On January 24, 1945 the first transport of Auschwitz evacuees reached Mauthausen. In one week 9,000 prisoners of various nationalities arrived, the majority of them Jews. One of the deportees from Auschwitz, Yehuda Bakon later recalled how on the march, 'The children said – it is good that our parents were killed in the gas chambers. They did not have to undergo all this torturing and suffering – because we saw they shot everyone who fell.'
