First SEALs (32 page)

The officers then marched the prisoners into an open area and lined them up outside the showers. They were stripped, shaved of all body hair, showered, and deloused. The guards issued them threadbare striped prison garb. For three hours they mercilessly questioned each individual, beating, slapping, slugging, and spitting upon the men. “You American swine!” SS officer Hans Bruckner repeatedly shouted as he used the cane taken from the disabled Slovak to strike Taylor's back again and again.

Several noncommissioned SS officers, working in “relays,” intimidated the prisoners and ruthlessly interrogated them. “Where
are you from? Who are you? Why are you here?” Every time the SS guard would ask a question, “Whatever the answer was, he would hit you over the head.”

When the initial interrogation finally ended, Taylor and the rest of the men marched through the main gate at Mauthausen. A heavy iron sign, which proclaimed in German, “Work will set you free,” hung over the entrance.

The guards led the newly arrived inmates into a courtyard and forced them to stand at attention barefooted for over an hour in the freezing cold. “This S.O.P. (standard operating procedure) was not changed even during the most severe part of the winter when men stood barefooted in the snow,” wrote Taylor.

Over the next forty-eight hours, the prisoners received no food. However, they did receive prison numbers stamped on cloth next to a colored triangle designating their status. The original prisoners from the camp wore green triangles, and all political prisoners wore red triangles. “Each contained letters abbreviating his nation in the red triangle. [For instance,] F for France and B for Belgium.” The guards then issued the inmates a wrist bracelet with the same number stamped in metal. Taylor's number was 138070.

The SS marched the men to Block 13, their crude barracks. Taylor explained, “There were 25 prisoner barracks each normally designed for 220 men, i.e., 70 triple-decker single bunks plus 5 double-decker singles, but at this time holding nearly 400 each. This was increased to almost 600, which made it necessary for three to ‘sleep' in each single bunk. Toilet and hygienic facilities were proportionately inadequate.”

The men slept in their clothes for warmth—and to keep them from being stolen. Taylor recalled, “After two days, we began by devious means to get wooden shoes and old trousers or shirts; until then we walked around in the cold and mud barefooted and clad only in ragged underwear. Within a week I had, through friends, collected a full compl[e]ment of assorted rags for clothes.” The barracks were unheated. Thin blankets provided the only source of
warmth for the men. “On unusually cold nights, there was heavy nocturnal traffic in blankets. The blankets, incidentally, were collected each morning and redistributed at random each night, thereby spreading lice and fleas from a few to all,” recalled Taylor.

Life in Mauthausen degenerated as the Germans' inhumane, brutal treatment of the prisoners turned many into animals. The men had to survive not only the SS but also danger from within the prison population. The SS assigned many convicted German criminals, inmates who were murderous thieves and forgers, as the barracks heads (
Blockeldesters
), who ruthlessly supervised their fellow prisoners “with a heavy hand.” The barracks heads “used their fists, blackjacks, sticks, rubber hoses and razor straps to maintain ‘order.'”

The prisoner population shifted between ten and fifteen thousand inmates who were literally worked to death or, later, exterminated in gas chambers. At the time Taylor was one of a few Americans in Mauthausen. He learned of only three others: a woman named Isabella or Carlotta Dien; Sergeant Louis Biagioni, an OSS Secret Intelligence agent; and Lionel Romney, an African American of the U.S. Merchant Marine who had been captured when the Italians sunk his ship. Mauthausen consisted of a diverse population, which included intelligentsia and artists of Third Reich–occupied countries. In Taylor's bunkhouse were Frenchmen, Germans, Russians, and many inmates from Central and Eastern European countries. One of the most notable was Vojtech Krajcovic, a renowned Slovakian economist who had also served as governor of the National Bank Bratislava and head of the Economic Institute of Bratislava.

Taylor reported, “We were all forced to work as soon as we got something approaching shoes and many of our group were assigned to the Kommando repairing the railroad and highway around Enns. This was heavy and continuous pick and shovel work for 12 hours with ½ hour off for lunch . . . and included a 16 km
round-trip march to and from work. Most of our group were high class professional men and the strain and misery of this type of work at first, can be imagined.”

