MAUTHAUSEN PART 9

LIBERATION
In 1944 agreement had been reached among the Allies as to each power's sphere of occupation once Nazi Germany had been defeated. Later, their rapid advances into German territory caused certain amount of dissension between them. Austria was one of the bones of contention and it was accordingly divided between the four powers. But at the time of division, when the Allied armies were still a long way away, no allowance was made for the fluidity of modern warfare. It was understood that if an agreed occupation line was overrun by one of the Allied armies during the campaign, a withdrawal would take place later. Although Mauthausen came into the agreed Russian sphere of influence, it was, in fact, liberated by forward detachments of the United States Army. Many thousand of lives were saved by this turn of events because the United States was very much better provided than the Russians with medical supplies and clothes. They gave then out freely when they entered the camp. Yet during the liberation and freeing of prisoners, the Americans had initially no control over them, order and discipline had broken down, typhus carriers mixed with other inmates that had previously been isolated and spread the disease.

Survivors of the Mauthausen quarantine section'

In the past hygiene played a significant and prominent part in camp life, and only towards the end of hostilities were the standards lowered. The floors of the prisoners' Blocks were always spotlessly clean. They were hosed down regularly all through the year, so that the wood was permanently wet. Random Block de-lousing took place whatever the weather and often occurred with hardly a moments notice. The prisoners would be hustled out, often in the middle of the night, while the Block was fumigated. Personal delousing might take place at the same time, or independently during Block fumigation. Sometimes it was done every two weeks, sometimes every six. The constant fear of typhus outbreaks made the camp administration particularly careful about louse control, something the Americans overlooked initially. Large notices, accompanied by drawings of a louse, were nailed on the walls at intersection of Stube (room) A and Stube B in every block. Over this illustration were the words 'Eine Laus dein Tod' (one louse, your death) [which was quickly removed upon the arrival of American troops, sic]
Hygiene was used as a pretext for tormenting the prisoners in a variety of ways. After running down to the showers, they might have to wait outside the laundry for several hours, or even all night, before the de-lousing of the previous group was finished. When their turn finally came, they hung their clothes on hooks in a small room at the bottom of the steps near the entrance to the showers. They were given small pieces of soap but no towels. So without drying themselves after shower, they had to put on the the same clothes again. A change of clothes was very much a matter of chance, there being no regular day when clean shirts or shorts were issued. They were never given out to those in quarantine.

Mauthausen - latrine overflowing with human waste, condition after liberation'

The camp authorities preoccupation with physical and Block hygiene also had its effect on the food and the overall condition of prisoners. Their rations, especially during the last six months of the camp's existence, were reduced to starvation level,and this forced the prisoners into acts which in any circumstances would have been unthinkable. One man with dysentery, who ate some small cubes of carrot, passed them almost immediately, absolutely unmasticated and undigested. Another pounced on the filth, snatched it up, after running the pieces under water, quickly popped the treasure into his mouth. But even this was not the lowest depth man can be driven. In May 1945, a Polish doctor investigating a report there was cannibalism in Block 5 found corpses with pieces of flesh removed. [PS 2176 (203), JAD, 3rd Us Army, sic] The culprit, a Russian, was caught red-handed. He was splattered with blood and still had a piece of flesh in his mouth. In another Block containing sick prisoners a body had all the stomach ripped up and the kidneys removed. Again the culprit was a Russian. When SS doctor Wolter was notified and asked to provide food for the sick, he replied that Commandant Ziereis had ordered that no food be given that day.

Mauthausen - Photo of an inmate forced to use a makeshift latrine during the operation of the camp

Camp garbage was taken for disposal in the same wagon in which bread was delivered. These wagons were drawn by prisoners. This may seem to be a breakaway from the usual strict hygiene habits until one realises that the SS regarded its prisoners simply as animals. A high standard of hygiene was enforced in the buildings and their surroundings, but such standards did not apply to the prisoners food because they were expected to eat like animals.
Towards the end of April, Zierreis formerly handed Mauthausen over to Captain Kern of the civilian police in Vienna. Kern was now faced with the terrible task of controlling the huge death pyre which Mauthausen had become, and also finding guards to police it, since Ziereis had joined the general rush to escape and hide. By the time an advance party of the 11th Armoured Division reached the camp on 5th May, most of its former guards had disappeared. Some went to the mountains where a last stand was being made, others fled to the cities to hide amongst the civilian population. Ziereis' decision seems to to have been prompted by the low-level flight over the camp of an Allied plane with British markings. This was surprising, because there were no RAF units in the area until some days later. The plane is, however, accurately described having 'twin booms' or, 'twin fuselages', and was therefore a Lightning. It was seen by a Polish prisoner named Dr Turzanski, who had recently arrived from Auschwitz.

Polish and Russian survivors in front of a tank of the 11th Armoured Division of the 3rd Army (this is a re-enactment picture taken)

As soon as Ziereis handed over, the camp underground movement came out into the open. The more active prisoner were armed and went searching the countryside for the SS men hiding. But the sick, the weak, the starving and the dying all languished as before during the few twilight days that elapsed before the Americans took over the running of the camp. One camp resistance group. consisting of some stronger prisoners, seized the telegraph communications at Gusen, Narn and Perg, then they sought out the locations of SS Units in order to prevent them from returning to the offensive. The same group held a pitched battle with the SS at the railway bridge near Mauthausen and incurred losses, which included Badia, a man who had formerly been active in the Spanish resistance. The liberating Americans faced a formidable task when they took over Mauthausen, and looking back, it is clear that it was well and ably carried out. It is true that they did not welcome the idea of large-scale resistance activities, and this may have been responsible for some of the ill feeling which arose between them and the Russian prisoners. Perhaps they did not fully appreciate that the normal reaction of people at last freee from torment and suffering would be to seek revenge and extort retribution from their former persecutors. It is very likely that they feared that, in their renewed surge of life, the prisoners might start a mass lynching of the local inhabitants. With this idea in mind , the Americans rounded up the local people, and made them clean away the bodies and clean up the barracks.

The corpses are piled at Mauthausen"

Mr. Casimir Climent, the man who saved so many invaluable camp records from as far back as 1940, also listed the number of prisoners in Mauthausen as at 1st May 1945. All authorities agree on the authenticity of his records and the efficiency and conscientiousness with which he processed them. From the 1st January 1945, to the 4th May, a total of 28,080 deaths were recorded in the camp and its subsidiaries. The Mauthausen crematorium was out of action and the huge communal grave which had caused the break-out from Block 20 was filled to capacity with 10,000 bodies. The Americans supervised its filling in, as well as the burial of nearly 5,000 bodies in the former SS football field near the garage yard. Hundreds of others were they were found, on the road side or up in the hills. The United States medical teams were naturally aware of the grave danger of giving too much food to the camp inmates in their weakened condition. Obviously, a piece of steak would kill. To start with they were fed, little and often, with thick, wholesome gruel. In this way the near-dad were brought back to life and helped towards health, or some semblance of health. Many of the US troops became blood donors. The prisoners wounds were cleaned and dressed, sanitary arrangements were efficiently organised and a massive cleansing operations was put into action. Yet even these measures could not prevent the deaths of more than 3,000 after liberation. Many died from sheer joy. They had lived on hope, on fear and on their nerves for so long that the sudden relaxation of tension, when it came, was too much for them. Many people died because they left the camp before they were strong enough. The Americans warned them against doing so and encouraged them to stay on, but the pull of their homelands was too powerful. Trains were sent, particularly from the USSR, to repatriate nationals and anyone else who wished to return eastwards to his homeland. [This was by all means for Russian POW's not a happy event and many were sent to Siberia by Stalin into 'Re-education' labour camps, many of them in fact did commit suicide rather than face a communist reception committee, sic]

Arrival of US Army armoured Scout Vehicle at the Assembly Complex" this is a re-enacted scene at Mauthausen on the 7th May 1945

On 8th May, the following notice was posted up in Mauthausen by the Camp Resistance Committee:
COMRADES
The crimes of Hitler's Nazism are horrible and dreadful. This concentration camp happens to be one of them in which the greatest portion of these atrocities took place. Many of our comrades were slaughtered as an offer of death to Fascism, many suffered damage to their health of which they can never recover. The International court of investigation of War Criminals has sent here its representatives. It is our duty and our right to assist this work by disclosing these crimes. Everyone of you who knows anything at all about the following matters should make his name known to his block secretary so he can be called in as a witness. The matters are as follows:
1. Murder of comrades, which you yourself experienced.
2.Shooting while trying to escape, which you yourselves saw.
3.Knowledge of prisoner of war.
4. Sadistic tortures which you experienced and saw yourself.
Report at once because the work must go forward and also that relations may be notified.
sgd. A. SOSWINSKI
This was one of the rare occasions when the communists co-operated with their American liberators. The Americans were in fact very active in keeping records and providing evidence for the Wra Crimes Tribunal. Among the prisoners they took were two ex-Polish soldiers wearing German uniforms. They were arrested by the OSS and interrogated. it transpired that the men. Wita and Dutzi, were innocent of any crimes and they were released on 27th April. The date is the interesting point about their arrest documents, for they show that Ziereis and Bachmayer were already marked men. On 11th May the camp still held 15, 211 men and 2,079 women. By June, th French, Belgians, Luxembourgian and Dutch had been repatriated. There remained 5,200 prisoners of whom 850 were women. 1,621 of them were still under medical treatment.

