Nowadays Mauthausen is an attractive small town on the north bank of the Danube east of Linz, but its status as a quarrying centre prompted the Nazis to site KZ Mauthausen concentration camp here. Prisoners were forced into slave labour in the granite quarry and many died on the so-called Todesstiege (stairway of death) leading from the quarry to the camp. Some 100,000 prisoners died or were executed in the camp between 1938 and 1945.