Exterior of Mauthausen Gas Chamber

The green building with the barred windows, shown in the foreground of the photo above, is the bunker or camp prison. The white building in the background is the former hospital, now a Museum. The sign on the side of the white building directs visitors to the Museum exhibits. At the far end of the hospital building is the main entry into the Museum and the rooms where films are shown. A stairway inside the Museum leads to more exhibits in the basement, and from there to the gas chamber. An outside stairway, between the two buildings, leads directly down to the basement execution room and from there to the gas chamber.

This is a view of the crematorium chimney, taken from across the street at the open gate into the Quarantine camp where prisoners were confined for two weeks upon their arrival in an attempt to prevent epidemics. The green building on the right is the bunker or camp prison. An outside stairway at the end of the green building leads to the execution area underground where prisoners were shot or hanged. The gas chamber is located underground in the area to the left of the chimney. In the foreground is the open iron gate into the Quarantine camp. Note the skylight over the basement behind the outside stairway opening. The spot where prisoners were hanged is under the skylight.

This photo shows a glass case in the Museum with a display of an open can of the Zyklon-B poison gas pellets which were used at Mauthausen to gas the Jews and other prisoners. This same poison gas was used to disinfect the clothing in all the Nazi concentration camps.

A display board in the Mauthausen Museum shows an excerpt from the deathbed confession of Mauthausen Commandant Franz Ziereis. The confession states that a gas chamber, disguised as a bathroom, was built at Mauthausen on the order of Dr. Krebsbach; the prisoners were gassed with Cyklon-B. Besides this, there was a special vehicle which traveled between the Mauthausen main camp and the Gusen sub-camp, in which prisoners were gassed along the way.

This confession was obtained from Ziereis on his deathbed after he was "shot while trying to escape" by American soldiers after he was captured. His confession was taken down by an Austrian anti-Fascist political prisoner, Hans Marsalek, who interrogated Ziereis as he lay dying and then wrote down the confession from memory ten and a half months later.

Crematorium

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