Gradually, even the most upstanding men transformed into thieves and savages. Stealing was “practiced on a scale that can't be imagined.” Taylor recalled, “One had to carry with him at all times his total belongings. Stealing became a matter of life and death” because “one could not support life on the regular prison food.” Mauthausen rations would starve a gerbil. As Taylor recalled, “Food consisted of flavored hot water (very dilute unsweetened ersatz coffee) at five for breakfast. Lunch was one liter of erpsin (beet) soup, much thicker but less palatable than in Vienna. Supper was 1/10 to 1/17 kilo of black bread. The bread was composed of wheat flour, ground potato peelings, sawdust, and straw. On Sunday, in addition we received a slice of margarine or a tablespoon of cottage cheese.”

Mauthausen was both a slave labor camp and a death factory. Once a human being was used up, he or she was exterminated. Germans gassed prisoners, shot them, beat them to death, or killed them by various other means. To attempt to hide their crimes, the Germans cremated the bodies. One of the first work details to which Taylor was assigned was the construction of a crematorium. Taylor and his work party knew completion of the facility meant the deaths of more inmates—including themselves. “We dawdled at our work to delay completion of the crematorium because we knew that the number of executions would double when cremation facilities were available.”

But the Germans knew Taylor and his comrades were stalling. “One Saturday morning, Prellberg and SS
Hauptscharführer
Martin Roth (head of the crematorium) belabored
Kapo
Jacinto for his failure to finish the work quickly and informed him that it must be finished and ready for operation on the following day or we (workers) would be the first occupants of the new ovens.” The death
threat was serious, and Taylor and his fellow inmates “finished the job in the allotted time.”

According to Taylor, “The crematoriums were large brick structures containing a firebox for burning wood and coal and over this were the ovens fitted with rounded supports at intervals for the bodies. The bodies were carried into the ovens on steel stretchers and with a quarter turn were rolled out. The new crematorium with two ovens could handle twelve bodies at a time, 160 a day and with the old ovens a total of 250 a day. Insufficient cremating facilities held down the number of executions as all bodies showing signs of violent death could not be buried. Gassed bodies were often disfigured from clawing, biting, etc. and chemical analysis of the tissues would show cyanide. All ‘violent-death' bodies had this stamp on their paper:
‘Die leiche muss aus hygienischen grunden gefert verbreannt werden'
[
sic
] which says, ‘The corpse must for hygienic reasons be cremated.'”

With the crematorium finished, the Mauthausen death factory went into full swing. “The next day, Sunday April 10th, 367 new Czech prisoners, including 40 women, arrived from Czechoslovakia and were marched through the gate straight to the gas chamber and christened the new ovens. Black oily smoke and flames shot out the top of the stacks as healthy flesh and fat was burned as compared to the normal pale yellow smoke from old emaciated prisoners. This yellow smoke and heavy sickening smell of flesh and hair was blown over our barrack 24 hours a day and as hungry as we were, we could not always eat,” recalled Taylor. He continued:

The gas used was Zyklon B cyanide a granular powder, contained in pint-sized cans and the same used for infection of clothing. In a small room, adjacent to the gas chamber, was a steel box connected immediately to a blower, which was in turn connected to the shower system. While wearing a gas mask, the operator bashed in the ends of two cans of powder (one can will kill 100 people) with a hammer and after placing them in the box, clamped the lid on hermetically
tight and started the blower. (In winter, when the gas would not evaporate fast enough from the powder, steam was introduced into the box from the other end.) After two hours, the intake blower was stopped and the larger exhaust blower was turned on for about two hours. Wearing gas masks, the prisoner operators removed the bodies to the cold room (capacity 500) where they were stacked like cordwood awaiting cremation. See enclosure ‘Instructions for the service of Pourric [
sic
] Acid Delousing Chambers in K.L.M', by the Chief doctor. It is worded for delousing but the instructions were especially for gas chamber operators. The blowers and gas receptacle were removed by the SS and attempts made to destroy them. In March 1945, Ziereis and Bachmayer (see protocol) ordered all ventilation sealed in the police wagon and a small trapdoor installed. A group of 30 to 40 prisoners were told that they were being transported to Gusen, a subsidiary camp about 8 km away, were crammed into the wagon, the door locked and a bottle of poison gas dropped through the trapdoor on an angle iron specially placed to break the bottle. The ‘police wagon' was immediately driven to Gusen and after parking for an hour the prisoners were delivered to the crematorium. The same numbers of Gusen prisoners were then loaded into the ‘police wagon' for transport to Mauthausen with identical results. From March to October 1945 the car circulated 47 times with an average of 35 victims each way on the round trip, making a total of approximately 3,300. In October, ventilation was installed again, and the police-wagon resumed its original function.

