Ebensee

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Ebensee is located in Upper Austria, at the south end of Lake Traun (Traunsee) and has a population of about 8500. Linz lies approximately 90 km to the north. The nearest towns are Gmunden and Bad Ischl.

View of Ebensee and Lake Traun

1 History
2 Industry
3 Tourism
4 External links

[edit] History

A dark point in Ebensee's history was the placement of a Nazi concentration camp (codename "Zement"), part of the Mauthausen network, in Ebensee. Roughly 20000 inmates were worked to their deaths to construct giant tunnels in the surrounding mountains. These tunnels were designed for moving Peenemünde's rocket research into bomb-proof surroundings.

Together with the Mauthausen subcamp of Gusen, Ebensee is considered to be one of the most diabolic concentration camps ever built.

The construction of the subcamp began in late 1943 and the first 1,000 prisoners arrived on November 18, 1943, from the main camp of Mauthausen and other Mauthausen subcamps. The main purpose of Ebensee was to provide slave labor for the construction of the enormous underground tunnels in which armament works were to be housed.

After rising at 4:30 A.M. the prisoners dug away at the tunnels until 6 P.M. After some months work was done in shifts 24 hours a day. There was nearly no accommodation to protect the first batch of prisoners from the cold Austrian winter. Thus the death toll increased astronomically. Bodies were piled in heaps, and every 3-4 days they were taken to the Mauthausen crematorium to be burned. Ebensee did not yet have its own crematorium. The dead were also piled inside the few huts that existed. The smell of the dead, combined with sickness, phlegm, urine, and feces, was unbearable.

The prisoners wore wooden clogs. When the clogs fell apart the prisoners had to go barefoot. Lice infested the camp. In the morning food rations consisted of: half a liter of ersatz coffee, at noon, three-quarters of a liter of hot water containing potato peelings, and, in the evening, 150 grams of bread. Due to this ill treatment, the death toll continued to rise.

When the war was coming to an end, the mass evacuation from other camps put tremendous pressure on the Mauthausen complex which was the last remaining camp in the area of Nazi power. The 25 Ebensee barracks were designed to hold 100 prisoners each. At the most they held 750 each. To this number one has to add the prisoners being kept in the tunnel systems and outside under the open sky. The crematorium was unable to keep pace with the deaths. Naked bodies lay stacked up outside the blocks and the crematorium itself. At the closing weeks of the war, the death rate exceeded 350 a day. To reduce congestion, a ditch was dug outside the camp and the bodies were flung into the quicklime. On one day in April 1945, a record number of eighty bodies were removed from block 23 alone. Amongst the pile, feet were seen to be twitching. During this period, the inmate strength reached a new high of 18,000 prisoners.

The camp was liberated in May 1945 by American troops. The former site now hosts a museum, and the tunnels can be visited as a memorial to the thousands who died.

[edit] Industry

Ebensee is the primary production center for salt in Austria, with brine being delivered via pipeline from salt mines around the Salzkammergut. Historically, the site was chosen because of the rich forests, whose wood was used to boil the salt out of the brine. Although a former industrial center in the Salzkammergut, it has recently fallen on bad fortunes with the closure of some of the larger factories.

[edit] Tourism

The town is surrounded by picturesque lakes, namely the Traunsee, the Langbathsee and Offensee. While the Traunsee is large enough to be used for boating, the other two lakes are smaller, surrounded by mountains, and are used for bathing only. Both are protected natural areas. Another tourist attraction is a small skiing area on the Feuerkogel, with about 10 lifts.