The Mauthausen Concentration Camp
Mauthausen Concentration Camp, Austria - 2022 Danube River cruise. Mauthausen was a Nazi concentration camp next to the town of Mauthausen, Upper Austria. It was the main camp of a group with nearly 100 further sub camps located throughout Austria and southern Germany. Construction of the prison started in 1938 using German and Austrian prisoners from the Dachau concentration camp for the purpose of working previously abandoned granite quarries to provide building materials for monuments and building in Germany.
Later in the war the prisoners were primarily used as forced laborers in the arms industry and Mauthausen became more of an administrative center where prisoners were sent for processing before being sent to the sub camps and the sick and weak were sent there to die. Around 190,000 people were imprisoned in the Mauthausen concentration camp and its sub camps during the war and at least 90,000 died.