked me (in English) where I was. I told him that I was at the payphone near the bus or possibly train station. He told me to go back to the station and he would be there in 10 minutes. I really did not want to walk back up that hill so I asked him if he could just pick me up at the phone booth. If this had been New York that probably would not work. There are more than one or two phone booths in New York. But this being Mauthausen (possibly) I took a chance and figured this anonymous voice on the phone would know exactly where this particular phone was. Seven minutes later a taxi pulled up to my phone booth.

I asked the driver (the same voice on the phone) if he knew where the camp was. He assured me that he did, but so did the last taxi driver. As we drove up a winding road I could gradually see an imposing prison fortress. This was clearly it.

The driver asked me how long I would be. I told him I did not know. He then asked me if I wanted him to wait. I assumed he would keep the meter running so I said no. I figured I could get another taxi when I was ready to leave.

That was a mistake.

Roll Call and Barracks

After the Anschluss of Österreich, the Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei declared the city of Linz a Führerstaat. It was to become a monument to National Socialism; a cultural metropolis worthy of representing the Vaterland. Or some such bullshit. Not far from Linz was a tiny village blessed with a mineral-rich quarry. In August 1938 prisoners from Konzentrationslager Dachau were transferred to the Wienergraben, where they were forced to build a granite fortress that would become the Materkampen for all of Österreich. Construction was paid for by what is now the second largest bank in Germany, the German Red Cross, and from the stolen savings and property of the slave laborers themselves. Though initially from KZ Dachau, people were eventually routed from death camps all over the Reich. Due to excessive overpopulation the first of the Gusen sub-camps was built in 1940. By November 1941, some three years and 1,600 dead forced laborers later, it was all but finished. By 1945 KZ Mauthausen had 49 satellite camps throughout Austria covering about as much land as Disney World in Florida.

Mauthausen was a slave labor camp. Rather than simply torture and kill everybody, most people were forced to work in the quarry, build tunnels and increase the production quotas for German manufacturers. Those who were forced to work outside worked from before sunrise to after sunset, regardless of weather. Those who were forced to work in the tunnels worked about 70 hours per week with little ventilation and no regard for safety.

Mauthausen had the largest concentration of political and ideological enemies to the Reich (excluding Jews). The death camp eventually held people from 30 different nations, including Austria, Czechoslovakia, Holland, the Soviet Union and Spain. Most prisoners were from Poland. Some were captured soldiers (mostly Russian), many were intellectuals, homosexuals and other undesirables. Between 1941 and 1943 there were 4,000 POWs, of which only 109 survived. The largest and most hated group were the Jews. Unlike soldiers or political prisoners they had no common nationality; they were imprisoned from all parts of Europe. Jewish slaves were routinely beaten and tortured by the Totenkopfverbände and Kameradenpolizei. Kapos were other prisoners, usually German or Austrian political prisoners or criminals. Life expectancy for Jews at Gusen was anywhere from a few weeks to mere days, and not much better for Russians. Not a single Jew is known to have survived the Gusen I and Gusen II camps between 1940 and 1944.

Mauthausen is often described as the worst of the death camps, although when you are being tortured and murdered they must all seem pretty bad. Even prisoners at KZ Auschwitz, the unquestioned leader in gas chamber murders, were terrified of being transferred to Mauthausen; a fact that delighted the Standartenführer. The gassings at Auschwitz were much more frequent and killed far more people, but the working conditions at Mauthausen were intolerably more severe. In 1941 Mauthausen was designated the only Category III camp in the entire Reich, “Rückkehr unerwünscht”. Mauthausen was a camp of no return. Slaves were transferred into Mauthausen almost daily. No one was ever transferred out to another camp.

Upon arrival, people were registered, categorized and segregated by nationality, religious or political affiliation, disinfected and issued prison clothing with precise efficiency. The disinfection process involved loading as many naked people as possible into a relatively small room where the door was locked behind them and the lights turned out. For people coming from other death camps this was the most frightening thing they could imagine up to this point, and the Totenkopfverbände knew it. Several survivor accounts mention laughter coming from outside of the chamber when the water was turned on. Once the captives were hosed down they were sprayed with disinfectant, often little more than rat poison. While they were mostly relieved that they had not just been gassed, many people were killed by the disinfection process alone.

