Mauthausen

I decided to hike from the train station to the camp. Took about an hour, uphill most of the way. The area around the camp looks a lot like Lancaster County, only with mountains.

The first think you see when you enter the camp proper are about a dozen memorials. One from every country whose citizens were murdered in the camp. Pretty much every country in Europe lost people there, even British and, get this, Americans.

Anyway, they've rebuilt most of the barracks, and you could go inside one of them. They had it set up almost exactly like how it was set up back in the 1940s. The bunks, they're barely big enough for one kid, and two adults had to sleep in each one.

There was a museum set up in the basement in one of the buildings. Photos of the prisoners, reproductions of actual orders issued by the Germans and the SS, actual uniforms that the prisoners wore. To see those... my God. There's reading about it, but to see it for real... And then there was the gas chamber. I didn't see the sign saying what it was at first, but I knew right away as soon as I stepped inside. Walked out fast, then went around the corner, and found myself in the "Dissection Room." I got out of that building fast; I thought I was going to be sick.

Mauthausen actually wasn't a death camp; it was actually a labor camp. Prisoners were required to work at a quarry just outside camp. There's a staircase down into the quarry. 182 incredibly steep steps. And the prisoners had to go up and down them carrying heavy tools while living on starvation diets. They stumbled or tripped, and they were shot. If the fall didn't kill them first. When I was down there, and this is going to sound crazy, but I swear I could hear them. The screams and cries of the prisoners, the clank of tools on rock, the blast of dynamite blowing clear another section of the cliff, the shots of the German weapons executing helpless prisoners, the shouts and laughter of the SS guards. I was all alone down there, but I swear I heard all of that.

This is going to sound really crazy, and I swear I am not making this up, but when I climbed back up out of the quarry, I saw ghosts. A prisoner and an SS guard. The prisoner, I don't know if it was a man or woman (it looked like a walking skeleton), hand fallen down and was struggling to get back up. The Nazi drew his pistol, thumbed the hammer back, and shot the prisoner point-blank in the face. He put the pistol away, then he turned to look at me. My God, I don't know if he was even my age! He was so young! And he was smiling! Not that evil, predatory smile you see the bad-guys wearing in the movies, but a happy smile, like he'd just scored a goal in soccer or something. He'd just shot a human being, murdered him in cold blood, and he was happy about it. I'm glad I'd decided to save the quarry for last; I booked out of there fast after seeing that.

Honestly, I think that Mauthausen or Dachau or Auschwitz are places that everyone needs to see. It's horrifying, I know, but only by seeing it firsthand can one truly appreciate what happened there. Simply reading about it or watching a video isn't enough.

I'll post pics tomorrow; right now I don't want to think about it anymore. I'm gonna go and watch something on iTunes or work on my novle or something; I don't think I'll sleep much tonight. Pics and write-up of Hallstatt will go up tomorrow, pics of Mauthausen... eventually.