Mauthausen

Today amidst the rain we visited Mauthausen Concentration Camp outside of Vienna. I want to refrain here from making any sort of conclusion from today in this post, focusing more on my observations, questions, and the paths which those question may lead me down. I feel that more time is needed for me to come to a conclusion (if one can every really come to any conclusion after such a visit) regarding what I saw.

The following are simply my reactions to our visit, our tour, and the images which I saw. Pictures of the camp itself will not be posted as well - they cannot do justice to such an atrocious past.

We arrived and met in front of the main gates leading into the camp - the only gates through which the victims were led. This camp was the mother camp of all Austrian concentration camps, with other satellite camps connected to it. There were about 200,000 prisoners here, most prisoners being political dissenters. The main goal was the elimination of political dissent against the Nazi regime through labor, thus classifying this camp as a type III camp (hard labor) instead of an extermination camp. Of the 200,000 prisoners, 30,000 were Jews, but there was in influx in the number of Jews here just before Auschwitz was liberated when the Jews were transfered from the camps closest to the Allies.

Around 100,000 prisoners did die, with 83,000 being liberated by Allied forces; the remaining 17,000 are unable to be accounted for due to missing records and such. Those who did die died through labor, abuse, malnutrition, disease, and gassing. The camp was built in Mauthausen due to its close proximity to a granite quarry; the first prisoners arrived here in August 1938 to begin building the buildings and walls.

Before entering the camp we saw the many, many monuments erected by different nations. Some commemorated individuals, some armies, some the victims. My first thoughts:

- It seems that the monuments take away from the gravity of the camp and tends toward glorifying its history.

- The monuments remember the soldiers more than they do the victims (in reference to the plaques praising the American liberating forces posted above).

- Are our attempts at "remembering" actually beneficial? Or are they more harmful to the memory of the camp?

- The various nations built these monuments, attempting at some form of closure to the unburied bodies. Is this really closure, or is this glorification? Or could it become a form of both?

- These monuments were built to give closure, but will there ever really be closure? Are these attempts futile?

- Is the best we can do simply remembrance [ through memorials]? Or are testimonies more useful and relevant? Does Ruth Kluger, as a survivor of Auschwitz, have a right to dictate Holocaust memorialism? Surely she has more right than I. Is her preference for testimony over monuments correct? Is there a correct preference?

How were the citizens of the town of Mauthausen supposed to react to the camp? Indifference? Feigned ignorance? Participation? Fear? Emotional self-protection? Our guide mentioned that many of the towns people felt honored since they too were Nazis. The camp gave them jobs in a time of war. However, now, their culture and their own hometown is rejected due to the camp and its history. These people cannot mention their own town without shame. Their sense of honor is now turned to shame. Their identity is now looked down upon due simply to the town's association with Nazism. Thus they are forced to disconnect from something as elemental and essential to a person's own identity as one's hometown.

Nowadays, many want the camp torn down, yet the mayor of Mauthausen himself is a tour guide at the camp. Is there a middle ground? The younger generation sees the camp as a responsibility, to remember; they are able to reject the actions of their grandparents and great-grandparents since they are distanced by several generations from the Holocaust.

During the camp's use, neither the SS nor the victims knew how to quarry stone or granite; thus, stone specialists and townspeople were employed in the quarry among the victims to help. They were forced to sign declarations of silence to keep the truth of the camps suppressed. Is this silence forgivable? Was this silence simply a matter of survival in a world filled with the threat of death and forced labor if one did not comply to the Nazi regime?

We were able to walk down into the quarry. The stones have been evened out to allow tourists to descend into the green plain which used to be the active quarry and labor site. Now it is serene and green. The steps, although smooth, are still stone, and are most steep. I cannot imagine carrying granite up stones rougher than the ones we used, all the while being beaten and abused, malnourished and under-clothed.

This silence and suppression surrounding just the camps and the declarations of silence has contributed to an emotionally backwards culture, family, and nation. It is human nature to remain silent for the safety of one's own family and children, but to attempt at justifying it when challenged remains difficult. Thus a collective guilt emerges from the peoples' silence.

Seeing the camp today, it looks old and run down. However, in the camp's operating days, it was quite modern with its showers and central heating.

We were told that individual creativity in regards to mockery and punishments dolled out by the SS was rewarded. The goals of the Nazis were articulated, but top-down instructions were not given. There was a sense of sadistic, inhuman humor alive here amongst the dead.

There was a gas chamber that was used, where 4,000 out of the 200,000 victims were killed. Gassing was only one method of extermination in this camp. It seems somehow fitting that while the insecticide used to kill the lice upon a victim's entry was also the same insecticide used to kill the victim in the gas chambers. Morbid, but logical according to the SS.

The most moving part to me, was not the gas chambers, not was it the memorials or the bunks in the barracks. Rather, the two remaining cremation ovens were the most disturbing remnants left within the camp. Walking through the gas chamber, one walks into two small rooms, where families have left pictures and stories of the victims' lives before the war and the camps. In this same room as the stories, pictures, and attempts at closure, there are two large cremation ovens. Bodies were burned, and their ashes used to pave and fortify the paths and streets surrounding the camp. It was such a morbid image. the gas chamber was a room, with its gassing tube removed by the Nazis so as to remove evidence. The ovens remain.