Amstetten

Members of the Boys were slave labourers in the Amstetten labour camp, a subcamp of the Mauthausen concentration camp in Austria.

Mauthausen concentration camp was operated by Nazi Germany. The camp had 40 subcamps.

The Boys were teenage and child-Holocaust survivors, who were brought to the UK after the war for rest and rehabilitation.

^{Mathausen Memorial, Austria.}

Amstetten was established on 19 March 1945. It was located 30km southeast of the main Mauthausen camp.

Structure

The camp was made of up Bahnbau I, which was for male prisoners who were made to repair the railway in Amstetten, which was a strategically important switching station on the main line from Linz to Vienna. Bahnbau II was for the female prisoners who were brought as labour detachments to clean the camp by train from Mauthausen. The maximum number of inmates at the camp was approximately 3,000. Conditions were extremely bad with no food and little sanitation. The camp was guarded by members of the SS and the Vienna Police.

The train station in Amstetten was bombed in March and numerous prisoners were killed as they were not allowed to enter the bomb shelters. Some prisoners managed to escape during the bombing raid.

Dissolution

The camp closed on 18 April 1945 and the surviving prisoners were moved back to Mauthausen.

There is a small plaque to mark the camp’s existence.