The Forgotten Massacres of Defenseless Soldiers in WWII
The Reckoning at Mauthausen: How the SS Guards Met Their End
16m
When U.S. forces arrive at Mauthausen on May 5, 1945, most SS guards have fled. Those who remain are seized by prisoners who have endured years of forced labor, starvation, executions, and medical experiments in one of the Third Reich’s most lethal camps.
In the chaotic hours after liberation, around 30 SS guards in Mauthausen and a similar number in the Gusen subcamp are killed. Others are compelled to perform humiliating punishments and quarry labor under the watch of their former victims. Kapos and prisoner-functionaries who collaborated with the SS also face violent retribution.
This film retraces the full arc of Mauthausen — from its creation after the Anschluss of Austria, through its system of annihilation by labor, to its final days of vengeance and collapse — revealing how a place built on terror ended in one of the most dramatic reversals of power in Holocaust history.
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