Once registered, the threat of death was omnipresent. By the middle of the war most of the people sent to Mauthausen had already been in other camps in the East. Many were immediately chained to a stone wall at the camp’s entrance and forced to stand at attention for hours, and sometimes days, during which time most were brutally beaten or killed. Like all of the death camps, Mauthausen had rules, and punishment for breaking even the most bizarre rule could be extremely harsh. Discipline was arbitrarily enforced, and mostly received by Poles, Russians and Jews. Austrian political prisoners received the most favorable treatment and there is still resentment against them in some circles. But they were still prisoners in a death camp, forced into slave labor and under constant threat of death. The most logical reason for the Austrians’ better fortune, if logic can ever be applied to any of this, is that Austria provided more people to the Schutzstaffel than any other country within the Reich’s territory.

Aside from the usual beatings and shootings, a popular method of punishment was to hang people from trees, with their arms behind their backs. Not only was this excruciatingly painful, but often the victims were forgotten and left to slowly die. For target practice the Standartenführer regularly had his young son shoot at the slaves while they worked. Just for fun, about 150 new slaves (mostly Jews) were forced into the small washroom one day. There they were soaked in nearly boiling water and beaten with whips until their shredded skin hung loosely from their bodies.

Slaves were forced to mine the Wienergraben with archaic tools or their bare hands. Reichsführer Heinrich Himmler proudly called this Primitivbauweise. Before construction of the Gusen camps, people had to march 4km daily from Mauthausen to the quarries regardless of weather and with the barest of clothing. Most either wore wooden clogs, cloth shoes, or nothing on their feet at all. Special Treatment consisted of being forced to climb the 186 steps of the Wienergraben while carrying 50kg (about 110lbs) blocks of granite. Men regularly dropped the granite on themselves and anyone who happened to be nearby. Anyone unfortunate enough to be climbing the steps behind them would suffer the consequences of a 50kg block of granite meeting up with gravity. Anyone who dropped their stone and survived was brutally beaten, often to death. If they survived their beating they were forced up the steps again, more often than not with the heaviest stone available. People were regularly forced to run up and down the steps. Many were literally worked to death. For shits and giggles the Totenkopfverbände would sometimes wager on who would successfully reach the top. Those who did would then be forced to jump off the cliff to their deaths or were given the choice of taking a bullet in the head or pushing the person next to them off the cliff. This area was affectionately known as the Parachute Jump.

Death by forced labor was but one way to murder innocent human beings at Mauthausen. The tiny underground gas chamber below the infirmary (which was never completely built) could be loaded with about 120 victims at a time and filled with carbon monoxide. For a group as efficient as the Schutzstaffel this was a terribly inefficient method of mass murder. More people died from suffocation than gas inhalation and their bodies were often covered in blood and excrement, their eyes protruding from their heads. At least 10,000 people were murdered in the gas chamber between 1942 and 1945. To improve productivity the Schutzstaffel converted a railroad car into a gas chamber and murdered people during transport from the main Mauthausen camp to satellite Gusen camps. When it became clear that Mauthausen’s small gas chamber could not realistically meet demands, people were often transported to nearby Schloß Hartheim where a larger and more efficient gas chamber could murder more people in less time. Schloß Hartheim had previously been used to murder handicapped children. Somewhere between 30,000 and 1.5 million people from various camps were gassed at Hartheim.

Initially, the purpose of KZ Mauthausen was to house slave labor to mine the quarry. After satellite sub-camps were built, Mauthausen became the registration and distribution center for all of the death camps in Austria. Most people continued to labor in the Wienergraben, but “scientific” experimentation quickly became a high priority. Between 1940 and early 1944 Jews were forbidden to receive legitimate medical attention, as it could interfere with the research. As far as the Schutzstaffel was concerned Jews were perfect victims for experimentation since they were not legally human yet they had the same internal anatomy as proper Aryans. Mauthausen became a haven for doctors who probably enjoyed tearing apart small animals when they were children. At least one doctor specialised in tuberculosis, infecting hundreds of people for study, while other doctors specialized in typhus and cholera. One doctor bragged that his cholera infections killed at least 1,500 people, while another killed at least 1,000 people by removing parts of their brains while they were conscious to see how long they survived.

