Mauthausen is a riverside market town in Upper Austria, 12 miles from the city of Linz. In March 1938, the SS and other Nazi organizations decided to set up a concentration camp near the township of Mauthausen, up on a hill, adjacent the granite quarry called Wiener Graben.
In August 1938 the first group of male prisoners and SS guards arrived at the train station of Mauthausen. They had previously been in Dachau concentration camp. The prisoners’ main task was to build the camp and start quarrying the stone.
Together with its twin camp, Gusen, this site’s early purpose was to imprison political opponents and groups of people the Nazis deemed “criminal” and “asocial.” At first, the camp was predominantly comprised of German and Austrian prisoners, however, after the outbreak of World War II and the arrival of Polish and Soviet men, German and Austrian prisoners became a minority. Over time, men, women, and children from more than 40 different countries were imprisoned in Mauthausen concentration camp.
Overall 190,000 people were imprisoned in the camp of Mauthausen and its subcamps. At least 90,000 of them did not survive.