Mauthausen Memorials

The area on both sides of the road leading from the prisoners' entrance to the quarry, which is the area where the SS barracks were formerly located, is now filled with large Memorials in honor of the Mauthausen victims of the Nazis from 30 different countries. The first monument was erected in September 1949 in honor of the French resistance fighters who fought against the German occupation of France. The Jewish memorial, shown above, was placed in a prominent spot on the south edge of the quarry in 1976.

This memorial stone, in honor of the Jews who were killed "only because they were Jews," is located at the top of the long climb up from the quarry. The stone was placed here by "Die Jüdische Jugend in Österreich" which means the Jewish Youth in Austria.

The Austrian Jews were the first to be deported by the Nazis, starting soon after the Anschluss of Germany and Austria on March 12, 1938. They were not deported to concentration camps, but instead were forced to emigrate to other countries like Great Britain and America; by the time the deportation of all the Jews in Europe started in February 1942, there were around 50,000 Jews left in Austria, most of them over 60 years of age.

In 1942, the majority of the Austrian Jews were deported to the Theresienstadt Ghetto in Czechoslovakia; from there, most of them were sent to the gas chambers at Auschwitz. Mauthausen was not a camp that was specifically set up for the Austrian Jews, nor even for Austrian political prisoners.

Most of the Jews who died at Mauthausen had been deported in 1944 from Hungary to Auschwitz and then transferred to Mauthausen. Most of them had to live in tents under the most miserable conditions.

Hungarian and Bulgarian Memorials

GDR (East Germany) Memorial

Albanian Memorial

General Karbyshev Memorial

Memorial for Dutch & British Agents

Private Memorials at Mauthausen

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