U.S. Army Signal Corps soldiers photograph the bodies of prisoners who died outside their barracks on May 12 after the liberation of the Guzen concentration camp in Austria on May 5, 1945.

　　The Gusen concentration camp near Linz, Austria, was liberated on May 5, 1945, by troops of the 11th Armored Division of the U.S. 3rd Army. It was a concentration camp of prolonged death, hard labor, bestiality, and mass extermination. The total number of prisoners of war killed at the Gusen concentration camp, and the maximum number held there, were unknown at the time of liberation; the bodies were discovered when American troops liberated the camp on May 12, 1945. It was a sub-camp of the Mauthausen concentration camp. U.S. Army Signal Corps soldiers photograph dead prisoners outside a barracks after the liberation of the Gusen concentration camp in Austria.

　Even after American troops arrived and liberated the camp, inmates continued to die of starvation at a rate of about 100 per day, at a high rate of starvation. Inmates told investigators that the camps were primarily for political prisoners from all over Europe. However, an unknown number of American airmen were found to have been massacred at one point in the Gusen camp. The prisoners worked in a nearby quarry until they were too weak to stand, and were then slaughtered by the Germans. The Guzen concentration camp was equipped with the usual efficient means used by the Germans to dispose of the victims they slaughtered in gas chambers and crematoria. Third Army units found the bodies of inmates in filthy beds, in garbage dumps, on roads, in carts, in storage rooms, and in refrigerated rooms set aside for awaiting cremation. German civilians were forced to work by the U.S. military to remove the decomposing bodies for proper burial.

　Some died in the gas chambers, others starved to death in their beds. Bodies were taken out into the streets to be loaded onto freight cars for decent burials. An unknown number of American airmen were killed at the Gusen concentration camp. The men were worked in a nearby quarry until their strength failed and then killed; on May 8, 1945, German civilians over the age of 12 were turned in for body disposal duty at the liberated Gusen camp. German, Austrian, and Polish prisoners of war, as well as approximately 4,000 Spanish Republicans in 1940 and 4,400 Soviet prisoners of war in 1941, were held at Goosen; the average life expectancy in 1940 and 1941 was six months, and the average weight of prisoners from 1940 to 1942 was 40 kg.