In Mauthausen concentration camp, most bodies were cremated in crematoria, but at the end of World War II the crematoria were insufficient and the SS had a mass grave dug near the camp to dispose of corpses.
In May 1945, when the US Army liberated the camp, they found piles of corpses and thousands of dying prisoners. The US Army set up large cemeteries in Mauthausen and Gusen for those who had died shortly before and after liberation. They assigned local civilians with the task of digging the graves and burying the dead.
Both the mass graves dug in the last months of World War II, as well as the cemeteries created after the war, were relocated to this walled area of “Camp II” and the adjacent “Quarantine Camp” in the 1960s and 1970s. In these two cemeteries, more than 14,000 people are buried.