Doctors often removed tissue, organs and appendages from conscious victims and bottled them for classification. Mauthausen’s Pathological Museum contained 286 specimens of hearts, kidneys, lungs, skeletons, skulls, faces and heads. One doctor had two human heads on his desk as paperweights, starting a fashionable trend throughout the Reich. Anyone unlucky enough to have tattoos were skinned (while conscious, of course), the flesh sold as ornaments and decorations. Lamp shades made of human flesh were particularly popular. In 1944 several large crates of anatomical material were sent to the Schutzstaffel Medical Agency in Graz.

Between 1940 and 1942 sick and unfit people (meaning Jews and other undesirables) were often murdered by drowning in small tubs and barrels. An ever-inventive Schutzstaffel Hauptsturmführer devised an inexpensive way to murder people: Todebadeaktionen. Around 3,000 people were crammed under showers where the high pressure would tear their flesh and rip out what little hair they had left, and the severe cold would usually kill them within thirty minutes. If anyone failed to die they were left outside to die of hypothermia in the snow. Bodies were left frozen in ghastly positions, some with missing fingers, severed in a vain attempt to shield the water. Between 1940 and 1943 at least 4,000 people were drowned at Mauthausen.

In February 1945 Schutzstaffel doctors murdered about 420 Jewish children between the ages of 4 to 7 with heart injections. Death by heart injection was so popular among many Mauthausen doctors that between October 1941 and April 1945 they were administered twice per week. In 1942 alone, 1,300 Russians and Spaniards were murdered by heart injections.

Food and proper medical attention was never a priority in any of the death camps. The average weight of an ill slave at Mauthausen was 42kg (92lbs), the lowest recorded weight of an adult male was 28kg (less than 62lbs). Those who were too sick or too weak to work were placed in special barracks where they were given no food or whatever whatsoever. A common menu according to one survivor consisted of 12oz of soup extract or 12oz of fake coffee for breakfast, 25oz of turnip or potato stew (and maybe 20g of meat when available) and water for lunch, 300g of bread and 25g of sausage or margarine for dinner. On weekends they got a tablespoon of jam or curd cheese rather than sausage. On this diet they were expected to do manual labor for 70 hours per week.

There were anywhere from 15,000 to 30,000 children at Mauthausen. They were treated no differently from adults. Those who were strong enough to work did. Those who were too young to work were either killed at registration or saved for medical experiments. One survivor tells of a Totenkopfverbände taking a baby from its mother’s arms and smashing its head against a wall. Babies hidden in work bags and under clothes were routinely shot, often with whoever was holding them at the time. Children of German and Austrian political prisoners had a better chance at survival. They might be assigned to work as assistants to Kapos or even Totenkopfverbände, though they were still subject to beatings and rape. Younger children of Jews and Gypsies were assigned to clean latrines where they were stripped naked and forced to wade waist deep in extrement, removing the waste with buckets. Children were usually the first to die in each wave of typhus and pneumonia.

By the time the Wehrmacht realized they could never win the war the Totenkopfverbände resorted to the quickest methods for killing the most people. Ammunition was conserved for the front lines. Death camp slaves were deemed unworthy of receiving a bullet. On 23 April 1945 at least 600 people were beaten to death with shovels, axes and stones. Between January and April 1945 at least 40,000 people were beaten to death with rocks and their own work tools.

A Polish survivor who had been a doctor before the war later reported that the Schutzstaffel had 62 different ways of killing people at Mauthausen.

One of the smaller crematoria

Special Examination Room 1A


Mauthausen was liberated by the 41st Recon Squad, 11th Armored Division, 3rd US Army on 5 May 1945. When Reichsführer Heinrich Himmler ordered the mass execution of all remaining prisoners in March, some Polish, French and Russian prisoners formed a resistance army. Their defensive siege never came to be as most of the camp’s officers fled and only a token guard detachment of local police and fire fighters remained. By the time US troops arrived, prisoners had mostly taken control of the camp and several guards and kapos had already been lynched.

