Mauthausen Gas Chamber The photo above shows the south wall of the Mauthausen gas chamber on the left and the west wall on the right. The gassing apparatus, which was behind the south wall, was removed by the SS when they left the camp a few days before it was liberated. The wall was put back into original condition by the SS and no traces of the gassing apparatus can be seen today. On the south wall is a sign in several languages which describes how the gas chamber functioned. Next to it on the wall is a private memorial to one of the prisoners who was gassed here. The gas chamber ceiling is 7.8 feet high and the white ceramic tile on the walls only goes about two thirds of the way up. The floor is glazed brick. The door on the right leads to the corpse room, a single crematory oven, the autopsy room and the execution spot. The door on the left opens into a hallway in which the poster shown in the photo below is displayed.  This poster hangs in front of a window in the hallway which leads to the door into the gas chamber on the south wall. The photo shows a can of Zyklon-B pellets, which were used for gassing the prisoners. This same poison gas was used in all the Nazi concentration camps to disinfect the prisoners' clothing in order to kill the body lice which spreads typhus. The door which opens into the gas chamber is to the left of this window; this door is shown in the photograph below.  The door on the south wall of the gas chamber, shown in the photo above, is at the end of a short hallway. Behind the wall on the right is a small, narrow room where a "gassing apparratus" was used to put the poison gas into the gas chamber. The window with the poster is behind the camera and to the right in this photo.  The photo above shows the door in the previous photo in the open positon. Looking through the door, one can see the interior of the gas chamber with heating pipes or cooling pipes on the north wall and the single drain hole on the brick floor. Note the light switch to the left of the door. On the wall to the right of the door is a water pipe going into the gas chamber, which was a fully functioning shower room. On the other side of the wall adjacent to the gas chamber is a small room which is now empty. Former prisoners at Mauthausen said that the "gassing apparatus" was located in a room adjoining the gas chamber.  The gas chamber at Mauthausen was disguised as a shower room with real water pipes, which entered the room near the door on the south wall, as shown in the photo above. This pipe can be followed through the morgue room and there is no doubt that it is a real water pipe. The photo below shows a water pipe in the morgue room, near the gas chamber. This pipe goes through the wall of the morgue and then enters the hallway in front of the gas chamber, from where the pipe enters the gas chamber.  The photograph below shows the water pipe entering the gas chamber on the south wall. Below the water pipe is a smaller pipe for the electrical wires which enter the room on the same wall.  Gassing Apparatus RoomEye-Witness TestimonyHome |