Mauthausen-Gusen Camp Trials - First Mauthausen Camp Trial

First Mauthausen Camp Trial

The first trial of the Mauthausen-Gusen crew took place in the Dachau concentration camp between March 29 and May 13, 1946. Among the accused were 60 former members of the camp's administration and August Eigruber, a former Gauleiter of Upper Austria. Among the defendants were also Viktor Zoller (former commander of the SS-Totenkopf guard battalion), and doctors Friedrich Entress (an SS member and a medic who practiced medical experiments on hundreds of inmates; killing most of them with injections of phenol), Eduard Krebsbach and Erich Wasicky (responsible for running camp's gas chambers). The Mauthausen-Gusen commander, Franz Ziereis, was shot several weeks after the liberation of the Mauthausen-Gusen camps and died in former Camp Gusen I on May 24, 1945.

All of the defendants were accused of a wide variety of war crimes and crimes against humanity. Among them was murder, torture, beating and starving the inmates. After six weeks all the defendants were found guilty. 58 were sentenced to death by hanging (9 were later paroled and their sentences were changed to life imprisonment), whilst three were sentenced to life imprisonment. All the death sentences were carried out on May 27 and May 28 of 1947 in Landsberg Prison.