Whereas many prisoners were gassed, others were simply shot to death. Taylor reported, “Until 1943, daily executions by rifle or tommy-gun were done openly back of Block 15 where those waiting to be executed were forced to watch their comrades, three at a time, being mowed down. When gas and injection deaths practically replaced shooting, all shooting was done individually in another small room adjacent to the gas-chamber. The victim was told that he was to have his picture taken and
was led into this room where a camera was set up on a tripod. He was told to face the corner with his back to the camera and immediately he assumed this position, he was shot in the back of the neck with a small carbine by an SS man standing to his left and slightly behind. Prisoner operators stood behind a door looking through a peephole so as to know when to drag the body out. SS
Standartenführer
Ziereis, commandant of Mauthausen, personally executed three hundred to four hundred men here in the above-mentioned manner during ten shooting ‘expeditions' over a period of four months.”

After finishing work on the crematorium, Taylor was transferred to cell block 10, which was occupied by a cosmopolitan group of prisoners, including Czechs, Poles, Russians, Germans, and Austrians. They were “old-timers,” survivors who, through “devious means,” consistently obtained the extra food necessary to stay alive. “Bread, margarine, potatoes and occasionally horsemeat, cereal, and schnapps were obtainable through the black market. Czechs, Austrians and Hungarians were allowed a few packages from home until March of 1945. The two French Lieutenants (Maurice and Albert), Krajcovic and I had received bread and margarine for our watches and ring at the rate of two loaves of bread and 1/2 kilo margarine for each Swiss watch. Divided four ways, this food lasted a week. In Block 10, I collected and boiled potatoes peelings and scraps from the more fortunate prisoners but our bread ration was reduced daily.”

Before arriving at Mauthausen, Taylor's weight had already dwindled to just 130 pounds due to the harsh conditions in Vienna. His stay at the execution camp only increased his emaciation. He reported, “I had terrible dysentery and innumerable small sores on my legs and back, but I continued to work as best I could to prevent being put on the sick-list and transferred to the ‘hospital' (
Sanitatslager
) where, believe it or not, five sick people were assigned to each single bunk, rations were half ‘normal' and infinitesimal amounts of medicine were supplied. Very few ever returned
alive from this ‘hospital,' and the daily death toll at this time from starvation was 400 to 500.”

The conditions and deaths at Mauthausen were unimaginable and largely unknown to most of the world, including the United States. Many of his fellow prisoners approached Taylor, saying, “We're sorry you're here, but, IF you live, it will be a very fortunate thing,” they said. “For you can tell Americans and they will believe you, but if we try to tell them, they will say it is propaganda.”

Every nationality “trusted me because I was an American,” wrote Taylor. “Consequently, I was the recipient of hundreds of eyewitness atrocity accounts with first hand evidence in many cases.” He risked his life to bury American GI dog tags as well as the epaulet of a fellow Navy officer from another OSS team, whom his German captors in Mauthausen executed in cold blood. It was too dangerous for Taylor to take notes, but he “kept a mental account of each story.”

Later, he had the opportunity to write down some of the horrific details:

The following examples taken from the enclosed sworn statements are in addition to the normal methods of execution, i.e., gassing, shooting, hanging, etc.: clubbing to death with wooden or/iron sticks, shovels, pick-axes, hammer, etc; tearing to pieces by dogs trained especially for this purpose; injection into the heart or veins of magnesium-chlorate, benzene, etc.; exposure naked in sub-zero weather after a hot shower; scalding-water shower followed by cow-tail whipping to break blisters and tear flesh away; mashing in a concrete mixer; drowning; beating men over a 150 foot cliff to the rocks below; beating and driving men into the electric fence or guarded limits where they are shot; forcing to drink a great quantity of water then jumping on the stomach while the prisoner is lying on his back; freezing half-naked in sub-zero temperatures; buried alive; eyes gouged out with a stick, teeth knocked out and kicked in the genitals, red hot poker down the throat, etc., etc., etc.