!!!Konzentrationslager, KZ

Concentration Camps: In National Socialist Germany concentration camps 
were erected as an instrument of tyranny from 1933. Political and 
religious "adversaries" of the Nazi regime (e.g. Jehova's 
witnesses), criminals, persons considered "asocial" by the 
regime, homosexuals, Jews, and gypsies, as well as, from 1939, 
undesirable aliens and prisoners of war, were incarcerated in these 
camps.

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The largest concentration camp on Austrian territory was in 
Mauthausen. The preconditions for building the camp were created 
through the acquisition of real estate and the leasing of quarries 
belonging to the city of Vienna by the SS company "Deutsche Erd- 
und Steinwerke GmbH" ("German Earthwork and Quarrying 
Company") in April and May of 1938. The granite produced in the 
quarries of Mauthausen was to be used, among other things, for the 
construction of monuments in Linz. At the beginning of August, 1938, 
the first transport of concentration camp prisoners from Dachau 
arrived; these prisoners were forced to build the concentration camp 
at Mauthausen. Later, men, women, adolescents, and children from all 
over Europe were imprisoned in Mauthausen. Those unable to work were 
put to death in many different ways (including "medical 
experiments" and poisoned gas); thousands starved. Over 100,000 
prisoners died in Mauthausen, some in the "Euthanasie- und 
Vergasungsanstalt" ("institution for euthanasia and 
gassing") at Hartheim Castle near Eferding. Mauthausen was the 
only concentration camp in Austria that was classified at the 
so-called "Lagerstufe III" ("Camp 
Level III", a combination of concentration camp and death 
camp). Most of Mauthausen's 49 subsidiary camps served the armaments 
industry, including Ebensee (gallery driving for underground rocket 
and development plants, distillation plants, ball-bearing production), 
Gusen (quarry and gallery driving, aeroplane manufacturing, etc.), 
Melk (gallery driving, ball-bearing production, etc.), 
St. Valentin (tank manufacturing), Wiener Neustadt (manufacture 
of defence weapons parts), Schwechat (aeroplane manufacturing). Since 
1947 the Mauthausen concentration camp has been a memorial site, in 
which a museum was established in 1970.

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Similar to concentration camps were the "labour reform 
camps" ("Arbeitserziehungslager"), to which - from the 
standpoint of the Nazi regime - persons unwilling to work, persons who 
had broken work contracts, and so-called "asocial elements", 
were sent and obliged to perform forced labour. These included 
Oberlanzendorf (= Lanzendorf), Innsbruck-Reichenau, 
Admont-Frauenberg, Schoergenhub (Linz-Kleinmuenchen), and Weyer (Upper 
Austria), as well as the gypsy camps Lackenbach and Salzburg-Maxglan, 
which were used as interim camps before the inmates were transported 
to ghettos and extermination camps.

\\
As part of the deportation process of Jewish citizens to ghettos and 
extermination camps, they were collected in camps in Vienna; Hungarian 
Jews forced to work for companies manufacturing "important 
products" for the war effort and for the construction of the 
"southeast wall" (" Suedostwall") were interned in 
camps in Vienna, Lower Austria, Burgenland, and Styria.

!Literature
H. Maršalek, Die Geschichte des KZ Mauthausen, 
%%sup 2/%1980; F. Freund, Arbeitslager Zement. Das KZ Ebensee und die 
Raketenruestung, 1989; B. Perz, Projekt Quarz. Steyr-Daimler-Puch und 
das KZ Melk, 1991.


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