Freed inmates removing the hated insignia of the Germans above the Entrance of Mauthausen May 5th 1945

On 23rd May, Charles H. Hayes, Agent 511 of the US Intelligence Service, heard the rumour that Ziereis was hiding in the neighbourhood of Spital, Austria. He prepared to go there, but before he had a chance to leave, he was told that Ziereis was now in the hospital at Gusen. Hayes undertook the interrogations, which were difficult and had frequently to be broken off because of Ziereis' condition. During this time he was under the care of DR Toni Goscinski, an ex-Gusen inmate who had saved many lives by his courage and devotion. Despite his own feelings, Goscinski cared for the wounded Ziereis with superb efficiency and it was undoubtedly due to him that the ex-commandant lived as long as he did. For the most part the interrogation took place in German, with the ex-Mauthausen inmate Hans Marsalek acting as interpreter. It stopped at last at 7 p.m. on 24th May, when Ziereis was no longer able to answer the questions. He died at 7.30 that night. NOTE: THIS BRIEF COMMENT DIFFERS VASTLY AS WRITTEN UNDER PART 7 OF MY NARRATIVE.Accepting the fact that the sworn affidavit by Marsalek was written ten months after the event, whatever Ziereis may have said would have been rather rambling and erratic and not worth repeating, but is entered into the records of the IMT.
And now to Georg Bachmayer: Transcription of sworn statement of TEC 3 Gerard Oppenheimer, Linz-Dornbach, Austria.
'My name is T/3 Gerard Oppenheimer, Agent attached to Counter-intelligence Corps (MII), at present of the 11th Armoured Division now stationed at Linz, Austria. I have been working on the Mauthausen Chain of Concentration camps under Lt. Galbraith of the C.I.C. 11th Armoured Division. On the 23rd May 1945, I was present at the disinterment of Georg Bachmayer, Assistant Commandant of Mauthausen and Branches, and of his small daughter. This took place in Altenburg, Austria, near Perg and was done by a few local Nazis under the supervision of a former prisoner of Mauthausen, now a tailor in the town, named Rueckert.
'Around 19th May 1945, we heard that Bachmayer had committed suicide after killing his family. We had no transportation immediately and a few days later we got orders to exhume the body and verify Bachmayer's identity. Lt. Galbraith and I were in charge of the detail and after identification we had him re-buried in the same spot. The corpse was in a bad state of disintegration. I myself photographed Bachmayer's corpse. From other photographs of this man which I had seen previously, I am positive beyond any doubt that this was his body. I say this because of his protruding teeth, receding thin, dark hair with receding hair-line, and the exact description I had of his crippled hand, middle finger being continually bent and first phalanx of index finger missing. Perg is about 12 km from Mauthausen. I have given the photographs to the Examiner and have initialled each as to identity. I swear before God this is entirely true'.
sgd. GERARD OPPENHEIMER
T/3, U.S. Army
Subscribed and sworn to before me at Linz, Dornbach, Austria, this 5th day of June 1945
sgd. GILBERT M. ALLEN, JNR.
Lt. Col., Infantry
Investigator-Examiner. [ITS Historical Archives, file No. 276 (S) 157. sic]

As early as June 1945, the War Crimes Branch of the US Investigating team had drawn up all their documents and were ready for trials to begin. This team was one of the many set up in agreement with the Allies to investigate crimes uncovered by the advancing forces. The trials of former SS personnel in Mauthausen took place in Dachau in 1946 and were brilliantly conducted. The main Prosecutor, Jack Taylor of the OSS, was himself a former inmate of the camp. The official code-number given to the documents used in these trials was PS 2176. The jury were presented with facts concerning killings, particularly of prisoner-of-war, by means of shooting, beating, using of poison gas, drowning, starving, injections, stoning, exposure etc. Section IV of this remarkable series of documents states:
(IV) a. Summary of facts. Between 1,500,000 and 2,000,000 political prisoners are known to have been incarcerated and labelled for extermination at the Mauthausen system of concentration camps from available records...
Other exhibits during the trials were death registers, a specimen of poisonous gas, a rubber hose used by SS guards, a heavy whip, a cat-o'nine tails and various documents and affidavits relating to crimes committed. In all there were 818 persons against whom warrants were issued in connection with investigations into the crimes committed in Mauthausen and its sub-camps. The culmination of the struggle now achieved over the Nazis could have been the beginning of a new era of understanding between nations. The fault lies with both East and West that it was otherwise. The Americans should have understood the terrible sufferings endured by the Russians at the hands of the Nazis and shown compassion in this respect in the months that followed. The Russians for their part, should have given the Americans credit for their devotion to humanity and for the compassion and generosity shown by US forces to all in need.
EPILOGUE
Numerous members of the camp administrative staff and the guard units were prosecuted after the war. In a proceeding on the site of the Dachau concentration camp, a US Military Tribunal prosecuted deputy preventative detention camp commandant Hans Altfuldisch and 60 other defendants associated with Mauthausen in the spring of 1946. The tribunal convicted all 61 defendants, sentenced 58 to death and three to life imprisonment on May 13, 1946. On appeal, nine of the death sentences were commuted to prison sentences. US authorities executed 49 of the defendants and released the remaining twelve convicts in 1950 and 1951.
                                         



A young Frailty of collaboration with the enemy is executed by firing squad in Grenoble. He was one of six of the town's citizens shot that day.  Photo: Hulton Getty Images                                                 


US military tribunals tried approximately 224 other persons associated with Mauthausen (officials, guards, prisoner functionaries, prisoners, and implicated civilians) in about 60 further proceedings at Dachau in 1947 Military judges convicted more than 90% of the defendants.
Austrian authorities prosecuted and convicted several defendants associated with Mauthausen in several trials after the war. The Federal Republic of Germany also conducted numerous proceedings against persons accused of Nazi crimes at Mauthausen and its sub-camps. Perhaps the most extensive German investigation involved the proceedings against Karl Schulz and Anton Streitwieser, respectively, the chief of the political department in the main camp and the commandant of several Mauthausen sub-camps. US Federal civil courts stripped four former Mauthausen guards of their US citizenship during the 1980s, after the Department of Justice's Office of Special Investigations brought suits against them for participation in Nazi-sponsored persecution. An estimated 197,464 prisoners passed through the Mauthausen camp system between August 1938 and May 1945. At least 95,000 died there. More than 14,000 were Jewish.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS:
Literature sources: Black book. The Black Book Committee, New York, 1946.;BULLOCK, ALAN, Hitler: A Study in Tyranny, London 1954.: Tracing Service, Germany 1950: DATNER, SIMON, Crimes Against Prisoner-of war: DELARUE, JACQUES, Historire de la Gestapo, Paris, 1962: DYER, LT. COL. GEORGE, 12th Corps, Spearhead of Pattons' Third Army, Germany 1947: FOOT, M.R.D., SOE in France, London 1966: GRUBER, KARL, Between Liberation and Liberty, New York 1955: HILBERG, PAUL, The Destruction of European Jews, Chicago, 1961.: JANI, EMILIO, My Voice Saved Me, Milan 1961.: KOGON, EUGEN, The Theory and Practice of Hell, London 1951.: KRUKOWSKI, STEFAN, Bylon Kapo, Warsaw 1963.: MITSCHERLICH, A. Death Doctors, London, !962.: JUREK OSUCHOWSKI, Gusen, Entry to Hell, Warsaw 1961.:PAPPALETTERA, VINCENZO, Tu Passerai per il camino, Milan, 1965.: REITLINGER, GERALD, The Final Solution, London 1953.: REITLINGER, GERALD, The SS: Alibi of a Nation, 1922-45, London 1956.: SADZEWICZ,MAREK, Oflag, Warsaw 1958.: SEMMES, HARRY H. Portrait of Patton, New York, 1955.: SHIRER, WILLIAM, The rise and Fall of the Third Reich, London 1966.:SMOLEN, KAZIMIERZ, Auschwitz 1940-1945, Auschwitz, 1961.: SNYDER, LOUIS L, Hitler and Nazism, New York 1961.: TENNENBAUM, JOSEPH, In Search Of a Lost People, New York 1948.: WIGHTON, CHARLES, Eichmann, His Career and Crimes, London 1961.: WORMSER, OLGA and MICHEL, HENRI, La tragedie de la deportation 1940-1945, Paris 1955.BENZ, WOLGANG, Der Ort des Terrors, Band 4, München 2006 which I translated from German
Wikipedia
Metapedia
Blog: fold3,bgill,16 Oct 2011
Any references of documents with serial numbers preceded by letters 'PS' and 'D' indicates evidence used at the trials before the International Military Tribunal (IMT), Nürnberg, 1945-46. Both letters 'PS and 'D' refer to Mauthausen, not every reference has been quoted. I also have avoided where-ever I could the expression "Nazis" as this is derogative, to the extent that it is almost obscene to German readers for which I apologise, yet it is so entrenched in literatures in most languages that I had to use it. The correct expression "Nationalsozialismus" would be meaningless to others
Herbert Stolpmann.

