Ebensee concentration camp The Ebensee concentration camp was established by the SS to build tunnels for armaments storage near the town of Ebensee , Austria in 1943 . It was part of the Mauthausen network . Due to the inhumane working and living conditions , Ebensee was one of the worst Nazi concentration camps for the death rates of its prisoners . The SS used several codenames Kalk ( ) , Kalksteinbergwerk ( ) , Solvay and Zement ( ) to conceal the true nature of the camp . Formation . The construction of the Ebensee subcamp began late in 1943 , and the first 1 , 000 prisoners arrived on November 18 , 1943 , from the main camp of Mauthausen and its subcamps . The main purpose of Ebensee was to provide slave labor for the construction of enormous underground tunnels in which armament works were to be housed . These tunnels were planned for the evacuated Peenemünde V - 2 rocket development , but , on July 6 , 1944 , Hitler ordered the complex converted to a tank - gear factory . Approximately twenty thousand inmates were worked to their deaths to construct giant tunnels in the surrounding mountains . Together with the Mauthausen subcamp of Gusen , Ebensee is considered one of the most horrific Nazi concentration camps . Jews formed about one - third of the inmates , a percentage increased to 40 % at the end of the war , and were the worst treated , though all inmates suffered great hardships . The other inmates included Russia ns , Poles , Czechoslovak s , and Gypsies , as well as German and Austrian political prisoners and criminals . The Commandant Otto Riemer ( born 19 May 1897 , date of death unknown ) was a Nazi , a crew member of the German concentration camp Mauthausen - Gusen concentration camp , and SS - Obersturmführer . Unfortunately , his fate is unknown . Another SS man was Alfons Bentele , who died in a French prison . Conditions . Prisoners arose at 4 : 30 A . M . and worked until 6 : 00 P . M . , constructing and expanding tunnels . After some months , work was done in shifts , 24 hours a day . There was almost no accommodation to protect the first batch of prisoners from the cold Austrian winter , and deaths increased greatly . Bodies were piled in heaps and taken every three or four days to the Mauthausen crematorium to be burned ; Ebensee did not yet have its own crematorium . The bodies of the dead were also piled inside the few huts that existed . The smell of the dead , combined with the stenches of sickness , phlegm , urine , and feces , was said to be unbearable . Prisoners wore wooden clogs , or went barefoot when the clogs fell apart . Lice infested the camp . In the morning , food rations consisted of half a liter of ersatz coffee ; at noon , of three quarters of a liter of hot water containing potato peelings ; and , in the evening , of 150 grams of bread . Thanks to such paltry rations , abysmal living conditions , beatings , and the onerous demands of labour , the death toll continued to rise . Liberation . As the Second World War in Europe came to an end , mass evacuations from other camps put tremendous pressure on the Mauthausen complex , the last remaining concentration camp in the area still controlled by the Nazis . The 25 Ebensee barracks had been designed to hold a hundred prisoners each , but they eventually held as many as 750 apiece . To this number , one must add the prisoners being kept in the tunnels or outdoors , under the open sky . The crematorium was unable to keep pace with the deaths . Naked bodies were stacked outside the barrack blocks and the crematorium itself . In the closing weeks of the war , the death rate exceeded 350 a day . To reduce congestion , a ditch was dug outside the camp and bodies were flung into the quicklime . On a single day in April , 1945 , a record eighty bodies were removed from block 23 alone ; in this pile , feet were seen to be twitching . During this period , the inmate strength reached a high of eighteen thousand . In May , 1945 , shooting could be heard in the distance from inside the camp and there was a sense among prisoners that American and English forces were close at hand . On May 4 , 1945 , the commandant of the camp informed prisoners that they had been sold to the Americans and that prisoners should seek shelter in the camp ' s underground tunnels for protection . Prisoners refused and remained in their barracks . Hours later , some tunnels exploded , reputedly due to the detonation of mines . On May 5 , 1945 , prisoners awoke to find that the SS had deserted Ebensee and that only elderly Germans armed with rifles were guarding the camp . American troops of the US 80th Infantry Division arrived at the camp on May 6 , 1945 - though for many inmates liberation came too late and they died of hunger , disease and exhaustion despite the efforts of American doctors to save them . Post - war commemoration . In the immediate aftermath of liberation , former Polish inmates erected a stark concrete monument on the mass graves of their fellow prisoners who did not survive . In the first decades after the war , however , no other commemoration efforts were undertaken . To the contrary , the site of the concentration camp was designated for development as a residential area ; many of the remaining camp structures except for its gate were demolished . Moreover , during the 1960s a former SS officer for some time became mayor of Ebensee , without his Nazi past arousing much attention . However , a drastically changed attitude followed in the wake of the 1988 election of Kurt Waldheim as President of Austria and the revelations of his Nazi career . Ebensee , like many other locations in Austria , was touched by the controversy and the need to face Austria ' s past . In Ebensee there was a determination to commemorate the events and preserve what camp remnants were still there . The tunnels , which had been dug by the slave labourers , remained intact but they were neglected and their existence largely unknown . In 1997 Mayor Herwart Loidl presided over the placing of memorial plaques in the tunnels , commemorating the severe hardships of the slave workers who built them , and to those who had died there . Access to the underground chambers was created through the stairs known as " Lowengang " ( ) . The tunnels since opening have seen increasing number of visitors , from abroad as well as Austrian students who are learning about their nation ' s past . Today , a former school house has been turned into the " Zeitgeschichte Museum und KZ - Gedenkstätte Ebensee " , which holds regular lectures and readings , publishes a journal about the war period , and hosts an annual commemoration attended by surviving former inmates from different countries . It exhibits photographs , testimonies and relics from the camp .