On 11 May 1946, the trial of staff of the Mauthausen and Gusen concentration camps ended on the territory of the former Dachau concentration camp. The US military tribunal considered allegations against 61 people. William Denson, US Chief Military Prosecutor in Europe served as chief prosecutor, and Lieutenant-Colonel Douglas Bates Jr, military justice officer, served as Head of the Defense Council.
The Mauthausen camp belonged to Deutsche Erd und Steinwerke GmbH (German Earth and Stonework Co), otherwise known as DEST, and was a granite mining enterprise. The company was headed by Oswald Pohl, head of the SS Main Economic and Administrative Office. Pohl was also chairman of the board of the German Red Cross, and in 1938 he transferred 8 million Reichsmarks from membership fees for the construction of the concentration camp.
Of the 335,000 prisoners of Mauthausen, 122,000 were executed, of whom 32,000 were USSR citizens including Lieutenant-General Dmitry Karbyshev, who was hosed with icy water in the cold, and Stalingrad citizen Dmitry Osnovin, who became a national hero of Czechoslovakia. On 21 June 1943, 11 Soviet prisoners of war were burnt alive in the crematorium of the camp. Block number 20 was particularly notorious – it was called the"block of death". Prisoners were sent there for violations of the regime. It served as a training ground for the personnel of the SS "Death's Head" division formed from the camp`s guards - beatings and bullying went on day and night.
Of the 61 accused Mauthausen staff, 58 people were sentenced to death by hanging, although that sentence was changed to life imprisonment for nine of them.
Pohl, the founder of the Mauthausen concentration camp, was hanged on 7 June 1951 at the Landsberg Prison in Bavaria. The prison became famous for housing prominent Nazis, including, ironically, a young Adolf Hitler in the Twenties after the failure of the "Beer Hall Putsch" in 1923. After the war, the prison became a place of imprisonment and execution of Nazi criminals convicted in Bavaria. In total, by the decisions taken by American military courts, 284 people were executed there.
Source:
Alexey Konopatchenkov “The Mauthausen Concentration Camp complex in Nazi Germany (1938-1945): History, Structure, Resistance”. Abstract of the Dissertation