MAUTHAUSEN PART 8

HUMILIATION-ABUSE-TORMENT-DEATH-ALL NATIONALITIES

Poles
Highly efficient intelligence organisations sprang up in all prisoner-of-war camps. One of them, a Polish under-ground military movement, set out to obtain information which could assist Allied landing on the Baltic coast, and transmit to England. Colonel Morawski, the senior officer of Oflag II D, Grossborn, was the head of this organisation. Through a dis-affected German soldier they obtained maps of an area of Poland which was under investigation. This map concerned the province of Mazury, (Masuren) the allegiance of whose people to Germany was always suspect, and it was the German soldiers homeland. Unfortunately, he was betrayed to the Gestapo, horribly tortured and finally shot. Members of the Polish group were then interrogated by the SS and Gestapo, but the German had not revealed any secrets. The officers believed, mistakenly, that they were reprieved. In October 1944, Colonel Morawski, Major Wandycz, Major Holubski. Lieutenant Kloc and Ensign Szjbo arrived in Mauthausen. After standing for some hours against the wall of Lamentations, they were taken to Block 19 where they came under the friendly eye of a Polish prominenten called Dziarski. At this point Colonel Morawski was taken to the political section where he was offered a job as an interpreter. Dziarski, who knew that the group were about to be executed, would have no part in the ruse and informed Morawski that they were about to die and that, as he spoke, Ziereis was preparing for the execution. They were given the last rites by Father Wilk-Witoskawski and went with cigarettes in their mouths to the Appellplatz. About eighty German officers and NCO's were sent to the crematorium, followed by Ziereis, Bachmeier and others. Major Holubski and Lieutenant Kloc had to be taken from their sick beds. The prisoners were packed closely inside the crematorium. From the back, Ziereis shot Colonel Morawski in the neck, but failed to kill him. Grabbing at a stretcher used to feed the crematorium furnaces, Morawski flung himself at the Commandant and flayed him with it. In a moment he was mown down by a barrage of fire from automatic weapons. Execution orders for this group had been received from Berlin. [Datner, Crimes against Prisoner-of War, pp 126,309, sic]

Nacht und Nebel
A large number of prisoners from other camps came to Mauthausen on the Nacht und Nebel (Night and Fog) transports, among whom were Frenchmen, Belgians, British and Americans. The French and Belgians were generally members of the Resistance groups, or they had been caught in individual acts of sabotage or had been deported for refusing to volunteer to work in Germany. Some belonged to the Resistance organised in England, in particular to Colonel Maurice Buckmaster's Special Operations Executive. So far as is known, all the British but one, called Faramus, belonged either to the SOE or the Secret Service. [read Faramus: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anthony_Faramus. sic] The International Red Cross was unable to protect such prisoners, for they were not put into prisoner-of-war camps. After being interrogated by the Gestapo, they were either shot or dispersed among various concentration camps. Their whereabouts were kept in the Gestapo secret files and their names were never released to the International Red Cross. Their families were never notified of their capture, and their Resistance associates received no further news of them. Thus the prisoners never received any parcels or letters. On the 5th September 1944 a group of forty-seven NN Prisoners were admitted by the main entrance and taken direct to the bunker, were they were lodged overnight. The group consisted of thirty-nine Dutchmen, one American and seven Englishmen. The English belonged to various SOE groups, such as 'Prosper', 'Privet', 'Inventor', 'Primus', 'Acobat' and 'Parson'. After their capture, the forty-seven had been lodged for some time in Ravitch, a special prison for agents. It is still not known why Berlin decided that they should be executed at Mauthausen.
The morning after their arrival, the forty-seven men were seen emerge from the bunker barefooted and in their underclothing. Their numbers were written across their chests, which was exceptional. This was usually done only after death for the sake of records before cremation. They were taken to the quarry, where the 186 steps were lined on both sides by SS and Kapos swinging their cudgels and anticipating a spectacle. Here they were loaded with stone slabs of up to 60 lbs in weight, and then forced to run up the steps. The run was repeated again and again, and the blows fell faster and faster as the exhausted prisoners stumbled on uneven steps. The heavily-built English Jew, Marcus Bloom, who had operated the clandestine radio "Prunus", was the first to fall. He was shot in the head at point blank range. Many others fell after this and were likewise shot as they lay sprawled across the steps at the feet of their executioners.

Prisoners killed near the barbed wire fence"

