A Soviet POW was driven by guards to commit suicide at the barbed wire electric fence of the Mauthausen concentration camp in Austria, Nazi Germany, in September-October 1942.

　　Soviet prisoners of war committed suicide at the barbed wire electric fence of the Mauthausen concentration camp in Nazi Germany's Austria in September-October 1942. Some prisoners were annotated by guards for attempting to escape and driven into the high-tension wire fence; on May 5, 1945, troops of the U.S. 11th Armored Division liberated the Mauthausen camp; 15,000 bodies were interred in a mass grave; the camp was closed for the first time in 1945. Due to disease and starvation, 3,000 prisoners died in the weeks following liberation.

　Mauthausen concentration camp, located 20 km from the Austrian city of Linz, was founded on August 8, 1938, and liberated by American troops on May 5, 1945. The Mauthausen camp main camp consisted of 32 barracks surrounded by barbed wire, high stone walls, and watchtowers. Barbed wire surrounded the fields to the north and west to accommodate the vast numbers of prisoners pouring into the camp. Mainly Hungarian Jews and Russian soldiers were left out in the open all year round.

　The SS's preferred method of killing during the winter season was to gather a group of prisoners in a garage yard and have them undress. The guards then poured water on the group and froze them to death. This was quite effective when winter temperatures were usually around minus 10 degrees Celsius. Food rations for inmates were cut in half, and sick and weak inmates were sent into the woods to starve to death. All sick and weak inmates were killed with poison gas. The gas chambers were located in Hartheim, 10 kilometers from Linz.