Mauthausen

David Thompson · Post by **David Thompson** » 26 Jan 2003 06:56

Here are some documents relating to KL Mauthausen, from "Nazi Conspiracy and Aggression" vol. 4, pp. 836-41:

David Thompson · Post by **David Thompson** » 26 Jan 2003 06:58

Part 2:

David Thompson · Post by **David Thompson** » 26 Jan 2003 07:22

From "Nazi Conspiracy and Aggression" vol. 6, pp. 783-85:

alsaco · Post by **alsaco** » 26 Jan 2003 23:33

The french author and journalist Pierre Daix was in the KZ in 1943-45 as member of the french communist resistance.

He has written a book of souvenirs on this. He was then 17. He still writes regularly on new books in "Le Figaro".

Dan · Post by **Dan** » 26 Jan 2003 23:56

David, where can we find a description of exhibit 216?

Thanks

David Thompson · Post by **David Thompson** » 27 Jan 2003 00:19

Dan -- Exhibit 216 in the IMT proceedings, or some other trial?

Dan · Post by **Dan** » 27 Jan 2003 02:53

David, the one you just quoted. A sample of the poison gas allegedly used there.

David Thompson · Post by **David Thompson** » 27 Jan 2003 03:10

Dan -- That's an interesting thought! My first guess would be the National Archives; second guess would be the US Army Chemical Corps Museum/Archives. A letter/phone call/e-mail to the National Archives would be the way to go; specifying the citation (Nazi Conspiracy and Aggression, vol. 4, p. 837, Item/Exhibit 2176-PS), and the description ("specimen of poison gas used in gas chamber at Mauthausen and Gusen No. 1 and No. 2"), and ask them if they know where it is. If you do it by e-mail or regular mail, include the jpeg image above so there's no mistake. If they don't know where it is, ask them who does. And you might ask them if there's a chemical analysis report as well.

michael mills · Post by **michael mills** » 27 Jan 2003 04:22

The US Army investigator, Eugene Cohen, obviously misunderstood the purpose of Mauthausen Concentration Camp.

It was not established for the purpose of exterminating enemies. Rather, it was set up on the site of the quarry which had supplied Vienna with stone for building; its purpose was to provide material for SS cdonstruction projects.

Prisoners sent to Mauthausen were put to work in the quarry, hacking out the stone and carrying it up a flight of steps out of the quarry. The work in the quarry was by its very nature extremely hard, and combined with the brutal consitions resulted in a death rate that took on exterminatory proportions.

German concentration camps were divided into three categories. Category I had the least harsh conditions, and was supposed to hold prisoners capable of rehabilitation. Surprisingly, Auschwitz I, the original camp, was in that category. Birkenau was in Category II.

Category III had the harshest conditions, and was designed as punishment for incorrigible prisoners. There was only one camp in thaqt category; Mauthausen. No doubt Mauthausen was placed in that category because of the punitive nature of the work at that quarry. Certainly being sent there was equivalent to a death sentence, in comparison with other camps were the possibility of survival was much greater.

Prisoners were sent to Mauthausen for punishment rather than just incarceration. Among them were Allied POWs who attempted to escape. The expectation was that they would be killed by the lethal working conditions.

Under Aktion 14f13, sick and weak prisoners no longer able to work were sent to nearby Hartheim Castle for "euthanasia". Hartheim is mentioned by Cohen, but he was obviously not aware of its function; it was one of the "euthanasia" centres operated by T4. Later, the killing of prisoners under 14f13 was located in the camp itself, as well as at the subsidiary camps. There are reports that gas-vans were used for that purpose.

A cellar structure within Mauthausen camp is claimed to have been a gas-chamber. According to testimony by captured camp staff, Zyklon-B pellets were heated in a metal box to evaporate the HCN gas, which was then led through a pipe into the cellar. That description bears a close resemblance to the operational methodology of more advanced delousing chamber in which the Zyklon-B was heated in a container and the gas circulated through the chamber in order to speed up the delousing process.

The testimony therefore suggests that:
(a) the sophisticated delousing methodology described above was adapted for homicidal gassing at Mauthausen (but seemingly nowhere else); or
(b) the testimony itself is a garbled description of one of the advanced delousing chambers.

In any case, the cellar claimed to have functioned as a gas chamber does not presently have any of the equipment required for the evaporation process described above, so the matter cannot be decided definitively.

The most common cause of death at Mauthausen was the sheer brutality of the working conditions in the quarry, combined with malnutrition. Added to that were executions, individual acts of brutality by the camp staff, and the regular despatch of sick prisoners to Hartheim, where they were killed with bottled carbon monoxide.

The number of victims claimed by Cohen, between 1.5 and two million, is clearly a gross exaggeration. That is more than is currently claimed for Auschwitz-Birkenau. The number needs to be seen in the context of immediate post-war guesstimates, which were invariably greatly exaggerated.

Scott Smith · Post by **Scott Smith** » 27 Jan 2003 04:43

michael mills wrote:The number of victims claimed by Cohen, between 1.5 and two million, is clearly a gross exaggeration. That is more than is currently claimed for Auschwitz-Birkenau. The number needs to be seen in the context of immediate post-war guesstimates, which were invariably greatly exaggerated.

Or simple Greuelpropaganda lies--every container of insecticide becoming "mass-murder in a can."

Charles Bunch · Post by **Charles Bunch** » 27 Jan 2003 05:10

michael mills wrote:
In any case, the cellar claimed to have functioned as a gas chamber does not presently have any of the equipment required for the evaporation process described above, so the matter cannot be decided definitively.

