Mauthausen was a high-security walled prison on a hill-top in the Austrian countryside where criminals who had been convicted of serious offences and others believed to be security-threats were housed. Photos from outside Mauthausen showing the emergency-water-pool and the 8 meter (26 ft) high wall with guard towers and the main entrance gate. The roof of one building is visible over the wall.

Photo from inside camp with meeting and exercise yard, and living barracks with kitchen in background. At prisons like Mauthausen with 8 meter (26 ft) high walls, mass-murders are not alleged. However if the Germans planned to murder inmates, prisons surrounded by high walls rather than camps like Auschwitz with wire fences would have been selected to prevent people outside camp from seeing and hearing the executions.

Camp Commander SS Standartenführer Franz Ziereis overlooking meeting yard. Ziereis and his staff treated prisoners according to the German-signed Geneva Convention, as verified by the International Red Cross. By 1943 their main concern was stopping outbreaks of Typhus. (Photo taken between 1942 and '44)

After the war the Allies said no mass-murders occurred at walled-camps like Mauthausen, yet the mass-murder of thousands-a-day were kept secret for over one year in camps like Auschwitz, Treblinka and Majdanek, surrounded by see-through wire-fences, roads, and towns, where it would have been impossible to keep mass-murders secret for even one day.

In 1945 Soviet propagandists made a mistake by alleging secret mass-murders at visible camps like Auschwitz and Treblinka, instead of at camps like Mauthausen where the walls would have allowed secrecy. Years later when they realized their mistake it was too late to change as Auschwitz had been promoted as the largest, most important mass-murder camp.

The large room located in the basement where prisoners enjoyed hot showers every day after work, with visible shower heads, hot and cold water pipes, and floor drainage grills.