Deutsche Post Mahn- und Gedenkstätte Mauthausen

DEUTSCHE POST in the former German Democratic Republic on 5 September 1978 issued a first day cover stamp dedicated Mahn- und Gedenkstätte Mauthausen. This multicoloured stamp measured  55 x 33 mm. Lothar Grünewald designed the stamp. Deutsche Wertpapierdruckerei (VEB) printed 3,500,000 stamps using the photogravure method. It was valued at 35 Pf. - East German pfennig. Postmark cancellation for this FDC originated from Berlin.

    

Mauthausen was a Nazi concentration camp on a hill above the market town of Mauthausen (roughly 20 kilometres (12 mi) east of Linz), Upper Austria. It was the main camp of a group with nearly 100 further subcamps located throughout Austria and southern Germany.

Political opponents and groups of people labelled as ‘criminal’ or ‘antisocial’ were initially imprisoned here and forced to work in the granite quarries. In 1938, the SS transferred the first prisoners from the Dachau concentration camp. During this phase, the prisoners, who were all Germans and Austrians and all men, had to build their own camp and set up operations in the quarry. Their daily lives were shaped by hunger, arbitrary treatment and violence. Later in the war, women were transferred here and were increasingly used as forced labourers in the arms industry.

When the US Army reached Gusen and Mauthausen in May 1945, some prisoners were in such a weakened state that many still died in the days and weeks after liberation. Of a total of around 190,000 people imprisoned in the Mauthausen concentration camp and its subcamps over seven years, at least 90,000 died.