In seven years Mauthausen housed about 195,000 men, women and children. The Schutzstaffel murdered almost 150,000 of them. Of the more than 320,000 prisoners in all of the Mauthausen and Gusen camps, less than 80,000 survived. Only 68,874 of the dead can be identified through Schutzstaffel records, not including the thousands who died in American army hospitals after the camp was liberated. Exact figures of how many people were murdered or even how many were ever at Mauthausen are unknown because the Totenkopfverbände destroyed as many records as they could and Mauthausen received so many new prisoners, especially near the end of the war, that the usually efficient Schutzstaffel could not keep track of who they were murdering. Newer slaves were often given the same registration numbers as those who had already been murdered. One number could easily belong to multiple victims. And most of the people who were murdered immediately upon transfer or who died during the registration process were never registered. In April 1945 at least 8,000 Hungarians were shot or beaten to death during the registration process.

The US Army forced the local population to bury hundreds of corpses while local children were forced to watch. Mauthausen’s Standartenführer never admitted to any crimes. He even bragged that he “derived great sensual pleasure from personally hitting inmates”. He died while in custody after lengthy interrogation by US intelligence officers and his body was on public display for several days afterward. The official cause of his death is still in dispute. The Hauptsturmführer who invented Todebadeaktionen declared that the life of ill political prisoners and healthy Jews held absolutely no value for him. Almost every officer stationed at Mauthausen was eventually executed. Most were hanged in late May 1947. Instrumental in the prosecution were two prisoners, American OSS officer Lieutenant Jack Taylor and Polish engineer Simon Wiesenthal, both of whom went to great lengths to keep the memories of Mauthausen from being buried away.

The Mauthausen camps made a net profit of over US$2 million each year (US$26 million today) from the quarry, manufacturing, and renting out slaves to local construction projects and farms. Even though most locals claimed they never knew what was happening and failed to notice the daily shipments of thousands of people by train, truck and the occasional death march. Most of that money went directly to Berlin, but many German corporations saw their bank accounts swell from the use of slave labor, including auto manufacturer Steyr-Daimler-Puch (Mercedes, BMW and Volkswagen used slaves from other camps) and what is now Bayer, who not only profited from slave labor but also produced many of the chemicals used in the gas chambers and funded medical experiments for their own use. Most of these companies have avoided any responsibility for their actions. In 1998 Volkswagen admitted to using slave labor and agreed to pay reparations.



Prisoners being forced to climb the quarry steps
(Photograph copyright KZ Mauthausen Memorial)


Leftovers forgotten by the Schutzstaffel
(Photograph copyright Simon Wiesenthal Center)

Just walking up to KZ Mauthausen was an unbelievable experience. The parking lot where the taxi dropped me off is a short hike to the entrance. On one side is picturesque snow covered scenery (at least in winter) worthy of being in Austria. On the other side is a fortress where horrendous atrocities ocurred not that long ago.

When I arrived it was cold. I was wearing several layers of clothing, including gloves, scarf, wool hat and a very warm overcoat. It was still almost unbearable. Slaves at Mauthausen wore thin uniforms, often torn or incomplete. I could not imagine how they must have felt in such winters. It began to snow about halfway through my visit. Although it added an eerie beauty to the surroundings, the overall effect was just depressing. It all seemed appropriate.

Other than a woman working in the ticket booth (which used to be a guardpost), the entire place was completely deserted. Winter is not the most popular time to visit but it is probably the best. After I walked through the main gate where slaves used to pass every day on their way to the Wienergraben, and where new slaves were chained to the wall, I entered one of the barracks. It was a small rectangular room made of wood, with small glass windows, some boarded up with wooden planks. The room was completely empty except for me and the knowledge that thousands of people waited for their death in here. With every step I took the floors creaked like a bad horror movie. Other barracks had frames of bunkbeds or small tables with a chair or two.

Outside, I walked the length of the roll call grounds, where snow had been shoveled into piles in the center. At the far end of the grounds I noticed a small smokestack piercing out of one of the buildings. I did not need any visitor’s map to know exactly what it was. I entered the building that housed the crematorium and found myself in a museum. It was pretty much what one might expect of a death camp museum, only much more depressing. Among the displays was a 50kg block of granite and a wooden device designed to hold it on a slave’s back. Reading about a 50kg block of granite is one thing, but actually seeing one leaves no doubt just how heavy it is. There is no way I would have survived a single trip up the steps with one of these.

