Location
Mauthausen is located in the mountains of Austria so they have rough winters which gave many of the prisoners frostbite. They frostbite became so severe some had to have their legs amputated.
Hitler always wanted to be an architect but he failed the entrance exam to get into architecture school. He wanted to rebuild Linz, the place where he intended to retire and the place where his parents were buried. This plan required plenty of granite and brick, and manual labor. So after 1937, most of the concentration camps, including Mauthausen, were located near quarries or gravel pits so that prisoners would be used to produce the building materials and use them to rebuild.
Hitler always wanted to be an architect but he failed the entrance exam to get into architecture school. He wanted to rebuild Linz, the place where he intended to retire and the place where his parents were buried. This plan required plenty of granite and brick, and manual labor. So after 1937, most of the concentration camps, including Mauthausen, were located near quarries or gravel pits so that prisoners would be used to produce the building materials and use them to rebuild.
Also the camp was located near a railroad line and also on the Danube river so it would be easy to transport prisoners into the camp and granite out of the camp.
Mauthausen had 3 sub-camps, Gusen I, II, and III. Gusen I camp was originally an independent camp where prisoners labored in the quarry. Then in 1944 it became a sub-camp of Mauthausen. On March 9, 1944 a second Gusen camp, Gusen II, was set up in nearby St. Georgen as another sub-camp of Mauthausen. At Gusen II prisoners worked on construction of underground factories. 16,000 prisoners at Gusen were transported each day to Gusen II. Gusen I was located 6 kilometers west of Mauthausen. 38,000 deaths were said to have happened at Gusen I.
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