The persecution continued until 3 p.m. when the final elimination began. Of the remaining men, half were driven under blows towards the fence which divided the quarry from the tidily kept flower beds of the SS quarters. Machine-gunners were stationed near by to mow them down with a hail of fire, while the SS photographers recorded the fact that they had been shot while trying to escape, 'Auf der Flucht erschossen'. The following morning the other half aware what was in store for them, only made a few runs up the 186 steps, and then went across with resignation and dignity to where the machine-gunners and photographers were waiting. Not one of them had received any food or water since they had arrived.
British and Americans
Very little is known about them or about the suffering which they endured. Wilibald Zegler, who spent some time in the camp and was gassed on 29th April 1945. Ralph Fosser and Alfred Jones, who were executed on the 9th November 1944, and what about the English women member of the Anglo-Yugoslav mission? Fifteen uniformed members of the Anglo-Americam military mission, which included a war correspondent, were executed in 1945. They were to have acted as liaison officers between the Yugoslavs and the Allies and would be more akin to commandos than SOE agents. Niclos Horthy, son of the Regent of Hungary at that time, was in the bunker of Mauthausen when they were imprisoned there and gave this testimony:
"About the end of January or the beginning of February, 1945, I came to realise that there were some Americans and perhaps English prisoners in the cells. I never saw them but I often heard their voices. I remember that two or three time some of these prisoners were interrogated in the SS Guard Room near my cell. The interrogations were always late at night from 11 p.m. to 2 or 3 a.m. I tried to listen to what was going on. Someone told me, I'm not sure who, that the interrogator came specially from Berlin. On some of these occasions I am sure that the prisoners were tortured. I did not hear beatings, but from the sounds I am sure they were being tortured in some way, as I heard suppressed cries of pain. Once I heard in a voice (sic) say "I don't know, how could I know'? His voice was broken and he appeared to be in pain. On these occasions I heard the voice of the Commandant so I am sure he was present. I have the impression from what I was able to overhear at the interrogations and from other little pieces of information that these prisoners were members of the Air Force".
Nicolas Horthy understood English and recognised the different accents of the American and the British. His story was further substantiated.:
'In February 1945, 14 or 15 members of the Anglo-American Military Mission to Yugoslav People's Liberation Army (including one women) were brought to Mauthausen. All were in Uniform. In the course of their investigation they were brutally tortured. Their inquisitors were a Kripo Officer [Criminal Police, sic], Hamechen, from the RSHA and SS-Standartenführer Geschke. Finally the whole group was murdered'.
A man by the name of Kanduth who worked in the crematorium stated: ' on 24th or 26th January 1945, was seen fourteen corpses in the refrigeration room, all of whom had been shot in the head. They resembled Americans and British. A few had round identification discs. [American GI's did wear square type "dog tags" around their necks during WW II, sic] About three or four had heavy silver bracelets, with a number on them. I can only recall two of the tags: Paris and Nerlson'. [It is customary for the Americans to wear bracelets, sic] "On the 26th December 1944, the German Edelweis Antipartisan Unit supported by a Slovakian Detachment surrounded a mountain chalet in Slovakia (Na Vilkim Boku) where fifteen officers of the Anglo-American military mission and several Czechoslovak resistance fighters wee staying. The officers were taken prisoners and handed over to the SD in Brzno, later they were sent to Mauthausem concentration camp. One of them was identified as US Army Captain Holt Green of the 2679th Infantry Regiment, leader of the mission. There are no data available what happened later to the officers, but they are unlikely to have survived the camp".[Datner, crimes against prisoners of War, page 169, sic] Was this group already described, and not a second one, as Mr. Datner believes? There is a similarity in the numbers of 14 or 15, yet the second testimony, unlike the first, does not mention a women. The dates are very close. Either is possible.
In July or August 1944, about twenty-five planes (probably Americans) were shut down. The crews bailed out and some were shot while descending Thirty-six airmen were brought to Mauthausen and interrogated in the bunker. Later, all were taken away by Wehrmacht officers. Five bodies were brought back to Mauthausen for cremation. Nothing is known what happened to the remaining thirty-one. [ITS Historical Section, witness Tiefenbacher (275) before US War Crimes Investigation Branch. No page number. sic]
At the beginning of 1945 , six American airmen were brought into Mauthausen. One was already dead and another badly wounded, They were made to stand against the Wall of Lamentations, where they were interrogated by Ziereis, Bachmayer and other SS-men. They were savagely beaten and their heads were repeatedly cracked against the stone wall. The injured airman died under this battering, and he and the other dead man were taken off to the crematorium. The other four were seen leave the camp, accompanied by their interrogators. There is no trace of them. In April 1945, nine American airmen were shot down. Four of them were brought to the camp in a large staff car. They were also made to stand against the wall and were interrogated by about fifteen SS-men. One fell dead at their feet, the other three were shot at the entrance to the crematorium. Shortly afterwards a cart entered the camp with the bodies of two more airmen, partly hidden under parachute silk There was no trace of the remaining three.
The British agents Le Chene, Zeff, Stonehouse, Sheppard,Groome, Hopper , Carter, Zarb and prisoner-by-accident Faramus all survived their captivity. Stonehouse, Sheppard, Groome and Hopper were transferred to Natzweiler after some eight or nine months in Mauthausen. Le Chene was transferred to the sub-camp of Gusen before departure of the other agents. Here he joined John Carter, who had arrived in late summer of 1944. Edward Zeff was sent earlier to sub-camp Melk.[ A Belgian NN prisoner, Mr. Vanderschelden, spent more than twenty years wondering whether two English agents who had saved his life in Mauthausen had survived. He had been savagely beaten in the quarry until his eyes were filled with blood. Being unable to see, he could no longer work. At either side of him, easing him up the quarry steps and thus risking their own lives, were two prisoners as emaciated as himself, speaking English. He remembered the few passing words between his helpers, and that they called one another Ted and Pierre. His relentless desire to know if they had survived was rewarded when he found Pierre Le Chene at a reunion in 1965. The other Englishman was Edward Zeff. sic]
French and Italian
French prisoners had been either communists or members of known communist-controlled Resistance groups. Now there were shades of all opinions and their numbers might include anyone who showed open opposition to the occupation forces. Two hundred thousand Frenchmen were deported for their Resistance activities in France and they were distributed among all concentration camps. At least 8,203 are recorded as died in Mauthausen. Only 20,000 of the original 200,000 were to return alive.
It was much the same case with the Italian prisoners. It is strange that while Mussolini was in power he allowed Italian communists to be sent to Mauthausen and other such camps over which he had no jurisdiction. It is not surprising, however, that after Mussolini's downfall Hitler turned against his former ally and threw thousands of Italian partisans, some of them very young, into concentration camps. The earliest known Italian death in Mauthausen is dated 5th January, 1941, though the majority of the total of 4,518 to die in the camp and its sub-camps is to be found in 1944 and 1945. The youngest was just sixteen years old and the oldest seventy-five. Sixteen, seventeen and eighteen-year old Italians were a frequent occurrence in Hartheim transports. The scorn with which the Germans had always held the Italians was now matched by the courage with which the Italians showed their contempt for their executioners. There appears to have been almost no contact between the Italian prisoners and their German and Austrian 'allies'. After mass executions of outside consignments the Gestapo, SS and prisoner functionaries always descended like vultures on the possession of the dead and pocketed anything of value.
Towards the end of the war a unit of the Hitler Youth was stationed in Mauthausen as part of the garrison. At this time the camp housed about five hundred children, some of whom were German gypsies. Members of the Hitler Youth used to take groups of them to play in the yard behind the bunker, close to where the steps led down to the crematorium and gas chamber. They played ball games with them and gave them sweets. While the children were playing happily, one or two of the Hitler Youth lads detached themselves from the games and, swinging an unsuspecting child into each arm. At the end of the play period all that remained were the balls and some dropped sweets.
Jehovah Witnesses
There were a considerable number of German and Austrian Jehovah's Witnesses in Mauthausen. They were derided by their 'red' comrads for their incomprehensible ideology, and horribly pilloried and physically abused by the 'greens'. There were instances of Witnesses being tempted, by promise of release from camp, to join in the beating or even execution of a fellow prisoner. A more subtle attempt at persuading them to act against their rigidly held beliefs was when they were invited to 'wear SS uniforms for extra warmth', hereby allying themselves with the SS in the eyes of other prisoners. Sometimes they were given a time limit in which to relinquish their faith if they wished to survive. So far as is known, every Jehovah's Witness resisted all these forms of intimidation. As camp officials discovered, however, that the Jehovah's Witnesses served many useful purposes. One of these was was to shave the SS with cut-throat razors. The SS could truly enjoy their toilet, knowing that the razor was in the hand of a man who had sworn to respect life even at the expense of his own. Although such services must have added to their chances of survival, it did not endear them to their fellow prisoners.
Jehovah's Witnesses were generally put to work on outlying farms around the camp. They appear to have been the dominant labour force on the land, although there were other workers too. The farms went by code names, probably using the the name of the farmer in charge and came under the authority in 1942 after the reorganisation from Dachau. Some women were sent to the St. Lambrecht farm to cook there for its workers. The administration of this farm was in the hands of a Standartenführer from Munich. With Oswald Pohl and various women, he often held noisy parties there. The prisoners seem to have interfered with their enjoyment of such frivolities, for Ziereis received a communication from St Lambrecht that they had mutinied and tried to seize the farm before making their escape. They were therefore sent to Mauthausen to be executed. Some were driven immediately into the high tension wire, some were torn by Bachmayers pet dog, Lord, and the rest were sent to Gusen. The death records show that German Jehavah's Witnesses were being sent from all over Germany and executed in groups of thirty-five at a time.
Priest and rabbis seem to have been treated quite separately from Jehavah's witnesses. Despite their own sufferings and pitiful condition, individual priest prisoners laboured unselfishly to bring comfort to those around them, especially the sick and dying. The SS would not tolerate such Christian acts and many of them suffered for fulfilling their duty. Very few survived.

CONTINUED UNDER PART 9

MAUTHAUSEN PART 7

HUMILIATION-ABUSE-TORMENT-DEATH-ALL NATIONALITIES
Spaniards
Spanish prisoners of all ages numbering 4,693 are known to have died in Mauthausen. They had sought refuge in France from the civil war in Spain. Then, following the defeat of France by Germany, they were used as pawns in Hitler's efforts to draw Franco into the war on his side. General Franco did provide as a token Spanish soldiers "The Blue Division" , which fought on the German side on the eastern front, it is also noteworthy to mention that German War Medals were allowed to be worn by their veterans in public sic] For several months discussions between the Auswärtiges Amt (the German Foreign Office) and the high command of the Armed Forces (OKW) as to whether they should be granted prisoner-of-war status. In the end it was refused. Had it been granted, the wives and children would probably have enjoyed some form of freedom. Perhaps it was to prevent this that they were denied such protection.
The round-up of of Spaniards in France had began early as May 1940. Most of them were grouped together and worked in Puttalange, Lorraine. After the German Army had overrun France, all the Spaniards were moved from Puttalange and sent to Mauthausen, where they arrived on 25th November 1940. They were immediately despatched to work in the quarry. Some workers were drawn from this transport to work in Mauthausen's political section, others were chosen to be prisoner functionaries. [A distinction has to be made here, between civilian refugees and prisoners taken during the Spanish Civil War 1936-1939 who came firstly to Dachau and later to Buchenwald and other camps like Mauthausen, they were mainly German and Austrian Nationals, which were termed as "Rot-Spanien-Kämpfer", part of the Red Brigade. The Civil War broke out with a military uprising in Morocco on July 17, triggered by events in Madrid. Within days, Spain was divided in two: a "Republican" or "Loyalist". Spain consisting of the Second Spanish Republic (which were pockets of revolutionary anarchism (Trotskyism) and a "Nationalist" Spain under the insurgent generals, and, eventually, under the leadership of General Francisco Franco. By the summer, important tendencies of the war become clear, both in terms of atrocities on both sides and in the contrast between the Soviet Union's intermittent help to the Republican government and the committed support of Fascist Italy and Germany for the Nationalists, sic].
One Spaniard, a Catalan who worked in the political section, was Casimir Climent, now resident in Paris. He copied and preserved material which is of incalculable value for any historical study. When orders arrived for the destruction of the records in this section, he managed to hide no less than fourteen kilos (nearly 31 lbs) of prisoners' files behind a cabinet which concealed a former window in the wall.

This 1939 press photo was headed, "Food and safety within the French border". The photograph was taken at Le Perthus, France. The caption read, "A Spanish refugee mother feeds her child from a bowl of food given them by French authorities shortly after their arrival in Le Perthus, a French border town. An estimated 150,000 refugees who fled before the advance of General Franco's victorious insurgent troops. Two, young girl refugees in the background smile happily at their new-found safety."

