60 years - Austria / II. Republic of Austria 2005 - 55 Euro Cent

The Mauthausen concentration camp was regarded during the Nazi regime in Austria as the instrument of suppression par excellence, with which the National Socialists proceeded against dissenters or people who did not conform to their race ideals. As the only concentration camp, Camp III, Mauthausen functioned as a murder camp from which the return of prisoners was undesirable and prevented by a variety of killing methods. "Killing by work" was the intention, which resulted in a ruthless exploitation of the prisoners in quarries as well as in the construction of tunnels, but also in various economic enterprises. Like a network, the Mauthausen system with its more than 40 satellite camps moved all over Austria. More than 200,000 people were detained in this concentration camp system. Only about half of the prisoners experienced the liberation of the camp by the US troops on May 5, 1945. The quarry "Wiener Graben" was one of the main reasons why it was on 8 August 1938 just started in Mauthausen to build the main camp. As a symbol of the horror of the camp, the so-called death staircase with its 186 steps was engraved in the memory of the prisoners. The prisoners had to make their way almost daily to the exhausting work in the quarry. The irregular, sometimes even loosely arranged stone blocks and slabs proved to be a deadly obstacle when the exhausted prisoners under the blows of the SS had to drag lumps of stone over the stairs to the camp or deliberately pushed them down and were killed by the rolling stones.