Mauthausen after liberation by the 11th armored and 26th infantry divisions.
Some of the bodies being removed by civilians for burial at Gusen Concentration Camp, Mauthausen, near Linz, Austria. Men were worked in nearby stone quarries until too weak to continue, then killed.
Quarantine area where prisoners were buried at Mauthausen
Quarantine area where prisoners were buried at Mauthausen
Survivors and U.S. soldiers stand over the corpse of a camp guard killed by survivors at Gusen
August Eigruber, former Gauleiter of Linz, and a defendant at the trial of 61 former camp personnel and prisoners from Mauthausen. Eigruber was sentenced to death on May 13, 1946.
“Entrance to the concentration camp Mauthausen”
Prisoners at forced labor doing construction work in the Gusen concentration camp.
A fresco on the side of a building in the town of Mauthausen
Himmler and his entourage inspect the Wiener Graben quarry (April 27, 1941)
Reichsfuehrer SS Heinrich Himmler beginning his inspection of Mauthausen
Reichsfuehrer SS Heinrich Himmler beginning his inspection of Mauthausen
Six thousand inmates await disinfection in a Mauthausen courtyard,
July 1941. After 24 hours of waiting, nearly 140 had died.
Lt. Jack Taylor of the OSS was captured during the Dupont mission and taken to Mauthausen. Shown here after liberation, he later testified in the war crimes trial against the Nazis who ran the camp.
KL Mauthausen central camp is located some 3 km east of the KL Gusen I & II camps. Today it is a museum to commemorate the 120.000 victims that died in a system of 49 different camps. The biggest group of victims (some 40.000 out of them) died at the bigger Gusen camps some kilometers away. In the final phase of the war, the stone-quarries and most of the surrounding buildings of the camp were used for the production of KL Gusen II aircraft-parts too.
Liberators Find Mauthausen Dead
Mauthausen Commandant Franz Ziereis
Mauthausen Commandant Franz Ziereis after being shot and captured by U.S. forces.
Roller prisoners were forced to use to flatten roll call area at Mauthausen
At Mauthausen, 2000 prisoners a week died from starvation.
Starved Hungarian woman receives treatment after liberation of Mauthausen.
Cheering survivors greet American troops as they enter the Mauthausen concentration camp a day after the actual liberation. According to P. Serge Choumoff, an historian and survivor of Mauthausen, this event was a recreation of the liberation done at the request of General Eisenhower.
Memorial wall at Mauthausen
Newly arrived prisoners were forced to stand at attention
for hours facing this wall while chained to iron rings.
At Mauthausen, inmates were chained for three days without food or water.
Spanish Republicans at forced labor in the quarry at Mauthausen (1942)
Photo taken just after liberation of Mauthausen on May 8, 1945, by American Gen. George Patton's troops.
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Today the quarry where so many died terrible deaths is quiet and still but for the occasional gentle breeze off the granite walls, or the hushed voices of tourists, or a parent summoning a child, or even a survivor describing what it was like here... then.
Part of railway car used for hauling rocks at Mauthausen
“On the way to the concentration camp Mauthausen and Gusen”
Female survivors of the Mauthausen concentration camp lie in wooden bunks in the hospital barracks.
Prisoners were forced to climb the 186 steps of the Wiener Graben with large blocks of granite on their backs. Often the blocks would fall, crushing limbs and bodies of those following, sometimes killing. The SS guards invented competitions betting on which prisoner would make it to the top first. Those surviving the ordeal would then be forced to jump from the edge of the quarry to their death below. This particular spot at the edge of the quarry was known “The Parachute Jump.”
Prisoners were forced to climb the 186 steps of the Wiener Graben with large blocks of granite on their backs. Often the blocks would fall, crushing limbs and bodies of those following, sometimes killing. The SS guards invented competitions betting on which prisoner would make it to the top first. Those surviving the ordeal would then be forced to jump from the edge of the quarry to their death below. This particular spot at the edge of the quarry was known “The Parachute Jump.”
Prisoners were forced to wear these carriers on their
backs to haul stones from the quarry at Mauthausen
Tattooed survivors in a barracks in Mauthausen
Survivors in the women's barracks at the newly liberated lower camp of Mauthausen.
Two sisters from Italy who were political prisoners at Gusen. They avoided execution by hiding from doctors who chose prisoners for the gas chambers.
U.S. Colonel Col. Richard R. Seibel was appointed to take command of the Mauthausen camp for 35 days, after an American patrol found the camp in April 1945, before the official liberation of the camp on May 5, 1945.
Survivors Georg Havelka, Ernst Martin, Joseph Ulbrecht
Dr. Hans von Becker. This photograph is in not part of the Dupont Mission Report but is misfiled with the SS photos. However, von Becker, formerly Schussnig’s publicity minister, was a prisoner