From the records of these early days at Mauthausen, it appears that the Spanish prisoners were among those with the highest survival rate. They were numerically small in comparison with other nationalities, but many of them were reasonable cultured and well educated and thus enabled them to get better, less physical strenuous, jobs in the camp. As front after front fell in 1941 and huge transports of prisoners began to arrive, these Spaniards became invaluable to the SS. Those who were good at, say, book-keeping or languages became efficient members of the prisoner staff. Thus they escaped the worst of the suffering endured by their less qualified compatriots. Those who reached such positions did their best to help the less fortunate Spaniards. When newly arrived transports were awaiting the preliminary showering, the Spanish prominenten would seek out any new fellow countrymen. With luck such men might be given as much as a whole loaf of bread. The greatest loss of Spanish lives occurred during the early months of the building of the camp. The main road to the front entrance was built by Spaniards at tremendous human cost. It was made of huge granite slabs, laid in cobble form, and was wide enough for three vehicles to be driven abreast.
Czechs
The first transport of Czech prisoners arrived in October, 1941. They were divided into two groups, one for work in the quarry and one to build the camp for Russian prisoners. The site chosen for the 'Russenlager' was outside and to the west of the camp's confines. Here they dug foundations, levelled the ground and prepared the stone blocks for the building. The Czechs were housed in the camp proper, mainly in Blocks 10 and 13, while the sick were put in Block 16. There were few Czech Jews in Mauthausen because most of them were sent to the camp of Theresianstadt, north of Prag. [Unlike other Holocaust camps, Jews entered Theresianstadt willingly, even eagerly, because Nazi lies led them to believe it would be a peaceful retreat. The deception continued even after it was clear that Theresienstadt was a ghetto. The Nazis used the camp to film a pro-concentration camp propaganda film and fool Red Cross officials into believing the Jews were being well cared for. sic] Many Czechs were murdered as a direct acct of revenge after the shooting in Prague in 1942 of Himmlers Deputy, Reinhard Heydrich. Whole commands of Czech prisoners working on road building were machine-gunned and left by the way side until lorries were sent to take the bodies to the crematorium.
Dutch Jews
The mass deportation and elimination of Dutch Jews was on a immense scale, second only to that of Polish Jews. Early 1941, The Dutch people organised a general strike against the occupation authorities under Seyss-Inquart. In February, as a direct result of this, 389 Jews from Amsterdam and Rotterdam were sent to Buchenwald. Here many of them fell ill because of the severe climate and harsh conditions, but they were barred from the infirmary by the chief SS Dr Eysele (who escaped to Egypt after the war). Those who had been admitted before the ban were either given fatal injections or discharged. The remaining 340 were transported to Mauthausen. The following account of what happened to the Dutch Jews when they arrived there is given by two political prisoners, who were later transferred from Mauthausen to Buchenwald. One was a Pole, the other German.
"The shipment from Buchenwald arrived around midnight. In the morning the inmates of Mauthausen were not allowed to leave their barracks. Fifty of the newly-arrived Jews were chased from the bath-house naked and driven into the electrical fencing. All the others were herded into a barrack in which a German politcal prisoner from Bavaria was the 'clerk'. This latter was informed to 'supervise the decimation of Jews within six weeks'. 

Mauthausen dead prisoners lying along the barbed wire

He refused, was given twenty-five lashes on the wooden horse and transferred to the 'sock-mending detail', a favourite source for injection liquidations. The second day of their arrival, the Jews were shunted into the quarry. They were not allowed to use the steps to the bottom of the pit: they had to slide down the loose stones at the side and even here many died or were severely injured. The survives then had to shoulder hods, and two prisoners were compelled to load each Jew with an excessive heavy rock. The Jews had to run up the steps. In some instances the rocks immediately rolled downhill, crushing the feet of those behind. Many of the Jews were driven to despair the very first day and committed suicide by jumping into the pit. On the third day the SS opened the so-called 'Death Gate' and with a fearful barrage of blows drove the Jews across the guard line, the guards on the watchtowers shooting them down in heaps with their machine-guns. The next day the Jews no longer jumped into the pit individually. They joined hands and one man would pull nine or twelve of his comrades over the lip with him into a gruesome death. The barrack was cleared of Jews not in six, but barely three weeks. Every one of them perished by suicide or by shooting, beating and other forms of torture'. [PS 2176 (6), JAD, 3rd US Army, sic] 

Prisoners were forced to wear these carriers on their backs to haul stones from the quarry at Mauthausen
(It is unlikely hat an individual was able to carry this size of rock, sic)

  Civilian employees at the quarry put in a request to the camp authorities that these suicides by jumping be stopped, since the fragments of flesh and brains clinging to the rocks 'afforded too gruesome a sight'. The quarry was thereupon hosed down and prisoners were posted at various points to prevent Jews from jumping over the edge. This was the origin of the term 'parachute troops', which was used in Mauthausen. As time went on, the civilian employees became immune to such things and did not report further request. There was one survivor from the original 389 deported Dutch Jews. Before transfer from Buchenwald to Mauthausen took place a man named Max Nebig volunteered to undergo human guinea-pig treatment. Dr Eysele performed a stomach resection on him without anaesthetic of any kind. He did not even knock the patient unconscious with the famous shoe. Following this direct vivisection, Eysele gave the usual injection which was intended to be fatal, but a compassionate male nurse, managed to change the contents of the needle and Nebig somehow survived.
By October, 1941, there were 1,200 Jews from the Netherlands and Czechoslovakia in Mauthausen. They were mostly housed in Block 15. In the snow and bitter cold of that winter they wore only thin trousers and a shirt. They went barefoot because the wooden clogs with which they were issued were quickly lost or stolen. In one group of thirteen men who were selected for a work commando there was a blind man whose plight was pitiful.
As he groped and stumbled in the snow, he was showered with blows by the SS. They killed him in the end. Another man's cloths were set alight as he worked with the others carrying stones up the quarry steps. He was burned to death.
Those of this large intake of 1,200 Jews who managed to keep alive were becoming weaker by the day. Their meagre sup ration was placed in a tub winch could be reached only by crawling past a group of watching SS. These men amused themselves by overturning the tub just as the prisoners crawled up to it. In desperation they licked at the soil hungrily before they sank into the ground. One man who refused to take part in this final indignity was shot in the face at close range, in full view of those still going towards the tub. There were no survivors of this group. Some weeks after the admission of 340 Dutch Jews from Buchenwald the SS gave the Judenrat or Jewish Council in Amsterdam long lists of the dead so that the rabbis could inform the relatives. Death certificates were issued from the camp, headed 'Standesamt II Mauthausen'. In general the stated causes of death gave the impression that they were picked at random from a medical dictionary. Relatives were advised that he ashes of the dead could be sent to them of a fee of 75 gulden. In many cases when this was done they received at varying intervals not one casket, but several. The issue of mass death certificates was repeated with each new deportation. The Jewish Council collected them together and transmitted them to the Swedish Government, which according to the custom of war was entrusted with the protection of Dutch nationals in the Dutch colonies. It was the only means by which the Jewish Council could hope to draw the attention of the world to their plight, for the Swedish Government could not fail to see the validity of their fears and the duplicity of the Germans. The Swedish Minister in Berlin, Herr Richter, protested to the German Foreign Office legal expert, Herr Albrecht. He pointed out that the deaths were occurring regularly on certain days and that all the victims were rather young men. He therefore asked if he could visit Mauthausen in his official capacity. Albrecht could not flatly refuse the Swedish request because the Jews in question were Dutch nationals on German soil. However, he did manage to put off the unwelcome visit. Meanwhile, his colleague Luther wrote to the Gestapo Chief Müller to request that the SS be a little more careful in future. Had the Swedish visit taken place, it might have substantially checked the Nazi extermination policy. Bene ,the German Foreign Office representative in the Netherlands, saw a chance of circumventing the Swedish enquiries. On 17th July, 1942, he suggested divesting all Jews of their nationalities, but the proposal was rejected because of the obvious criticism that would arouse from neutral states. Undaunted, Albrecht settled the matter by saying: 'Should it be unavoidable to place the Dutch Jews outside Holland, it would be expedient if the police would not allow information to leak out with regard to their whereabouts, especially in possible cases of death'.

