User:Halibutt/Mauthausen

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[edit] Inmates

Prisoners awaiting disinfection in the courtyard of Mauthausen

Until early 1940, the largest group of inmates consisted of German, Austrian and Czechoslovak socialists, communists, anarchists, homosexuals, and Roma. Other groups of people to be persecuted solely on religious grounds were the sectarians, as they were dubbed by the Nazi regime, that is the Bible Students and Jehovah's Witnesses. The main reasons for their persecution was their rejection of the loyalty oath to Hitler and their refusal to render any kind of military service — a political consequence of their beliefs^[1].

In early 1940 a large number of Poles were transferred to the Mauthausen-Gusen complex. The first groups were composed mostly of artists, scientists, boy scouts, teachers and university professors^[2][3], arrested in the course of the AB Action. While at a latter stage the newly-arrived prisoners belonged to all categories, the educated people and political prisoners constituted the largest part of all inmates until the end of the camp's existence. During World War II large groups of Spanish Republicans were also transferred to the camp and its sub-camps. Most of them were former Republican soldiers or activists who fled to France after Franco's victory and then were overrun by German forces in the effect of the French defeat of 1940. The largest of such groups arrived to Gusen in January of 1941^[4]. In early 1941 almost all Poles and Spaniards, except for a small group of specialists working in the quarry's stone mill, were transferred from Mauthausen to Gusen^[5]. Following the outbreak of the Soviet-German War in 1941 the camps also started to receive a large number of Soviet POWs. Initially most of them were kept in huts separated from the rest of the camp; it was the Soviet prisoners of war who constituted the first large group to be gassed in the newly-built gas chamber in early 1942. In 1944 a large group of Hungarian and Dutch Jews was also transferred to the camp. Much like all the other large groups of prisoners transferred to Mauthausen-Gusen, most of them either died as a result of the hard labour and poor conditions, or were thrown down the sides of the Mauthausen quarry (nick-named the Parachute Wall by the SS guards and their Kapos).

An element of a memorial in the Mauthausen camp

Outside of the major waves of inmates, throughout the years of World War II the camps of the Mauthausen-Gusen complex received new prisoners in smaller transports on a daily basis, mostly from other concentration camps in German-held Europe. Most of the prisoners of sub-camps of Mauthausen were kept in various detention sites prior to their shipment to the final destination; the most notable of such recruitment centres for Mauthausen were the infamous camps at Dachau and Auschwitz. The first transports from Auschwitz arrived in February of 1942. The second transport in June of that year was much larger and numbered some 1200 prisoners. Similar groups were sent from Auschwitz to Gusen and Mauthausen in April and November of 1943 and then in January and February, 1944. Finally, after Adolf Eichmann visited Mauthausen in May of that year, the KZ Mauthausen-Gusen received the first group of roughly 8,000 Hungarian Jews from Auschwitz, the first group evacuated from that camp before the Soviet advance. Initially the groups evacuated from Auschwitz consisted of qualified workers for the ever-growing industry of Mauthausen-Gusen camp complex, but as the evacuation proceeded also other categories of people were shipped to Mauthausen, Gusen, Vienna or Melk.

Over time Auschwitz had to almost stop accepting new prisoners and most were directed to Mauthausen instead. This was also true for a group of roughly 10,000 prisoners evacuated in the last wave in January of 1945, only a few weeks before the Soviet capture of the area of Auschwitz-Birkenau complex^[6]. Among them was a large group of civilians arrested by the Germans after the failure of the Warsaw Uprising^[7]; by the liberation not more than 500 of them were still alive^[8]. Altogether, during the final months of the war, 23,364 prisoners from other concentration camps arrived to the camp complex^[8]. Many more perished during the death marches or in the railway cars, where the prisoners were kept at sub-zero temperatures for several days prior to their arrival. Many of those who survived the journey had died before they were even registered, while others were given the camp numbers of prisoners who had already been killed^[8]. The estimated number of prisoners that passed through all of the sub-camps is 335,000; most of them were forced to do hard labour in limestone quarries and factories.

Camp file of a Polish political prisoner No. 382, Jerzy Kaźmirkiewicz

As in all other German concentration camps not all prisoners were equal. Their treatment depended largely on the category assigned to each inmate, as well as nationality and rank within the system. The so-called kapos, or prisoners who had been recruited by their captors to police their fellow prisoners, were given more food and higher pay in the form of concentration camp coupons which could be exchanged for cigarettes in the canteen, as well as a separate room inside most barracks. In addition, following Himmler's order in June, 1941, a brothel was opened for them in 1942 in Mauthausen and Gusen I camp^[9].

One of the barracks in Mauthausen with stones left by Jewish visitors in memoriam; modern view

[edit] Notes and references