National Archives Publishes New Guide to Records of Mauthausen Concentration Camp
Press Release · Thursday, April 10, 2008

Includes World War II and Postwar Records

College Park, MD…The National Archives announces the publication of The Mauthausen Concentration Camp Complex: World War II and Postwar Records. Compiled by staff archivist Amy Schmidt and intern Gudrun Loehrer, this guide identifies and describes records from 19 record groups preserved at the National Archives at College Park, Maryland.

The records were developed through wartime intelligence and reconnaissance, captured during the camp’s liberation, and generated through postwar military investigations and tribunals. They include textual, photographic, motion picture, and cartographic records, spanning the period 1938–1960. The 367-page reference information paper (RIP 115) is available free from the Research Support Staff at the National Archives at College Park. To obtain a copy, please call 1-866-272-6272 or 1-800-234-8861.

Mauthausen was an SS-operated “Category III” death camp designed to hold “heavily accused” prisoners and “asocial prisoners, those who can hardly be corrected.” The volume provides detailed description of records that document both the nature of the Mauthausen complex as a network of about 50 sub camps and the operation of the camps, including forced labor, transport of inmates, and methods of execution. The opening section describes Original Mauthausen records and special collections, and another identifies at length the records of the U.S. Army war crimes trials in Dachau, Germany, 1945–1948. Appendices provide a list of Mauthausen defendants by case; a catalogue of Mauthausen materials at the International Tracing Service in Bad Arolsen, Germany; and an address list of other international repositories holding Mauthausen-related records. These records are an invaluable source of information for Holocaust historians.

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For Press information please contact the National Archives Public Affairs staff at 202-357-5300.

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