Star of David and a public sign' "Jews not allowed

The rounding up and deportation of Dutch Jews continued. Huge sums of money were offered for their betrayal of those hiding. The pick of the craftsmen, the engravers and diamond cutters went to Westerbrork, Vught and Hertogenbosch. Many of the engravers were destined to end their lives in the Mauthausen sub-camps of Reydl-Zipf and Ebensee. On 24th September 1942, the Gestapo Headquarters in Amsterdam sent a progress report to Himmler. It contained this sentence:
'Until now we have set into motion, together with the Jews shoved off for penal reasons to Mauthausen, altogether 20,000 to Auschwitz'. It is clear from the words 'penal reasons' in this report, and 'this and other punishments' in a Special Report, that the fate of the Jews was already sealed. There is also no doubt that the authorities, both in the Netherlands and in Germany, were fully aware of the meaning of the words. The threats contained in the Special Edition were simply another attempt to avoid the unpleasantness of mass round-ups. The plan was effective in the Netherlands and elsewhere, it worked disastrously well in the Warsaw ghetto.
Russian Prisoner-of-war
Apart from the Jews, the highest mortality rate under the German concentration camp system was undoubtedly among the Russia prisoner-of-war. And Mauthausen probably holds the record for any single camp. There were only 273 deaths recorded of numbered POW's admitted to Mauthausen between October and December 1941. Inasmuch as the activity Report speaks of 2,000 shared with Gusen, the figure seems in line with evidence to hand. According to the same evidence, only 458 Russian POW were admitted to the camp in 1942, yet statistics show that 1,908 died in that year. It is important to remember that these figures of entries and deaths are accurate representation of the deaths out of those particular numbers. That is, the combined incoming and outgoing (died) prisoner-of-war for 1941 and 1942 show almost total mortality. As there were very many more Russian POW than the statistics admit, this same rate of mortality was found with the unregistered prisoner-of-war as with those registered. As had been said, the Russian prisoners were housed outside the main camp on a separate site, originally two disused stables now augmented with prisoner Blocks, not far from the SS football field. The stables were cleaned out and roughly made wooden bunks, three tiers high, were installed. There were no heating or sanitation in any of the twelve Blocks which comprised the Russian camp. After a while the two stable blocks were divided from the newly constructed Blocks by a wire fence. They were then used as a factory for making belts and bandoleers, and for shoe repairs. The workers were either elderly prisoners, some aound twenty, or young children who had been rounded up during the campaigns. There are no records of them and there are no known survivors.

View of the Russian camp in one of the Linz sub-camps of Mauthausen

Within the first few weeks of the start of the Russian hostilities 2,000 officers, NCO's and men arrived at Mauthausen. They were extremely dirty, hungry and infected with lice. Hundreds of them had scabies and erupting boils, others were coughing with consumption. Many who had been wounded in battle received only the most rudimentary surgery at the hands of the SS and their untrained nurses. Three hundred and fifty of the 2,000 were quite obviously sick. This sort of sickness ration continued throughout the war. Only a handful survived. The death records of the Russian prisoner-of-war make pitiful reading. Page after page lists names, ages, numbers and rough addresses. Few were older than nineteen or twenty, and some were only seventeen years old. The way they died remain uncertain because the cause of death is always written in the records as: Auf Befehl R.F.SS, or 'by order of the Reichsführer SS'. The number of deaths taken at random records a total of 379 between September 25th 1944 and 21st of November of that year. Murder by drowning was another speciality. Hose-pipes were forced into the mouths of prisoners until their lungs bursts with water. Others were submerged in barrels of water, others in ditches. Another form of torture was to make the emaciated prisoners stand completely naked outside their blocks, where the ground had deliberately scattered with fiercely jiggered stones.

Naked Soviet POWs probably in the first stage of starvation" 

The Karbychev incident is in a class by itself. On the night of 15/16th February 1945, 1,700 prisoners out of a transport of an original transport of 2,500 arrived at Mauthausen from Sachsenhausen. Bachmayer was there to receive them and immediately picked out some 400 as being too sick to bother with. These men were made to strip and were then sent behind the walls of the laundry. Here, after standing four hours, they were sprayed alternatively with hot and cold water. First they had to re-enter the shower-room via the steep steps, then with their bodies still wet, they had to return to the open space between the kitchen and laundry. The temperature in winter was always below freezing. That night it dropped to minus 20 degree Celsius. As icicles formed over their bodies, the entire camp was assailed with the cries and screams of the dying. Among the group was a remarkable man, General Karbychev, who rose to the occasion with superb courage. As he walked among the dying, giving what comfort he could, he besought them not to be cowed by their persecutors. He promised to set an example of defiance by dying on his feet. At the next shower of water he leant against the wall and immediately thick ice formed a coffin around him. [PS 2176, JAD 3rd US Army, sic] The next day only eight men were still breathing. Blue-black bodies littered the area. One man had just enough strength to crawl about two yards to a piece of rag which in his last breath tried to pull under his body. A frenzied SS Sergeant quickly disposed of the rest by crushing their skulls with kicks and blows from a rifle butt. Such incidents occurred with horrifying frequency. The appalling sufferings of the Russian prisoner-of-war were second to none. The camp SS staff appeared to pick upon them deliberately.
Commandant Ziereis vented his personal spite especially on prisoner-of-war. It was almost as though by the murder of innocent prisoners he could compensate for the prowess which had eluded him on the field of battle. In his dying deposition, he admitted that he sometimes selected between twenty and forty prisoners for his own personal shooting practice. When the garage yard was packed with newly arrived transport, he enjoyed standind like a god high up on a stone vantage point which overlooked it. From here good targets presented themselves, as the wretched men huddled together like chicken in search for warmth, the outer ring moving grafdually towards the centre and vice versa. Ziereis' victims included not only prisoner-of-war in the usual sense, but also those who had lost their prisoner-of-war status by being discharged from the camps and handed over to the SD (Security Service).

Mauthausen Commandant Franz Ziereis". He was wounded by Allied soldiers and subsequently died some time later from his wounds

With the US Army closing in from the West, and the Soviet Army from the East, on the morning of 3 May 1945 Ziereis departed KL Mauthausen with his wife and three children. He was identified by former Polish inmates, and arrested on 23 May 1945 at his hunting lodge on the Pyhrn in Upper Austria. While trying to escape the Americans he was shot at and wounded at about 18:00 hrs (6 pm). He was shot once through the upper left arm, and suffered a mortal gunshot wound in the back and into a lung and through the stomach exiting the other side. Ziereis was given first aid, then transported to the US Army 131st Evac Hospital in Gusen, arriving there at 21:30 Hrs (9:30 pm). There Ziereis was questioned over six to eight hours that night with Colonel Richard R. Seibel of the 11th Armored Division then commanding Mauthausen, other US Army personnel and civilians. His statement was taken. He was one of about 2,893 patients being cared for there, but died shortly afterwards at 07:30 Hrs (7:30 am) on 24 May of his wounds. It seems that during th night of 23/4 May, a group of ex-Mauthausen prisoners told US soldiers in the Spital area that they had seen Ziereis. They were able to lead the soldiers to the place near a wood and identify him. Ziereis was obviously extremely frightened when he saw them and opened fire, he had retrieved his pistol which was hidden under a tree, [according to Austrian sources, sic] The Americans replied, and he was wounded , first in the upper arm and then again, as he twisted round, in the back.

Naked body of Franz Ziereis

Some history revisionists claim Ziereis made no statement and was dead when the photos were taken, or that he never was taken to a hospital, but these theories simply defy reason. The facts are corroborated not only by several photos taken of Ziereis at the hospital, showing several US Army personnel and officers alongside Ziereis, but also by numerous documents including the official log book of the US Army 131st Evac Hospital now in custody of the US National Archives. Yet in a photo album of Dr. Oscar Roth, which was bequeathed to Yale University, there is a second, shorter version of this confession that is consistent in most points, with the version of Maršáleks, which he wrote ten months after the event. However, there is a handwritten note in the same album, which differ again with the circumstances of his arrest. There, it states, Ziereis was not shot during the capture, but "taken prisoner and shot". During the final hours of the commander Franz Ziereis's death, the Americans, U.S. Col. Richard Seibel and Professor Premsyl J. Dobias were present, and have denied that the dying man had made such a confession. Furthermore on the 1st June 1989 and on the 1st August 1990 the Austrian country's Criminal Court, Vienna, states that the confession is a later forgery.
According to the official version Ziereis died on 25 May 1945 of his injuries and his body was exhibited for several days at the camp fence of Gusen I. It is claimed that Polish and Russian former inmates of the camp took Ziereis's body. Later his body was found (and photographed) placed onto the barbed wire fence at Mauthausen, naked except for the bandage on his left arm and with his back painted with Nazi graffiti "Heil Hitler" and a Swastika. [ they painted the swastika the wrong way around, they did not learn much, did they?, sic]This was certainly against US Army regulations, and was most likely done by angry former prisoners, but after what the American soldiers had seen they probably felt no need to interfere with the prisoners. There Ziereis remained for several days until the stench of decay prompted an Army officer to order the body removed, and then buried without identification and knowledge of his grave.

