Jen's Blog: How can such a beautiful country have such a horrible past...

Entrance gates into the main camp

Today we visited one of Austria's main concentration camps, Mauthausen. I learned alot on this trip, in a different way. Dachau was more like the history of the camp, though there was alot of what the camp was like sprinkled in. This camp isn't as well known in the states, but it held about 200,000 prisoners and over 105,000 of these prisoners died there. Our tour guide was very good at relaying to us what it was like for the prisoners in the camp (though unless you have experienced the horrors yourself, you will never truely understand).

barracks

beds...
at one point they were sleeping
8 people per bunk..

In preperation for this trip, and since we were missing German class to go, we had to watch a video of a survivor, and then present it to the class. My video was on this lady Maria Catharina Van Büren. She was from Holland and was a political prisoner, basically. In her interview she describes having to strip and shower once they arrived. She discribes the hunger they faced, only being given 2 slices of bread and 1 bowl of soup (more like water) a day. She talks about the stairs of death that lead up from the quarries that they were forced to work at and how the Jews were just pushed off the edge of cliffs. It was interesting listening to her describe the things she went through. And how death was an every day part of life.

"execution site"
where the gas chamber, giant
fridge and crematorium is

Well in the beginning of our tour, our guide took us up to the outer wall of the camp, the part that was visible to the surrounding countryside (it is up on this big hill). He told about how people knew what was going on up here, but were scared to do anything about it. Seeing these prisoners walk through town, emaciated, dying on the streets just became everyday life for the residents and they thought nothing of it. Then he showed us an aerial shot of the camp just before it was liberated. And there was a soccer field on the other side of the wall! and right next to that was the barracks where they took the sick and just let them starve and dye there. The people watching the game could see into this small little compound and see these people, but did nothing.

one of the many memorials

Inside the camp, he took us to the first place the prisoners went once they walked throught the enterance gates. The place where they stood and were stripped of all their belongings, and some of them were beaten. They stood their naked, in all weather for hours (it was kind of chilly today, and I can't even imagine having to stand in that place naked for hours). We next walked into the showers (where the soldiers would play with the temp, so it would be scalding and/or freezing) and where they were shaven of all their body hair. The barracks was another story. barracks that were built to fit like 300 people, were at one point packed full of 800 people! We were then taken down to the crematorium and the gas chambers... such an eerie feeling.

"Monument for the European youth
and young people who
here or in other places
lost their childhood, youth and lives
Never Again!"

After our tour we were allowed to wander. Naturally we wandered through the many different memorials and then we made our way down to the Totesstiege - stairs of death. A set of 186 stairs, very steep, leading down into a rock quarry. Prisoners were forced to carry 50kg (over 100lbs!) slabs of rock up these stairs multiple times a day. Our guide said that people set on this detail only lived 4-6 weeks, and that the average healthy male that would carry these slabs was only like 94 lbs. We walked down cobblestone path to the stairs - which was very uneven which made it a bit difficult - then walked down the stairs into the quarry. The stairs were super steep and not even at all, I can't even imagine how hard that was to carry 50kg on our back, weak from hunger, up those 186 stairs multiple times a day!We wandered around the quarry for a while, which was breathtaking by the way, but in a somber way, and then it was time to go back.