Camp prison / “bunker”

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The camp prison also known as bunker was built in 1941/42.
It contained 33 cells. Arrests were among the official penal measures a concentration camp commander was entitled to impose. To make matters worse, detainees were often put in darkrooms without plank beds or anywhere to sit and were deprived of food. Offences against a number of rules and prohibitions, some of which the detainees were unaware of and which often contradicted each other, were used as a pretext for such arrests.
Most of the detainees held at the bunker were transferred to Mauthausen to be executed. Others were kept at the bunker for much longer, sometimes more than a year. These were primarily political prisoners to be interrogated by the political department – the camp Gestapo – upon arrival. Virtually all of these interrogations were accompanied by torture and serious physical abuse.

Josef Drexel, a German political prisoner, recalls his time in the cell:

“Like all the other cells it was completely empty– except for a bucket to relieve oneself. Not a single piece of furniture. The walls plastered with yellowish lime – and quite bare. The door was dark green, almost black, of strong oak planks and iron-mounted. Walls and doors were covered with feeble confessions from past prisoners...
You were rarely on your own in these cells. Quite often, you got company, if only for hours or days. (...). Prisoners who were held at the barracks but had been subjected to interrogations were generally not taken back to the barracks right away but were temporarily kept under arrest in the cells too.
Mostly in the evenings but during the night too, the door would open and someone would be shoved in, stumbling. They shared your cell for some time, until they could stand up and walk again. Most new arrivals immediately stretched out on their bellies in a corner, moaning, feverish and in a terrible state.
From autumn 1944 onwards, large numbers of prominent political prisoners were detained at the bunker, used by the Nazis as hostages.