Franz Ziereis at Gusen, 24.5.1945

This photo of a display board in the Museum at the former Mauthausen concentration camp shows Commandant Franz Ziereis as he allegedly gave his deathbed confession at the Gusen sub-camp of Mauthausen on May 24, 1945. His confession was written up from memory, ten months later, by one of the prisoners, Hans Marsalrk, and entered into the Nuremberg International Military Tribunal as proof that Jews were killed in gas chambers at Mauthausen and at Hartheim Castle.
Note that Ziereis has been propped up for the photo, had a harness around his chest, with straps over his shoulders, which appears to be holding his body upright. An unidentified man wearing an American Army cap is sitting very close to Ziereis while the arm and hand of another man can be seen in the upper left hand corner. Everything has been carefully posed to show Ziereis as he allegedly makes his death-bed confession, but notice that the three elements of the photo do not match; it looks like three separate photos that have been put together. This is a flash photo but there is more light on the arm in the background than on the soldier in the foreground. Was Ziereis really still alive when this photo was taken? In the official version of the story, Ziereis died in an Army field hospital at the Gusen I sub-camp, 6 kilometers west of the Mauthausen main camp, but not before he talked for 6 to 8 hours, confessing to the deaths of millions of prisoners, including the killing of prisoners in the gas chamber at Mauthausen and the castle at Hartheim.
In a sworn affidavit, dated April 8, 1946, that was entered into the Nuremberg IMT as document 3870-PS, Hans Marsalek, a prisoner who worked as a clerk ( and acted as interpreter) at the Mauthausen concentration camp, wrote the confession ten months later, he never appeared as a witness to corroborate the events that took place. Marsalek gave the date of Ziereis's death as May 23, the morning after his interrogation. According to Marsalek, Ziereis freely confessed because he knew he was dying. The caption on the photo at the top of this page says that the photo on display was taken on May 24, 1945 at the Gusen camp. The soldier in the photo is not identified, but allegedly Col. Richard R. Seibel, the commander of the 11th Armored Division was present when Commandant Franz Ziereis was questioned by Hans Marsalek. Col. Seibel did not testify at the Nuremberg IMT, nor did he sign his name as a witness to the confession of Ziereis. In the upper left hand corner of the photo at the top of this page can be seen what looks like the sleeve of a striped prison uniform on the arm of a person who is taking notes, possibly Dr. Koszeinski, a prisoner whom Marsalek alleges was present, or Marsalek himself.

A display board in the former Mauthausen concentration camp , which allegedly shows the dying Ziereis during his confession. Who the writer is in the background is not known, since the only known document referring to Ziereis' last words, was written ten months later, from memory by Hans Maršáleks

The name of the photographer is not mentioned on the display, but Francois Boix, a prisoner who worked in the photography department at the main Mauthausen camp, was allegedly present when Ziereis made his confession. Boix worked in the darkroom at Mauthausen and had the means and the opportunity to put three photographs together to make a fake photo.
Boix testified at the Nuremberg IMT that Mauthausen was an extermination camp where the only way out was through the chimney, and that there were gas chambers there, but he was not asked about the confession of Franz Ziereis. U.S. Associate Trial Counsel Col. John Harlen Amen read parts of the Marsalek affidavit on April 12, 1946 at the Nuremberg IMT, including the part pertaining to an order allegedly given by Ernst Kaltenbrunner to blow up all the prisoners at the Gusen camp. Ernst Kaltenbrunner was on trial at Nuremberg, charged with Crimes against Humanity which included the gassing of prisoners, to which Ziereis had confessed, according to Marsalek's affidavit.
Kaltenbrunner objected to the reading of the affidavit and requested to confront the witness through his lawyer, this was denied.
An eye witness account of the last days of Commandant Franz Ziereis was Cpl. Donald Leakem then a 21-year-old soldier [in 2008 about 84 years old, sic] with the 11th Armored Division, 21AIB, of General Patton's Third Army; he was among the first soldiers that liberated Mauthausen on May 5, 1945. Along with other U.S. soldiers, Leake was assigned to live inside the Mauthausen concentration camp and guard the prisoners in order to prevent them from killing each other and to keep them inside until the typhus epidemic could be brought under control.
Following are some statements he made:
Leake saw Ziereis when he was brought into the Mauthausen main camp, and put into the room where the SS guards spent time when they were not on duty.
Donald Leake wrote the following regarding the last days of Ziereis's life:
I was told to stay in his room to guard him from the prisoners who would like to get hold of him. I heard no confession or any threats to him while I was on duty. About 2 or 3 days later the Doctor said to me "he is dying but I have many other patients to take care of. Call me if you see any change in him." After about 20 minutes he (Ziereis) began gasping and breathing heavy, so I sent a soldier to get the Dr. He came and said "since he's dying this is a last resort" and he gave him a shot directly into his heart [adrenaline?] but he died soon after.
According to Leake, the Doctor who took care of Ziereis was an American wearing civilian clothes who had only recently arrived; he was not a prisoner in the camp. [This is contrary to the official version thata prison doctor attended Ziereis, sic]
Donald Leake wrote that Commandant Franz Ziereis was unconscious when he was brought to Mauthausen and that he never recovered consciousness while Leake was on duty. Leake's job was to guard Ziereis to keep the prisoners from getting to him to exact revenge.
In answer to question about whether Hans Marsalek could have heard a confession from Ziereis, Donald Leake wrote the following on July 6, 2008:
He (Ziereis) was in a room the guards of the camp used for down time. No one questioned him while I was on duty. I would have seen anyone had they come into the room. I never saw him conscious or speak on my guard time. Anything could have happened on my off time but I doubt he could have conversed with anyone. My orders were "shoot to kill if any prisoner tried to get to him." I thought they just wanted to patch him up for a war trial. No one seemed excited that they had the commandant there. I thought it was very important. I also thought that 2 or 3 30 cal shots were excessive to bring a man down. One of the holes seemed to go into his armpit and possibly lodge in his lung. I certainly would have seen Marsalek if he had entered while I was on duty.
According to Donald Leake, Ziereis did not die immediately after he was shot, but lingered in an unconscious state for a couple of days before he died. Ziereis was never taken to a hospital, according to Leake. Leake believes that the photo of Franz Ziereis on his death bed was taken after he was already dead.
The official version of the death of Ziereis is that he died in a hospital in Gusen and his body was hung on the fence at Gusen by the prisoners and left there for a couple of weeks. However, Donald Leake saw the body of Ziereis hanging on a fence in the Mauthausen main camp after his death.
Regarding what happened after the death of Ziereis, Donald Leake wrote the following:
The Doctor said I could leave, and someone would take care of the body. I wasn't comfortable with this so I sent someone to my squad leader and he said to leave for other duties. I don't know how, but I later saw his body hanging on the fence with swastikas painted all over him. What else the prisoners did, I didn't see, but after a few days the odour was bad. I told an officer it was growing rank and he said he would take care of it which he did.




CONTINUED UNDER PART 8

MAUTHAUSEN PART 6

KILLING THE HANDICAPPED AND DEFORMED - THE EUTHANASIA CENTRES (continued)
On the 27th April 1943, a top-secret memorandum was sent out to all concentration camp commandants, under the heading of 'Action 14f13 in Concentration Camps':
'The Reichs Leader SS and Chief of the German Police has decreed that in future only insane prisoner can be selected for the action 14f13 by the medical commissions appointed for this purpose. All other prisoners unfit for work (persons suffering from tuberculoses, bedridden invalids etc.) are definitely to be excluded from this action. Bedridden prisoners are to be given suitable work which can be performed in bed.
The order of the Reichsführer SS must strictly observed in future. Requests for gasoline for this purpose will therefore be discontinued.
sgd. Glücks, SS Brigadeführer and Generalmajor of the Waffen SS.
This is a remarkable document. It seems to imply that the killings under this action had got out of hand. Perhaps they had provoked scandal and protest. The assumption is that exterminations were to be carried out in secrecy to prevent such protest recurring. Thus, although the travelling teams of psychiatrists became fewer, the indiscriminate and secret killings went an as the SS became increasingly efficient and able to act without fear of retribution. They chose their own victims now, and the co-operation between Hartheim and Mauthausen remained as close as before. Following this memorandum from Glücks, though not necessarily as a consequence of it, new subterfuges were restored to. The 'Kugel Aktion' was brought into force to dispose of prisoners quickly and easily, and the all-powerful stamp 'By order of the Reichsführer SS' was always effective. The result was the same. Dachau Transports soon became known for what they were-just another way in which people disappeared. The destination was not Dachau, of course, but Hartheim. All those normally listed that way have died in Hartheim under the disguise that read: TRANSPORT-AUFSTELLUNG (Invaliden-Transport) vom KL Mauthausen und KL Mauthausen/kdo. Gusen nach nach dem KL Dachau. The transport lists cynically refer to the KZ Dachau as a 'Camp-Sanatorium'.
Hartheim was not the only place where people disappeared. The selected prisoners wee driven away in buses, having been told that they were going to another camp to get their health back. From 1941 to 1944 a total of 2,980 such victims are known to have been taken to Ybbs-Donau,where they received lethal injections and were then cremated. These Heilanstalten (sanatoriums) Ybbs-Donau selections were conducted twice yearly. The names of these victims are unknown because their files were removed from the political department records and their numbers were re-issued to newly-arrived prisoners.

