Since it had been decided that the Peenemünde rocket research center was to be relocated into a protected underground area, it became clear that the necessary work would have to be done by concentration camp prisoners. On October 20, 1943, this project called "Cement" was approved by Kammler who was the responsible building official of the SS. It took another four weeks, until the preparatory work for the new concentration camp was finished. A number of general contractors had been hired to undertake the construction of this project, and their civilian workers would watch over the work of the prisoners.

The first 63 prisoners arrived in Ebensee on November 18, 1943, from Mauthausen, the nearest concentration camp, by way of Redl-Zipf, another sub-camp of Mauthausen. By the end of 1943 there were already more than 500 prisoners in the camp who were temporarily housed in a former weaving factory. They had to work under the most severe conditions digging the tunnels and erecting the future concentration camp. Because of the extremely severe working and living conditions the prisoners soon lost their strength. Within a few weeks more than 10% of the prisoners were sent back to Mauthausen for "not being able to work anymore". On December 6, 1943, the first prisoner died in the concentration camp of Ebensee.

In February 1944 the prisoners shifted into the new concentration camp about four kilometers outside Ebensee. In that very thick forest the prisoner barracks had been laid out in such a way that the least number of trees had to be cut down. They thought that this way it would be more difficult for the Allies to detect the camp from the air. Inasmuch as the SS had openly assumed that there would be a large number of dead they had ordered the construction of a crematorium in the spring of 1944 which began to operate on July 31st, 1944.

The camp continued to be enlarged until the spring of 1945. Inside the electrical fence which surrounded the concentration camp there were 32 barracks to house the prisoners, 2 barracks which served as workshops, 2 hospital barracks plus "convalescent barracks", one laundry with a drying room, a kitchen for the prisoners with a food storage facility, a barrack for the "senior camp prisoner" with a "canteen", an administration building, a lavatory and a crematorium.

Normally the SS selected only men between the age of 20 and 40 for this camp who were able to work and who had certain professional qualifications. The composition of these various transports reflected the entire political and military situation in Europe. The continuously increasing resistance in the countries occupied by the Germans caused an ever increasing load of prisoners, and the people caught in the arbitrary imprisonment actions were brought to the concentration camp in Mauthausen by way of intermediate stations, from where, after about 2-3 weeks of quarantine, they were shipped to sub-camps.

In the spring of 1944 prisoner transports arrived in Ebensee with large numbers of Italians and Frenchmen. In June 1944 the concentration camp in Mauthausen received Hungarian Jews who had survived the selection process in the concentration camp of Auschwitz; about 1.500 of them arrived in the summer of 1944 in the concentration camp of Ebensee. (1) In the following months only a few Jewish prisoners arrived with the transports, only in the spring of 1945 Jews formed the majority of the prisoners in the transports again. In July 1944 most of the prisoners who arrived in the concentration camp of Ebensee were Soviet P.O.W.s; (2) in the fall of 1944 mostly Polish prisoners arrived in the concentration camp of Ebensee who came from the concentration camp in Auschwitz. In January 1945 the number of prisoners in the concentration camp in Ebensee began to increase by leaps and bounds. The transports into this concentration camp were no longer organized on the basis of economical necessities, and nobody cared anymore whether the prisoners were still able to work or not. When the Soviet army approached, the SS had evacuated these prisoners from the eastern camps, and, from April 1945 onwards, also from the eastern sub-camps of Mauthausen and had them distributed among the other sub-camps which soon had been overcrowded. On January 29, 1945, 1.999 prisoners of the concentration camp in Mauthausen arrived in Ebensee. They had been evacuated from the concentration camp in Auschwitz on January 18, 1945, registered in the concentration camp in Mauthausen (3) and then immediately shipped on to the concentration camp in Ebensee. These prisoners had been on the way for about 11 days, mostly in open cattle cars, without any food. (4)

 

Categories of Prisoners, May 3rd, 1945
political	6691	40,68%
Jews	4968	30,20%
Sov. POWs & civil.Workers	3935	23,92%
"criminal"	791	4,81%
others	38	0,23%
Jehovas	16	0,10%
homosexual	10	0,06%

One of the worst evacuation transports arrived in the concentration camp of Ebensee on March 3rd, 1945: it consisted of 2.059 Jewish prisoners from the concentration camp in Wolfsberg which was a sub-camp of Gross-Rosen. They, too, had been brought to Ebensee in open cattle cars by way of Mauthausen. Concentration camp commander Ganz was responsible for the brutal treatment of these exhausted prisoners. Because he was afraid that contagious diseases would be brought into the camp he would not allow these prisoners to enter the barracks until they had gone through the disinfection procedures. After the disinfection they were brought into their barracks where all the windows were unhinged on the orders of Ganz. By doing so Ganz hoped to expedite the death of the many sick prisoners so that in his overloaded camp there would be more space for new transports. Drahomír Bárta, one of the camp clerks of the concentration camp in Ebensee, wrote in his secret diary the following lines:

"Morning, about 9:00. Transport from Wolfsberg. 115 dead were taken out of the train at the railroad station in Mauthausen. 49 dead arrived here with the transport from Mauthausen. 182 died during the night from March 3rd to March 4 when they stood near the crematorium. 2.059 remained alive and went through the disinfection procedure on March 4. Out of this number 191 were dead by March 13. Barracks 26 and 27 have no windows, no beds, no blankets." (5)

 

Nationalities, May 3rd , 1945
Polish	5346	32,50%
Soviet	4258	25,89%
Hungarian	2263	13,76%
French	1147	6,97%
German	1107	6,73%
Others	627	3,81%
Yougoslavian	594	3,61%
Italian	443	2,69%
Greek	282	1,71%
Spanish	220	1,34%
Czech	162	0,98%
	16449	100,00%

By the middle of April the evacuation transports from the sub-camps of Mauthausen arrived at the concentration camp in Ebensee. They consisted of: 1.773 prisoners from the sub-camp of Wels, more than 5.800 from Melk, 1.444 prisoners from Amstetten, 407 prisoners from Leibnitz and 695 from St. Valentin. Even on May 3rd and 4, still prisoners arrived from the concentration camps in Melk, Schlier Redl-Zipf, Sachsenhausen and Neuengamme. In 1944 there was an average of 5.000-6.000 prisoners in the camp, but later the number increased considerably in spite of the numerous deaths and reached well over 18.500 by the end of April. On May 3rd, 1945, there were 16.448 prisoners living in the concentration camp in Ebensee. (6)

1) Veränderungsmeldung (Report of Changes), June 14, 1944, Archivum Glównej Komisji Badania Zbrodni Hitlerowskich w Polsce, Warsaw (AGKBZHwP) KL Mauthausen, vol.11, p.260 ss.

2) cf. Marsálek, Hans: Die Geschichte des Konzentrationslagers Mauthausen. Dokumentation. Vienna 1980, p.126.

3) cf. Marsálek: Mauthausen, p.127.

4) Gilbert, Martin: Endlösung. Die Vertreibung und Vernichtung der Juden. Ein Atlas. Reinbeck bei Hamburg 1982, p.214 s.

5) Private Archives of Drahomír Bárta, Prague, Bárta's Diary, March 3rd/4/14, 1945.

6) Handwritten Report, Private Archives of Bárta.


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