t the Mauthausen Concentration Camp prisoners were literally worked to death. Unlike the death camps in Poland, where huge gas chambers killed thousands a day, Mauthausen killed prisoners through hard labor and torture. Mauthausen was the only Category Three concentration camp, meaning the prisoners sent there were meant to be exterminated, and exterminated through work. When the camp opened in August 1938, the prisoners were assigned to work in the granite quarries and to build the actual camp. Inmates worked in the quarries and armament factories with their bare hands, and the SS guards would kill those who fell behind or got worn out. For the prisoners who escaped when the camp was liberated, many had faced arduous labor, torture, and starvation in the most physically brutal concentration camp of the Nazi regime.