Hartheim castle, the euthanasia killing centre where people with physical and mental disabilities were killed by gassing and lethal injection

Early in 1942, Jews who were classified under 14f13 and shipped to an unknown destination, which was later found to be the mental institution Bernberg, near Magdeburg. Here they were subjected to special gassing, by gases that had previously been tested only upon cattle. A group of Dutch Jews, all young healthy men, were arrested in the summer of 1942 and taken to Mauthausen. A few days after they arrived about twenty of them were driven in a closed van to a remote factory building, about three hours drive away. This building contained a number of laboratories and gas chambers, and the prisoners soon realised that they had been brought there for gas experiments. Each gas chamber had three windowless concrete walls. The fourth wall was of thick glass and faced a passage where chemists and psychologists could gather to observe what happened inside. The Dutch Jews and twenty-seven other men, all naked, were forced to undergo three tests. They were allowed gas masks for the first one, which lasted fifteen minutes. After the first two minutes they felt an intense prickling of the skin, followed by a glowing sensation. When they left the gas chamber, their temperatures were taken and blood was drawn from their veins, after which they received a shower bath a strong chlorine solution. No harmful effects were felt as a result of this first experiment.

The Bernberg Psychiatric Home

[BERNBERG was a mental home with a capacity of 132 beds was founded in 1875 in Bernburg, near Magdeburg. As a replacement for Brandenburg, in September 1940 a section of the complex was confiscated by the Gemeinnützige Stiftung für Anstaltspflege (Charitable Foundation for Institutional Care), one of the fake organisations set up to camouflage the euthanasia programme commonly known as Aktion T4. From that time onwards, Bernberg mental home was divided into both a normal institution and a euthanasia killing site. Within four weeks during October/November 1940, 80 square metres of the cellar in the former Männerhaus 2 (Men’s House No.2) were converted into a killing facility. The Brandenburg staff, including physician-in –chief, Dr. Irmfried Eberl, moved as a group to the new killing centre. sic]

to continue:
Three weeks later the men were again forced to enter the gas chamber, unclothed and with gas masks, Again they experienced the glowing sensation, but this time, it was followed by intense cold. When they left the chamber after fifteen minutes, the doctors did not examine their blood but were given another chlorine bath. After three days, ten of the men developed severe skin irritations and sores which covered their entire bodies. These ten men were fortunate, for they were not exposed to a third test. A week later the remaining men underwent the third test without gas masks. This final ordeal lasted for half an hour. The floor grilles, which in previous tests had been covered with iron plates, were now opened. After a few minutes the victims retched and became dizzy. Gradually they lost their sense of balance and fell down across one another. They were only faintly conscious after this. At the end of the test the victims were carried out by laboratory assistants, who wore anti-gas suits, rubber gloves, shoes and gas masks. Blood spurted from the noses mouth and ears of the prisoners. X-rays were taken of their stomachs and lungs after they had been bathed in the decontamination chamber. The vomiting and feeling of dizziness lasted for four days, during which they were forced to resume heavy labour.
This experience was reported by one of the Dutch Jews who not only miraculously survived the tests, but became one of the very few prisoners to escape from Mauthausen. He added that he was informed by a reliable guard that a few days after the third test, forty more Dutch Jews had been subjected to the same tests in quick succession and that they had all died as a consequence. These particular tests took place at Bernberg, but similar ones occurred at Hartheim, and victims were only Jews.
Teams of SS doctors would descend without warning upon the infirmaries in Mauthausen and its sub-camps. No matter what their condition, the prisoners were then obliged to parade naked before selection. [This was a standard practice within the German Armed Forces, to appear before a selection committee naked to assess your physical condition, there was nothing wrong in that, sic] Anyone known to have typhus would be immediately sent to be killed. The doctors indicated their arbitrary decisions over life or death of the prisoners by a wave of the hand in one direction or another. At the end of March 1944 , the elimination of infirmary patients was speeded up. On the first occasion 2,000 from Gusen, where Dr Richter was the arbitrator. The next time another 2,500 inmates from each camp were taken away in buses. The grand total of 9,000 men was disposed of without a trace, their names having been removed from the files in the already familiar pattern of the euthanasia programme. All doctors and psychiatrists on the medical tours of the concentration camps and all SS doctors resident in the camps were fully aware of what happened to their chosen victims. They followed the proceedings with lively interest and took part in the elimination of prisoners. It is sometimes difficult to differentiate between the euthanasia programme and the mass executions which took place. As a rule, euthanasia was for sick people and for Jews. But there were also a large number of people, such as gypsies, who were gassed and whom it is hard to classify. A random example taken directly from the death records shows that on the 24th April 1945, a total of 237 people were gassed. On the next day the number was 116.
When the 14f13 plan was partially relaxed, as a result of the Glücks memorandum already quoted, exactly the same procedure was followed with sick inmates of the camp. In the section of the number books for transfer, the sign 'T' is often seen, followed by the word 'ERHOLUNGSHEIM' (Convalescent Home). This was simply another name for Hartheim. The castle of Hartheim, seventeen miles from Linz, lies in empty countryside, near a railway line. It dominated the flat land, it was dark in appearance at that time, the heavy outline standing out against the sky. It was built in 1898 as an asylum for imbeciles, but in 1940 the management of Ober-Donau handed it over to Bouhler. During the war its isolation was nearly total. It was put to three main uses:
1. In the euthanasia programme.
2. As a gas chamber to aid Mauthausen.
3. As a training centre for the SS from Belsec, Sobibor and Treblinka.
It was thought that if the SS could stand watching German children and adults being killed, they would have no qualms about killing the so-called Untermenschen, or sub-humans. Even German nationals were caught up in the whirpool of legalised murder. Human beings were erased without trace from the face of the earth, with as little consideration as one would have squashed a fly. The transport trucks arrived in the courtyard of Hartheim and backed up to a wooden framed, tarpaulin-covered passageway, which led directly to the inner castle yard. As the prisoners emerged into this inner quadrangle and saw the grim features of the castle for the first time, they must have felt like trapped animals. Immense walls, some three storeys high, towered over them, concealing from the outside view the crematorium chimney stack some 85 feet high.

Hartheim Castle (2009)

On the right of the entrance were the kitchens and dining-rooms. the left were the furnace and central heating fires, a cabinet maker's workshop, a storage room for beverages, a refrigeration room and a spare room. From this spare room a door led to the tower of the castle which housed a photographic studio. another small door led the studio into a room which had the appearance of a bathroom. This door was made of iron and sealed with rubber, it had a small round slot, and its lock was massive, with a sliding bolt. Inside the room, the lower half of the walls were covered with tile and there were six showers. Beyond were the gas apparatus and containers, complete with measuring device. The gas chamber led on to another larger room, where again the walls were half tiled. The only furniture was a table. Immediately behind these rooms were the two crematorium furnaces. Ashes from the crematorium were stacked to the left of the entrance. Larger human bones were crammed into garbage cans, although Hartheim did possess an electric bone mill. Clothes of the victims , both adults and children, were stored in the garage of the castle. The SS had their apartments on the second floor of the castle. Although the doctors were members of the SS and held SS ranks, they were always dressed in civilian clothing. One of the psychiatrists, Dr Lonauer, had his private clinic at Hartheim, where he held consultations. He also became head of one of the euthanasia selection committees.

Gas chamber at Hartheim Castle

On the 13th December 1944 as the war was nearing its end, twenty Mauthausen prisoners were taken to Hartheim to reconstitute it as a form of school. Its real purpose was to be hastily concealed before the arrival of the Allies. One of these prisoners stated later that he had to carry a trunk containing surgical instruments to a nearby farmer. He also took the smoke stack apart and removed some of the clinkers. The bathroom tiles and all the murder instruments were taken away, he also saw a large hall which contained reflector lamps and beds which were stained with blood. Bricklayers restored the rooms to a normal state and white-washed the walls. The work lasted ten days. Some of the furniture was removed to Mauthausen and some to a nearby hunting lodge. The property belonging to Prince Starhemberg was taken to Wiesenbach on the Atasee.

A light shines on the spot where the oven was located in the Hartheim Castle

THE SURVIVOR FINISHES HIS TESTIMONY THUS:
'The second time we went there on January 2nd 1945, and worked for ten days to restore the castle to its former appearance. We replaced the door with bricks, and broke a new one into the wall etc. They have now established a children's home there. Towards the end of our stay there, 35 children, 6 nurses and 1 teacher were brought. There was room for 400 children'.
(The castle of Hartheim has now been converted into flats for many families.)


CONTINUED UNDER PART 7