Day 24 8/26: Mauthausen

Today everyone was more silent and reverent than usual. Today we were going to Mauthausen, a Nazi concentration camp a few hours car-ride away from Vienna. None of us knew exactly what to think or how to feel, so we piled into the bus in silence for the long day ahead of us. This would be my first time visiting a concentration camp, so I was especially confused about the feelings that I had going into the experience. I did decide, however, that out of respect to those who lived and died in this place I would not take pictures. I feel that they would not want the camp photographed for a grade, and I certainly have to intention of looking at them again if I took them. When we got to the front of the camp, I was rather surprised. The buildings looked squat and only barely resembled a military outpost. The view around it was green and beautiful as well; one would have to know what the place was in order to appreciate the fact that so much pain and misery had transpired all around.
We began our visit with a guided tour of the compound. The guide was very nice, knowledgeable, and approached the subject with due care and respect. Construction on Mauthausen started in 1938; at the time local carpenters were excited to have work in the area. The location was chosen because it was remote enough to not cause too much undue suspicion and because of its proximity to the granite quarry where the inmates were to gather rocks to build the compound or die trying. The inmates at this particular camp were not only Jewish, in fact they were in the minority. Prisoners of war from the Soviet Union, gypsies, Spanish republicans who opposed Franco, and anyone else who stood as a threat to the Nazis were shipped here. The theme of the camp was death by work where the inmates would be so exhausted from the long labor and little food/rest that they would literally die in the yards. By 1940, it became one of the largest camp complexes in German-controlled Europe. The doors closed, normal citizens were not allowed inside, and secrecy surrounded the complex. In 1945, the Allies opened the gates to the abandoned complex to find the inmates emaciated to the point where over a thousand died even with medical care and food. The exact death toll of the camp is unknown, but estimates range from 120,000 to over 300,000.
There are a few parts of the tour around the camp that stood out to me. The first was the parade grounds. New inmates were brought in through the gates and were forced to stand with their faces to the wall. They were then beaten, some were shot, some were attacked by dogs, and all were shown the gate and told “that is how you came in,” and then shown the incinerator, “and that’s how you’ll leave.” Every morning they had to stand outside of the parade grounds in whatever the weather conditions were and be subject to more of the SS’s humiliation techniques. Then they were herded to the quarry where they broke rocks all day. Today, the parade grounds are lined with plaques for all of the different groups of people who suffered and died, including but not limited to Jews, Catholics, Soviets, Spanish republicans, and homosexuals.
In the barracks we saw the beds that they had to sleep on. In the same space that would not comfortably hold many of the people on our trip, three inmates had to sleep as once. The building was not very large, but about 300 inmates were housed in each one. Sometimes this was welcome because of how low the temperature got. Only a few barracks stand today, but the ones that do reveal how cramped and impersonal the lives of the inmates must have been. Across from the barracks was a field that holds the ashes of many thousands of inmates who died and were cremated throughout the years. On the other side is the medical facility where many inmates were experimented on and euthanized. Every building had a terrible purpose, and each took away a little bit more humanity than the last.
By far the most memorable stop we made was the gas chamber and the crematorium. What is one supposed to say about such things? Standing in the room where so many hundreds of other people lost their lives in agony was not the most fun experience, and in my opinion we stayed in there too long. The inmates were told that they were going in the room for a routine shower in order to avoid panic. Of course, none ever came out again alive. Before entering the chamber, the SS would mark the inmates who had gold teeth so that they could be collected after death. Even in death, the SS found a way to dehumanize the inmates. The actual room with the oven in it was also moving. Peace flags, candles, flowers, and pictures of those who were cremated dotted the room. It was an odd juxtaposition to see the faces of the same people whose bodies were set ablaze in the oven right in front of me.
A group of us walked down the stairs that the inmates were forced to carry 200 lb stones up. The stairs were so steep that many healthy and fit people did not go down, and these were not even the originals. The SS would watch as prisoners tumbled down with their huge rocks, knocking down anyone unfortunate enough to be in the path below. The SS would also make the inmates line up on top of the ledge and forced them to push the person in front of them off the cliff to the waters below. I was again struck by how beautiful the place where so much death took place was. It looked like something out of one of the backpacking magazines that I get, only I knew how tragedy plagues the looks of the place.
After the tour, we watched a short film on the history of the camp. The film was odd because it stressed that the SS members who worked at the camp were not evil at heart, but many were in fact happily married family men who kept gardens. Although this may be true, it seems out of place to explain such things in the concentration camp where they would unleash dogs on prisoners and shoot them without a moment’s hesitation. They were so convinced that the people in the camps were subhuman that they would not even rape them, believing that having sex with them would be like having sex with a dog. Yet, the film also said that many SS destroyed the gas chambers before the Allies took over the camps. This fact points to some form of knowledge of wrong-doing. Why would they keep such secrets if they thought they were doing good deeds? This issue of how people can become to brain-washed has always fascinated me. We discussed the study done by a Stanford professor where a group of students were labeled as “guards” and another group as “prisoners” and each assumed their roles. Within a week there were actual abuses transpiring and the experiment had to be cut short. Is it really within human nature to be so cruel?
The placard at the entrance says it best: “Always be vigilant.”