Mauthausen, Austria - In 1942, a farmer living next to the Mauthausen concentration camp, in northern Austria, filed a police report about detainees getting shot in the camp's quarry and left to die.
"I ask that those inhumane actions either stop or be carried out where one can't see them," her statement read.
Needless to say, neither of the requests were granted.
Of the 200,000 prisoners who passed through Mauthausen from August 1938 until its liberation on May 5 in 1945, half would die.
It was Nazi Germany's only category III camp, the most brutal destination for "incorrigible political enemies of the Third Reich".
The detainees included large numbers of international prisoners of war -- particularly Soviets and Poles -- but also, to a lesser extent, criminals, homosexuals and Jews.
"This wasn't a straightforward extermination camp; its slogan was 'annihilation through labour'," Mauthausen tour guide Casimir Paltinger told AFP. "People were worked to death in the quarry."
The first Mauthausen barracks were erected some 20 kilometres (12.5 miles) from the city of Linz five months after Austria's "Anschluss", or annexation.
The Nazis had chosen the site because of its huge quantities of granite, which would provide "the construction material for many of the Third Reich's dreams", said Paltinger.
The stones were used to build highways, government buildings and indeed the concentration camps themselves.
As the Reich's ambitions grew, so did Mauthausen. Over time, it expanded from a single labour camp to a network of 49 satellite camps across Austria and Germany, now generally referred to as the "Mauthausen system".
The detainees were brought to Mauthausen for their registration before being sent to one of the sub-camps.
There, they would produce and assemble parts for weapons, rockets or warplanes for instance.
"Many camps were built right next to a factory, and deportees from around Europe were exploited to keep the German industry ticking over," said Paltinger.
In addition, local firms and national corporations used prisoners from Mauthausen for cheap slave labour, thereby turning the network into one of the Reich's most profitable enterprises.
AFP