The fact that the gassing apparatus was removed by the perpetrators does not mean the matter can't be decided definitively any more than the fact that the gas chambers of Birkenau were destroyed means gassing at Auschwitz can't be decided.

David Thompson · Post by **David Thompson** » 27 Jan 2003 05:20

Scott -- If Major Cohen's estimates of the Mauthausen deaths are wrong (and that remains to be seen), I think Michael Mills' explanation is a lot more reasonable than your "greuelpropaganda lies" formulation.

If you have proof that Major Cohen (and a lot of other officers and men in the US armed forces) took part in a conspiracy to fabricate lies about the Nazis, let's see the proof. If you don't have any proof, your suggestion is baseless and no better than the "greuelpropaganda lies" you denounce.

Charles Bunch · Post by **Charles Bunch** » 27 Jan 2003 05:30

David Thompson wrote:Scott -- If Major Cohen's estimates of the Mauthausen deaths are wrong (and that remains to be seen), I think Michael Mills' explanation is a lot more reasonable than your "greuelpropaganda lies" formulation.

If you have proof that Major Cohen (and a lot of other officers and men in the US armed forces) took part in a conspiracy to fabricate lies about the Nazis, let's see the proof. If you don't have any proof, your suggestion is baseless and no better than the "greuelpropaganda lies" you denounce.

Good luck getting any evidence!

Cohen's numbers are way off.

About 200,000 inmates were shipped to Mauthausen. Somewhere between 100,000 and 125,000 died, making the camp the most deadly of any in the Reich. Most of the dead were not Jews, who comprised somewhere around 1/3 of the dead.

http://www.mauthausen-memorial.gv.at/en ... ichte.html

The total number of prisoners admitted to the Mauthausen concentration camp (men, women, children and juveniles of various nationalities), according to calculations conducted by former camp clerk Hans Marsalek amounted to at least 197,464 (192,737 men and 4727 women).
The figure 197,464 is arrived at as follows: The highest prisoner number allocated in Mauthausen was 139,317. To this, one must add (according to the death registers, transfer lists, etc.) all those prisoners who, until the time after which a number was only assigned once in Mauthausen (February 20, 1942) and Gusen (January 23, 1944), had died or been transferred or released, plus all prisoners who were not registered by name or number. From this total, however, one needs to deduct those who, with a Mauthausen number, were transferred from Mauthausen to Gusen between February 19, 1942 and January 22, 1944 (approx. 6500 persons) and who were then given a new number.

The prisoner stock (main camp plus all satellite camps), which only provides information on the number of persons detained in the camp on that day but not on the number of people admitted into the camp in the course of one year or in total, was as follows:

December 31, 1938: 994 prisoners
December 31, 1939: 2,666 prisoners
December 31, 1940: some 8,200 prisoners
December 31, 1941: some 15,900 prisoners
December 31, 1942: some 14,000 prisoners
December 31, 1943: 25,607 prisoners
December 31, 1944: 72,392 male and 959 female prisoners
March 7, 1945: 84,472 male and 1043 female prisoners
May 4, 1945: at least 64,800 male and 1734 female prisoners

http://www.mauthausen-memorial.gv.at/en ... ichte.html

The 13 "death registers" (Totenbücher) of the Mauthausen chief camp doctor which were saved from destruction by the SS and could thus be preserved, contain entries of 68,874 names.

Not listed in these books, according to Hans Marsalek, ("Die Geschichte des Konzentrationslagers Mauthausen"/The History of the Mauthausen concentration camp) were the following victims:

Some 5,000 operation "K" prisoners; at least 4841 victims of the Hartheim death factory; some 1,500 executed prisoners without prisoner numbers; more than 2,000 dead prisoners of the tent camp in April 1945; more than 8000 Hungarians who were drowned, slain or shot on the way from Burgenland and Styria (construction of the so-called "Ostwall," or "East Wall" of fortifications) to Mauthausen and on to the Gunskirchen satellite camp or who died shortly after the liberation; more than 8058 persons who died at Mauthausen, Gusen, Linz and Ebensee between April 27, 1945 and June 6, 1945; some 4,500 prisoners who died during transport or in the course of admission formalities; more than 360 prisoners who died during air raids on various satellite camps; more than 2,200 former prisoners who died between May 9, 1945 and Novemer 1945 in local or US hospitals; 36 who died in 1938; 959 Soviet POWs who died at Mauthausen in 1945; 72 female prisoners who died in the period from October 1944 to April 30, 1945.

Scott Smith · Post by **Scott Smith** » 27 Jan 2003 05:50

David Thompson wrote:Scott -- If Major Cohen's estimates of the Mauthausen deaths are wrong (and that remains to be seen), I think Michael Mills' explanation is a lot more reasonable than your "greuelpropaganda lies" formulation.

More-reasonable, yes, especially if one ignores the strange spate of atrocity-propaganda since the war.

WARNING: Greuelpropaganda! (Click at your own risk.)

Charles Bunch · Post by **Charles Bunch** » 27 Jan 2003 06:15

A film taken shortly after liberation at Mauthausen can be seen here:

http://www.us-israel.org/jsource/Holoca ... hfilm.html

It includes an interview with an American POW, Lt. Jack Taylor, who gives a brief summary of the horror of the camp.

Axis History Forum

Mauthausen

Mauthausen

Mauthausen

Exhibit 216

Auschwitz in a Can (at Belsen).