Publication Project “Europe in Mauthausen”

Project Funding: FWF Austrian Science Fund, PUB621, PUB720, PUB930
Project Duration: 2018–2025
Project Lead: Gerhard Botz (University of Vienna)
Project Team: Alexander Prenninger (LBIDH), Heinrich Berger (LBIDH), Regina Fritz (University of Vienna), Melanie Dejnega (FH Wien of WKW)

“Europe in Mauthausen” is a publication project that aims to publish the results of the ‘Mauthausen Survivors Research Project’ (MSRP, 2008–2011) and several follow-up projects. This history of the survivors of the Mauthausen concentration camp consists of four volumes that build on each other thematically.

The first volume, “Mauthausen and the National Socialist Policy of Expansion and Persecution” (2021), presents an overview of the camp and Mauthausen research, focusing initially on methodological considerations and macropolitical contexts. The contributions show that the Nazi camp system played a major role in the occupation and persecution policies of the Nazi regime (and the collaborating countries). From a structural-historical perspective, in this volume the Mauthausen concentration camp is situated within the logic and possibilities of the territories controlled and exploited by Nazi Germany and examined in the context of the dynamics of this area’s initially rapid expansion and subsequent decline.

The second volume, “Deported to Mauthausen” (2021), deals with the deportation transports and the constant transfers between the various Nazi camps, as well as the death marches in the final phase of the Nazi regime. Deportations and permanent transfers of prisoners within the camp system were an inherent part of the Nazi regime. This volume highlights the intertwined ideological, economic, military, and purely bureaucratic considerations that underpinned the concentration camp system and the oppression and extermination of politically, “racially,” and culturally “undesirable” persons. The volume shows how strongly these measures influenced the lives and life stories of the survivors, thus opening a new perspective on the history of the Nazi camp system from the point of view of the deportees.

The third volume, “Imprisoned in Mauthausen” (2024), deals with the everyday life of prisoners in a Nazi concentration camp and their attempts to stay alive. Their death or survival depended heavily on the racist, national, political, or professional categories into which they were categorized by the SS and on the conditions under which and when they were deported to the Mauthausen concentration camp. Despite the SS terror system, some prisoners managed to be resilient and exploit gaps in the murderous concentration camp system as a chance to survive.

The fourth volume, “Surviving and Remembering Mauthausen,” focuses on the post-war history of the survivors of the Mauthausen concentration camp from 1945 onwards, which has been little researched in detail and depth to date, thus enabling a new assessment of the role of survivors and their organizations as actors in the process of remembrance. The myths surrounding the silence about Nazi crimes after 1945 are also examined based on primary sources.

The basic research and main sources of the project, on which the four volumes are largely based, come from the Mauthausen Survivors Documentation Project (MSDP), which was carried out in 2002/03 under the direction of Gerhard Botz in cooperation of the Documentation Centre of Austrian Resistance and the Institute of Conflict Research with an international team of collaborators. As part of the MSDP, 859 audio and video interviews were conducted with male and female survivors of Mauthausen and its more than 40 satellite camps, recorded in 16 different languages in Europe, Israel, and North and South America. The MSDP was followed by the equally international Mauthausen Survivors Research Project (MSRP), which used this unique source base for a rigorous analysis; the results of this project are being presented to the public for the first time here.

The four-volume history of the Mauthausen survivors focuses both on individual experiences and their aftermath in the life stories of the survivors, as well as on the social and political contexts of memory and narrative. In this way, it shows that the camp universe of Mauthausen is still very much alive in the national cultures of remembrance in Europe.

This approach involves the use of a wide range of quantitative research techniques and qualitative methods for analyzing audio and video interviews in all four volumes in order to provide a comprehensive overview of the persecution and occupation policies of the Nazis and the concentration camp system using Mauthausen as an example.

In addition to the editors, 29 younger and established researchers from Denmark, Germany, France, Israel, the Netherlands, Poland, Russia, Spain, Hungary, the US, and Austria contributed to the volumes. Only with such an international team was it possible to analyze the interviews conducted in 16 different languages and interpret the survivors’ narratives within their respective national, political, and cultural contexts.

The volumes are published in German in print and open access.