Last Days: Don't you forget about me

The day after our visit to Mauthausen was the last day of class. It was by far my favorite lecture. Kathy shared really revealing family stories about her mother and grandmother living through the post-war occupation by the Soviet soldiers that started in 1945. They would rape and kill women on the side of the road shamelessly and in doing so thought that it was 'retributive justice.'. It was nice to have a break from pure academics and hear an almost first-hand account of what everyday life was like in Germany after the fall of Berlin and he toppling of the Thousand-year Riech. We also discussed Ruth Kluger’s book on Holocaust memory. She was 11 when she was shipped to Thereseinstadt and then later to Auschwitz. She argues that memorials should not exist and she is against people who seek them out as tourist attractions. Having visited a concentration camp, we could more accurately engage her text. We came to the conclusion collectively that, although concentration camps should not be destinations in the same way that famous cities are, the educational value that they hold is valuable to prevent something like the Holocaust from ever happening again. I also think that they need to exist as memorials more than museums. The people who died in these horrible places need to be remembered and the best and most accurate way to accomplish this goal, in my opinion, is to memorialize the site of the atrocities. Maybe in this manner they will eventually become places of reflection instead of pain. One of the most horrible parts about the ordeal that we learned in this lecture is that as some of the survivors grow old and get Alzheimer’s, they think that they are still in the camps every day.
On Sunday, our last day in Austria, we had our farewell festivities. I turned to my friend Jordan and we both said "so, it's come to this." We met at the famous ferris wheel (as seen in “The Third Man”) where we rode to the top. The view Of Vienna that it offered only reminded us of all the things that we would be leaving behind. We then headed to our last dinner together at a place called Centimeter II. Fathers Clemens, Elias, and Killian (formerly Michael) joined us. We ordered “the swords,” which were schnitzel and beef skewered on swords with fries and chili. It was delicious, and a glorious way to end the trip.
I spent most of the night talking with Father Killian about certain aspects of his order’s religious dogma that I was curious about. For example, the faith does not look down upon the use of marijuana because it does not deny life. This runs counter to the teachings that I have grown up hearing in the Catholic Church, so I wanted to know why this was so. According to him, they interpret the message of Jesus to not allow anything that destroys life. We spent the rest of the night talking, and before he left he invited me to come back anytime and stay in the monastery. After saying my goodbyes to my friends, I knew for sure that I needed to go back to Vienna one day. Hopefully one day soon. I went home, packed, and could barely sleep. It was, after all, my last night in Vienna. For now.