Mauthausen Camp Death Certificate

Authors

Object ID

2012.1.4

Object Name

Certificate, Death

Date

3-8-1940

Files

Content Warning

The Bulmash Family Holocaust Collection consists of images, documents, and artifacts related to the Holocaust. The collection contains materials that depict a number of topics that may be difficult for viewers to engage with, including: antisemitic descriptions, caricatures, and representation of Jewish people; Nazi imagery and ideology; descriptions and images of German ghettos; graphic images of the violence of the Holocaust; and the creation of the State of Israel. For more information, see our policy page.

Description

Off-white paper with bold German title, including printed and typewritten information, with a black signature at the bottom.

Information Provided by Michael D. Bulmash:

A pair of certificates (2012.1.3, 2012.1.4) certifying the death of an inmate. The first, dated March 1940, states that John Metz, a forty-one-year-old prisoner, died of "chronic illness and a heart attack." The second document, dated January 20, 1943, notified Alexandra Rutkiewski that her husband perished of a "lung infection" and that his body was cremated. Even more insultingly, it states as well that a death certificate is available for 72 pfennigs. Of course, many of the inmates at Mauthausen were worked to death in the granite quarry while receiving only starvation rations. Prisoners were divided into two groups: one that hacked the granite and the other that carried the 100-pound slabs up the 186 steep steps to the top of the quarry. Regardless of the real cause of death, for SS "doctors," the official version was always euphemized to conceal the reality of "life" in this category-three camp where prisoners were subject to "vernichtung durch arbeit" (extermination through work). For all prisoners, life in Mauthausen meant "ruckkehr unerwunscht" (return not desired).

[Related item: 2012.1.3]

Dimensions

8 x 6"

Keywords

Death, Mauthausen, return not desired, extermination through work, John Metz, Alexandra Rutiewski

Subcollection

Concentration

Recommended Citation

"Mauthausen Camp Death Certificate" (1940). Bulmash Family Holocaust Collection. 2012.1.4.
https://digital.kenyon.edu/bulmash/670