Mauthausen

One of our most memorable days happened on Wednesday, May 23. We rented a car and Chauffeur Bob did a great job driving us down the autobahn. As we left the rental place, we passed this sign:

How did they know we'd been eating a lot of beans????

Our destination was the Maulthausen Concentration camp, located in upper Austria, near Linz--the place Hitler grew up and identified as his hometown. I had never heard of this camp, yet it is one of the largest camps and considered most infamously brutal of all the camps. Mauthausen was in use from 1938 until it was liberated the last week of the war.

It started out to be a drizzly day, a perfect mood-setter for a solemn place.

We used audio devices in a self-guided tour. Most of my information comes from notes I took during the tour.

Just inside the gate is the prisoner sorting area. Prisoners were brought to this place, stripped, beaten, sorted, and generally humiliated as a way of controlling them and forcing submission. This camp was a labor camp, and its stated purpose was "extermination through labor". Most of the prisoners of this camp were political prisoners-sent here because they were teachers, artists, scientists, professors, religious dissenters, even boy scouts who disagreed with the Nazi philosophy. Most prisoners were from upper middle to upper class society. There were also women and children in this camp. Ironically, many women prisoners were sent here after being accused of prostitution, yet camp officials procured women from other camps to use as prostitutes, promising them earlier freedom, which, of course, never materialized.

Almost immediately, I was struck by the contrast between the grim brownish-gray brick buildings and the lush, green rolling scenic farms and houses just outside the complex.

I was also amazed to learn just how many concentration camps there were: 1500-a number that includes the main camps as well as the satellites. I would have guessed 10. There were 20 "main" camps, each with a number of satellite camps of various sizes. There were also other "detention centers", not part of that 1500 number, that were basically run like the concentration camps.

The housing for prisoners were contained in these rows and rows of innocuous-looking green dorms. At one time, surviving prisoners wanted to tear this camp down, fearing it would be glamorized and/or turned into a tourist destination. Fortunately that never happened, and their value as a tourist destination is huge.

The inside of the dorm was not unlike some of the girls' camp cabins I've slept in over the years. You can see some lockers to the left, and a bunk bed on the right. This room, with more space and lockers, was reserved for a select group of prisoners--those who told on fellow prisoners and were then given special privileges, such as more food and access to prostitutes.

 As the camp became overcrowded, each single bed was shared by up to 5 men. Often, men died during the night and prisoners avoided telling anyone for as long as possible in order to get the food ration of their dead bed mate.

A dorm would have wall-to-wall bunk beds. These rooms were intended for 300 people; up to 2000 people lived here as the camp became more crowded.

An onsite picture showing prisoners as liberation was taking place. The caption on this picture says the sitting man was a victim of torture for some perceived transgression .

Table in a dorm.

Originally, the idea was to work prisoners to death, but prisoners also died of disease such as typhoid fever, as well as other diseases, cold, starvation, beatings, shootings, electrocution, medical experiments, and deliberate murders. A total of 65 common causes of death were listed by camp survivors. Another 3455 people were gassed in these showers in the main camp, with many more gassed in Mauthausen satellites and specially-made trucks that gassed prisoners while "transporting" them between camps. As liberation drew near, camp guards pulled down and carried off the gas dispensing parts, hoping to hide the horrors that occurred here.

A prisoner, beaten after trying to escape.

The gas chambers were down in the basement of one of the buildings. Here you can see the room men were herded into on their way to the gas chamber, as well as the door to the outside.

An escape or suicide attempt, ending in electrocution on the electrified fence.

One of several crematoriums, decorated with flags from counties of people who died at this camp. There were more Russians in the camp than any other nationality, followed by Spanish prisoners. We learned later in our journey that Peter van Pels, the young man hiding with the Anne Frank family, was send to this camp and died here.

This basement area also had walls full of pictures of people killed or thought to have been killed in this camps.  So many people! Estimates vary widely, but one source reports that of 320,000 prisoners who passed through this camp, only 80,000 were believe to have survived. Nazi records are deliberately deceptive; prisoner numbers were often reused, causes of death were falsified, and records were purposely destroyed.

 This room was a cold storage room where bodies were kept before they were cremated. As time went on, the crematorium could not keep up with deaths and this room was stacked to the ceilings.

The dissenting room, where tattoos and gold teeth were removed from bodies.

 A typical wall around the complex.

The location of this camp was chosen because of the nearby granite quarry.

To the left is "Parachutists Wall". Here, prisoners were lined up and given the option of pushing the man in front of him off of the cliff, or being shot by a guard for refusing to do so. On the right side, near the bottom of the picture, you can see Stan in a red shirt on a very steep set of stairs.

Pond at the bottom of the Parachutists Cliff.

This is known as the "Stairs of Death". Prisoners were forced to carry the quarried stone, often weighing more than 110 lbs, up these 186 steps for 12 hours a day, one after another. Temperatures in this area ranged from -22 degrees in the winter to hot summer days.

Men, weakened from overwork, too little food, beatings, exhaustion, and disease, sometimes stumbled and fell, leading to a domino of falling bodies all the way down the stairs. The steepness of the stairs is difficult to capture in a picture.

 Actual photo of prisoners using stairs.

 The surrounding countryside is absolutely beautiful. It's hard to imagine the thoughts of prisoners, looking out over these scenic vistas. I listened in on a tour group and heard the following story: In the house in the center of this picture lived an older women. She called the police to complain about the beatings and torturing she witness just across the way from her home. The screams of the prisoners greatly disturbed her. Could they stop the beatings of the prisoners or at least ask them to do it some place she would not be subjected to the sights and sounds? "This," said the tour guide, "represents the situation perfectly. Townspeople were annoyed by the camps, police had no power over them, and in the end, everyone just went about their business."

There was a small cemetery on the edge of the camp; it contained both Jewish and Christian headstones, maybe 75 altogether. After quite a bit of research, I learned this cemetery was used by the liberators to bury those they found dead, but not yet buried as the chaos of the last few days in the camp went on, as well as many prisoners who were so ill and weak that they did not survive the stress of liberation. Sad to have made it to the last days of the camp and then to die anyway!

Visiting Mauthausen was a sobering experience. It is painful to contemplate man's inhumanity to man.

The most powerful part of the camp for me, however, was the stunning art behind the complex. 

The various pieces were commissioned by countries who were represented among the prisoner population.

It is incredibly moving art

with all sorts of themes.

I love the emotion of this harsh barbwire framing the beautiful scenery

and this angry, triumphant survivor,

and these battered, broken bodies,

and this lonely, childlike, trapped figure.

  I wondered as we walked through this camp how Mom felt about these places. As far as I know, she never visited a camp. Although I probably wouldn't have agreed with her, it would have been interesting to hear her thoughts....