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Concentration Camp Mauthausen
Subcamp Ebensee
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Below you can
see photographs taken at Ebensee, a subcamp of Mauthausen concentration camp
and its subcamps.
Photographs courtesy of the
USHMM, unless otherwise stated.
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View of the
Ebensee concentration camp, May 1945.
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The Ebensee concentration camp was
established by the SS to build tunnels for
armaments storage near the town of Ebensee,
Austria in 1943. It was part of the
Mauthausen network.
Due to the inhumane working
and living conditions, Ebensee was one of
the worst Nazi concentration camps for the
death rates of its prisoners. The SS used
several codenames Kalk (English:
limestone),
Kalksteinbergwerk (English::
limestone
mine), Solvay and Zement (English:
cement)
to conceal the true nature of the camp.
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The
construction of the Ebensee subcamp began late in
1943, and the first 1,000 prisoners arrived on
November 18, 1943, from the main camp of Mauthausen
and its subcamps. The main purpose of Ebensee was to
provide slave labor for the construction of enormous
underground tunnels in which armament works were to
be housed. These tunnels were planned for the
evacuated P Peenemünde V-2 rocket development, but,
on July 6, 1944, Hitler ordered the complex
converted to a tank-gear factory. |
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Approximately twenty thousand inmates were worked to
their deaths to construct giant tunnels in the
surrounding mountains. Together with the Mauthausen
subcamp of Gusen, Ebensee is considered one of the
most horrific Nazi concentration camps.
Jews formed about one-third of the inmates, a
percentage increased to 40% at the end of the war,
and were the worst treated, though all inmates
suffered great hardships. |
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Four emaciated survivors sit outside in the newly
liberated Ebensee concentration camp. Photograph
taken by Signal Corps photographer J Malan Heslop.
Ebensee, Austria, May 8, 1945.
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Survivors of the Ebensee subcamp of the Mauthausen
concentration camp. Ebensee, Austria, May 8, 1945.
Credit: NARA.
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Prisoners arose at 4:30 A.M. and worked
until 6:00 P.M., constructing and expanding
tunnels. After some months, work was done in
shifts, 24 hours a day.
There was almost no accommodation to protect
the first batch of prisoners from the cold
Austrian winter, and deaths increased
greatly.
Bodies were piled in heaps and taken every
three or four days to the Mauthausen
crematorium to be burned; Ebensee did not
yet have its own crematorium.
The bodies of the dead were also piled
inside the few huts that existed. The smell
of the dead, combined with the stenches of
sickness, phlegm, urine, and feces, was said
to be unbearable.
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Prisoners wore wooden clogs, or went barefoot when
the clogs fell apart. Lice infested the camp. In the
morning, food rations consisted of half a liter of
ersatz coffee; at noon, of three quarters of a liter
of hot water containing potato peelings; and, in the
evening, of 150 grams of bread. Because of this
treatment, the death toll continued to rise.
As
the Second World War in Europe came to an end, mass
evacuations from other camps put tremendous pressure
on the Mauthausen complex, the last remaining
concentration camp in the area still controlled by
the Nazis. The 25 Ebensee barracks had been designed
to hold a hundred prisoners each, but they
eventually held as many as 750 apiece. To this
number, one must add the prisoners being kept in the
tunnels or outdoors, under the open sky. |
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Austrians clearing corpses in the Ebensee
concentration camp.
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The crematorium was unable to keep pace
with the deaths. Naked bodies were stacked
outside the barrack blocks and the
crematorium itself.
In the closing weeks of the war, the
death rate exceeded 350 a day.
To reduce congestion, a ditch was dug
outside the camp and bodies were flung into
the quicklime. On a single day in April,
1945, a record eighty bodies were removed
from block 23 alone; in this pile, feet were
seen to be twitching. During this period,
the inmate strength reached a high of
eighteen thousands.
American troops of the US 89th Infantry
Division arrived at the camp in May 6, 1945
- though for many inmates liberation came
too late and they died of hunger, disease
and exhaustion despite the efforts of
American doctors to save them.
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next stop:
Gunskirchen
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