There were arrows telling me where to go, and I was soon headed downstairs. Once underground, the wooden walls were replaced with concrete and there were, of course, no windows. The arrows were slightly misleading, often leading to dead ends or contradicting themselves. I do not know if that was done on purpose, perhaps to disorient visitors in some effort to give them a sense of the experience, but I chose to ignore the arrows and followed my own path. Soon I was in a very small room with a single concrete table with brick legs. There was a thin groove running the length of the table with a small hole that cut through. This was for draining fluids. Next to the table was a small bucket. This was for collecting body parts. There was a small window in the room, from which the doctors could periodically glance at the scenery while torturing people. I had thought I was underground, but half of this room stood above ground level.

After walking through a corridor I found myself in another small room. This one had no window, just a single brick oven with a small stretcher perched inside. On the stretcher was a lit candle. This could hardly be the sole crematorium. It would take a long time to burn thousands of people in this, whether they were dead or alive. In another room I found a larger crematorium, capable of burning two people at a time. A wall next to it had been turned into a small memorial with photographs and plaques dedicated to hundreds of people. The room was surprisingly bright with several windows letting light onto the ovens.

Walking beyond a very dark and empty corridor, I came to a large metal door with a small window. Looking through the window I saw a tiny room with tile walls and large plumbing. When I opened the door I did not need the sign that read “Gaskammer” to know where I was. I could not believe how small this room was. I did not see how it was physically possible to fit 120 people inside. Hanging from the wooden ceiling were pipes with small sprinkler heads and a single lightbulb. As if the room was not depressing enough, scratch marks from human hands could be seen in the ceiling. I hated being in this room. I was feeling nauseous and needed some fresh air, no matter how cold it was outside.

When I got outside I was nowhere near where I had started. The underground rooms and corridors led from beneath the Standartenführer’s office (which was the nicest building in the entire complex) to the kitchen to the laundry. Four buildings that were not connected at ground level had a maze of death and torture underneath. Outside, the snowfall was heavier than before. They sky was much darker. It was only going to get worse.

I visited the Wienergraben, but under a blanket of snow it did not look as imposing as it should. This was where thousands of people died, but it just looked like a snow-covered hillside. The path from the main gate to the Wienergraben is now a small park where several nations have provided monuments to those of their country who were murdered at Mauthausen.

After I had about as much as I could stand, I went to the ticket booth and asked the woman if she could call me a taxi. She made a quick phone call and said one would arrive in ten minutes. I looked around the front gate and the monument park some more and marveled at how such an evil place could be in the middle of such idyllic scenery. But it was cold and I was ready to leave. I walked down to the parking lot and waited in the snow.

And waited.

And waited some more.

Eventually I hiked my way back to the ticket booth and asked the woman if she could call someone else. My impression was that whomever she called was probably not the best choice. She made another quick phone call and told me that a taxi would arrive in ten minutes. I had already heard this song, but I gradually made my way back down to the parking lot anyway.

Standing in the empty parking lot, with snow and wind assaulting me and the sky getting darker by the minute, I was not happy. Then it occurred to me where I was. I was not likely to be murdered. I probably would not be tortured. No one was forcing me to do manual labor. There was no one anywhere near me with a gun. Other than a lack of transportation, I had complete freedom. I was at a memorial to hundreds of thousands of people who were systematically tortured and murdered by homocidal sociopaths, but I was unhappy because I had to wait for a taxi.

Genocide has a way of putting things into perspective.

Sooner or later, but more like later, I saw a car approaching up the hill. Of course, it was the same driver who brought me here. He asked me where I wanted to go. It had taken a good 15 to 20 minutes to get here from the Mauthausen bus/train station and another 30 minutes to get to the station from Linz. Not wanting to return the same way I had arrived, but dreading an almost hour long cab ride, I asked him how long it would take to get to Linz. He said 30 minutes.

Twenty minutes later I was at the Linz train station.