A Trip to Mauthausen, a humbling experience…

Looking at the main entrance into Mauthausen

On October 12, the day after my trip to Hallstatt, I went to visit Mauthausen which was the main concentration camp in Austria. During its operation Mauthausen controlled over 50 concentration camps in the surrounding area. Most of them have been destroyed since then, however the main camp has been mostly preserved and turned into a type of memorial/museum. The site is only ~20 km away from Linz, so I decided to take a visit… what a humbling experience.

The Mauthausen camp was located by a quarry and had the toughest work you could ever think possible. The prisoners were to mine and carry massive blocks of granite to be used for building construction. Like most camps, it started off as a political/criminal prison and slowly degraded to anybody deemed as “enemies” of the third Reich. A lot of the camp has been taken apart because of failures with the infrastructure and the buildings becoming unsafe. However, a lot of the principle buildings have been well preserved.

While walking into the camp, the first thing that you will see is the Klagemauer on the right which directly translates to the screaming or wailing wall. Most new arrivals at the camp were chained to iron rings on the wall and left to stand there for several days without food or water. There are an enormous amount of memorial plaques on the wall from nationalities all over the world representing victims whether they were soldiers or prisoners. The first building on the right has a giant shower and mattress sanitizing facility. This was NOT the gas chamber (which is also incorrectly labeled in the wikipedia reference http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mauthausen-Gusen_concentration_camp) according to the facility information and the fact that the showers were right underneath the kitchen. Mauthausen did not have the massive gas chambers that Auschwitz had. Most of the prisoners were killed here through the extremely tough labour. Don’t get me wrong, Mauthausen did have a gas chamber, but it was surprisingly a lot smaller than I expected (you could maybe fit 15 people in there). Right beside the gas chamber, they also had 3 cremators to dispose of the victims. The cremators had pictures of victims, plaques, notes and flowers all around them. The number of victims is impossible to calculate since the Nazis destroyed so many records, but just the number of pictures etc in itself was extremely humbling.

In one of the main buildings they had quite an extensive exhibit on the Mauthuasen camp including many photos and documents. I must say it’s one thing to read/study about this in high school and something completely different to actually see it. There were all kinds of large memorials around the camp and near the quarry that were put up by different countries. The stairway that the prisoners had to continuously climb everyday with massive blocks of granite on their backs was quite long and steep. The really ironic thing about the quarry is that it looks like a perfect, peaceful place for a picnic nowadays, if you didn’t happen to know anything about the history of this place. Being a Canadian born more than 40 years after WWII, it is difficult to appreciate the effect that the Nazis have had on Europe. The scars that they have left here are still very raw and visible for anyone to see.

Looking at the main entrance into Mauthausen

“Wailing Wall”, you can still see the iron rings that are attached to the wall

Memorial plaques along the Klagemauer

Plan of the Mauthuasen camp (buildings in red are the only ones still standing)

Entrance into the Gas Chamber

2 Cremators along with memorials

Picture of prisoners carrying blocks of granite up from the quarry at Mauthausen

Memorials surround the main camp near the quarry

Climb up from the quarry

The quarry… looks eerily peaceful

Tags: Concentration Camp, Holocaust, Linz, Mauthausen