SS troop accommodation

SS troop accommodation, spring 1940 (photo credits: SS-photo, Courtesy Museu d’Història de Catalunya, Barcelona: Fons Amical de Mauthausen).The wooden barracks were completed in early 1940. They were built by the first prisoner building detachments as accommodation for the SS camp watchmen.

At the beginning, only members of the SS guarded camp Gusen. Later, Wehrmacht soldiers, who were organized into 11 to 13 guard regiments, each divided into two “Wachsturmbanns”, also took on the guard. 

In February 1940, even before the camp was officially founded, the guard detachments already consisted of 600 men, in 1945 there were around 3000.