Statement no. 59

Report on the Mauthausen concentration camp

Katzdorf, October 21st, 1945

Accepted on behalf of the Documentation Campaign by: Scheck

Accepted on behalf of the archive: Tressler

Prague, January 29th, 1946

In Katzdorf on October 21st, 1945

Documentation Campaign Katzdorf

Report on the Mauthausen Concentration Camp

On October 21st, 1945, we visited the former Mauthausen concentration camp.

The Mauthausen camp consists mostly of the Mauthausen camp, the Gusen camp, and others. It was a center from which the aussenkommando sent prisoners to work in various munitions plants, for example to Melk, Vienna, Linz, etc.

A Russian company is currently staying in the Mauthausen camp section. Documents and the entire archive were taken away by the Americans, and parts thereof by the former Polish and Czechoslovak committee.

Under the leadership of the Russian commander, we inspected the camp guards and the infamous quarry. The camp itself is not very large. According to the statistics, it had a population of around 10,000. Under the main camp, there was a so-called Russian camp, ramshackle barracks that were mostly burned down by the Americans because they were completely infested with insects. This is also where the hospital was located.

In the camp, we saw cleaned out barracks, the crematorium, which was relatively small and had three ovens, the bunkers, the rooms in the cellar where quick executions took place, and the gas chambers. Executions were carried out in various ways. In the cellar, people were killed with a special pistol that, instead of regular bullets, shot a 6-7 cm long nail into the head of the condemned that was subsequently removed to be used again. The gas chambers that were utilized in order to do away with the sick before the camp’s liberation had a capacity of around 300 per day.

However, the main place of execution was the quarry. It’s a place that horrifies even today’s visitors. If you look at it, you’ll see the image of the terrible slave labor of thousands of prisoners with your very own eyes. It’s obvious that nobody could have endured this hard work for very long. Its smooth wall was about 80 metres high and teemed with exhausted, barefoot wretches dressed only in rags. The prisoners walked the roughly 1,000 m to work from the camp on a road paved with sharp granite stones, and because their workplace was so close, for cost-saving reasons this commando’s clogs were taken away in order to preserve them from being damaged. They walked to work barefoot and carried the heaviest boulders up the awful steps (we counted 196 in total) also barefoot. The steps were uneven, crooked, slippery. All the while, the prisoners were constantly and violently prodded by the guards. They even had to jog up the stairs while carrying their heavy loads. If any of them fell over from exhaustion or couldn’t carry a stone that an SS-man deemed too small, it was immediately considered Arbeitssabotage. There was only one punishment for Arbeitssabotage — being thrown from a deathly height. Every day, 100 to 200 people perished in this cruel way. Later, their friends had to take their bloody and shattered bodies back to the crematorium.

In the camp’s last year, no differences were made between Jewish and other prisoners. The food was the same as in other concentration camps.

Around April 15th, 1945, there were roughly 8,000 patients in the hospital, most of them suffering from infectious diseases, especially typhus and tuberculosis. Then, Himmler issued the order to destroy the remaining occupants of the concentration camps and so the sick began to be gassed. About 3,000 people were gassed and burned in 10 days.

On May 8th, 1945, the camp was liberated by the Americans. The sick were in such a poor state of health that over 1,000 of them died after they were liberated. A tastefully and reverently maintained cemetery for the post-war victims of the Nazi regime

is located on the site of the former SS sports grounds. Long rows of small, white wooden crosses are marked with the names and abbreviations of the nationalities of the deceased, but many have the word unknown written on them. In these graves lie the dead bodies that the liberators found but couldn’t identify. There were whole piles of them there. Many rows of crosses have yellow stars attached to them, which is how the graves of Jewish prisoners are marked. We found many other names that we thought might be Jewish (Kantorowicz, Spitz Schwarz, Weisz, Pollak). A similar cemetery is located by the Gusen concentration camp near St. Georgen. Almost all of the barracks of this camp have been burned down and destroyed.

At the end of July, the Russians assumed control over the entire region. They ordered the liquidation of Mauthausen. About 330 sick people were transferred to Katzdorf, roughly 18 km away from Mauthausen. Most were Polish, Hungarian, and Czechoslovak Jews. There are currently still 42 patients in Katzdorf. Czechoslovak citizens and citizens of Carpathian Ukraine are listed on the attached document.

The hospital in Katzdorf is led by a Polish doctor, Dr. Cederbaum. The food is satisfactory and there is enough medicine, but there are complaints about the anti-Jewish behavior of the Austrian authorities (regional authority in Perg), who are only supported by the Russian commander in Perg.

Some of the information about the Mauthausen concentration camp was provided by Tadeusz Skorny from Gdańsk.

Dr. Nasch

Dr. Weinberger