Mauthausen Concentration Camp, Austria
(all photographs by J. Gerencher)

This camp is located in green hills above the Austrian community of Mauthausen, which is located along the Danube River in the south of Austria.  The camp supplied labor for the granite quarries, which were to provide the building material for Hitler's new constructions in Berlin and elsewhere.  Conditions within the camp and the quarries were brutal.  The camp itself is made of granite blocks which were quarried from the local bedrock by slave labor.  Inmates were quickly worked to death in this camp.

Camp as seen from the distance in the quiet Austrian countryside.

Prisoner yard just inside camp entrance. 

Interior yard within the camp.  Wall made of granite blocks.
Note the electrified barbed wire at the top of the wall.

Interior yard with guard towers and electrified barbed wire.

Granite quarry below camp, toward Danube River.

Infamous steps descend steeply into the granite quarry.
There are 186 steps along this incline.

Ovens within crematorium of the camp.

Swimming pool for the prison guards and their families, 
right outside the main entrance of the camp.
A guard tower is in the foreground.

The camp was liberated by Americans in May, 1945.  Of the 110,000 survivors at Mauthausen and its subcamps, 3,000 died after liberation.  Mauthausen was one of the last camps to be liberated.