Statement no. 60

Report on the Ebensee Concentration Camp

Bad Ischl, 23. X. 1945

Accepted on behalf of the Documentation Campaign: Scheck

Accepted on behalf of the archive: Tresssler

Prague, 29. I. 1946

Bad Ischl, on October 23rd, 1945

Documentation Campaign

Bad Ischl

Report on the Ebensee Concentration Camp

In the most beautiful Austrian countryside, in the salt cave, on the southern edge of Lake Traun, lies the industrial small town of Ebensee. Several hundred meters from the town, on a steep slope, there are several building complexes with the typical architecture of concentration camps. The camp was founded in 1942 and was originally designed to hold roughly 2,000 people. Later, however, thousands of prisoners from evacuated camps from all over Germany were transported to Ebensee, and so the average number of people here was around 20,000. This meant that 4, even 5, people shared an 80 cm wide plank-bed.

Ebensee wasn’t a Vernichtungslager in the sense that people weren’t executed or gassed en masse here, but were beaten to death by the hundreds every day while they worked or were on the block. Combined with other circumstances, the toil here could not be endured for more than 4 to 6 weeks. The 18,000 surviving prisoners were either only here for a very short time, or had a better position within the camp system. But roughly 1,500 of the liberated prisoners died from various diseases and as a result of their bad treatment in the camp. They were buried in a cemetery that was renovated with dignity near the road between Ebensee and Bad Ischl. In it, there are rows of red crosses, which alternate with wooden Jewish stars.

We worked almost the whole time in underground tunnels. Paths were created within the cliffs, some over a kilometer in length, that were interconnected and made up an enormous system of underground tunnels and rooms. We manufactured synthetic gasoline, which is still manufactured here today, and a weapons plant of the Hermann-Göring-Werke was supposed to be located here, but this never happened because of the end of the war. The work was extremely difficult. Today, SS men who live in the former concentration camp work in the synthetic gasoline factory.

It is a strange sight to see the camp guarded by American troops, an American soldier on the guard tower, and the English-German sign electrified fence – elektrischer Zaun. But we also see that the interned SSmen don’t work too hard, and hear that they are allowed to receive packages, and that their food isn’t worse than the food for the Jews in the nearby camp, in the former SS barracks. There was a small crematorium in the camp, and during a period of high mortality it couldn’t keep up with the burning of all of the dead bodies, and so there was a mass grave of several thousand murdered people next to it. There was apparently a gas chamber in the camp, but we never found out if it was ever used.

The so-called Schonungsblocks were a special sort of hell. The sick lay there naked on the bare ground, what little food they were to get was stolen by block leaders, and therefore being sent to the Schonungsblock was like a death sentence.

Besides the former prisoners, 400 Poles, about 200 of which are Jews, are housed in the nearby camp (the former SS barracks). Their living conditions are not satisfactory. Their accommodations are adequate, but they complain about their small food rations and that nobody cares about their clothes. They are therefore forced to procure necessities by trading. This angers the Austrian and American authorities, which makes their situation worse, and that only increases

their poverty, and thus they have to trade.

They also complain about not getting enough help from Jewish institutions, and have stated that they have even been robbed and cheated by them.

They live alongside the Aryan Poles in the camp in a tense atmosphere. What we enjoyed most in the camp was the practically exemplary solidarity and brotherly mutual help between Jewish men and women.

A trip trough Austria reveals that this country was full of concentration camps, and there is barely a town without a monstrous double barbed wire fence nearby. The situation of the former prisoners in this country is worse than in Germany because the Austrians, as citizens of a free country, have refused to take responsibility for Nazi crimes and so the elevated position of the prisoners in Germany is not the same here. In the Russian sector there is an obvious tendency to repatriate as fast as possible, even people who don’t want to return to their home country.

Some of the information about the concentration camp in Ebensee was provided to us by the former inmates of this camp Bodenstein Moses, born in 1918 in Koszici near Krakow, Siegfried Benjamin, born in 1908 in Jaslo, and Dr. Bester Oskar, born in 1915 in Vienna, and all of those currently in D. P. Camp 3, Ebensee.

The local branch of UNRRA is overseeing the camp, and the D.P. Committee is also in Ebensee, which provided us with photographs and some documentary material.

Dr. Nasch

Dr. Weinberger