August 26-27 Mauthausen
August 26 Wednesday
Today was a day that began that any other of our early meeting days, in small groups we meandered over to the train station for our early bus ride out to our destination for the day. But our destination for today was not like any other, today we would be taking a tour of Mauthausen concentration camp. Orginally established in 1938 after the Anschluss Mauthausen was built near a rich marble quarry located in upper Austria, the camp was built as one of the orginal, massive, permanent main conectration camps around which the thousands of satellite and work camps would be constructed. Mauthausen was also the only concentration camp identified as a grade III, meaning it was a work where the
'most prolifilic' or severe politcal enemies, prsoners of war, and eventually jewish peoples were sent. The grade of 3 was a rating of brutality of treatment of the prisoners, meaning that even as far as concenctration camps went prisoners held in Mauthausen experienced an unrivaled and generaly unprecedented level of violence through either physical violence like beatings and executions, but more importantly through systematic violence, like forced labor, planned starvings, and deliberate exspoure to the elements.
In its more than 6 year run more than 200,000 people would be sent to Mauthausen but by the time of liberation more than 100,000 of these people would have died, be it from exhausition, rampant diseases, mass executions, or lethal injections. Prof Stuart made a very interesting point than in the first 6 months of the prison less than 40 people died, while in the last 6 months it is estimated at least 40,000 died.
The stairs of death are where prisoners were forced to haul stone blocks up 186 steps frequently resulting in deaths from exhausation or other accidents. Thousands would die on these steps but tens of thousands more would die as a result of the endless exhausition the brutal labor coniditions inflicted on them. The included image above was taken from the stairs of deathof the paratrooper jump cliff above the quarry. The paratrooper jump cliff earned its name from the local SS guards, who found a game in throwing prisoners at random from the heights of the cliff into the rocks and lake below. It felt awful to stand in a place of such evil, I can't imagine what brings men to do things like that to their fellow man, or maybe I can, but I don't want to have to imagine it, because it is at places like Mauthausen where the evil at the core of all men came fully to the front.
The evil at Mauthausen is palable, such a thing leaves a permanent scar on the world, especially so as we were reminded by our tour guide that the ashes from the chimney of the crematoria still stain the very ground we were walking on. Today was a harrowing experience, after our tour at Mauthausen we stopped in a local village for a dinner together, spirits were seemingly high at dinner after such a deeply draining day, perhaps a good thing for now, to find joy in each other when faced with so much pain.
August 27 Thursday
" When they came for the socialists, I said nothing, for I was not a socialist.
Then they came for the trade unionists, I said nothing, for I was not a trade unionist
And when they came for the Jews, I said nothing, for I was not a Jew
Then they came for me - and there was no one left to speak for me"
-Martin Niemoller, Lutheran Pastor and survivor of Dachau
Our trip to Mauthausen served as a reminder, a reminder that we must speak for one another, that we must stand by one another. The one thing that really stuck with me yesterday was our tour guide Daniel's idea that disgust is the oppisite of empathy. It makes me think of those people amongst our society today who would drive deep that wedge of disgust to further osratcize or victimize one group, than another, than another, as the Nazis did. It is a sort of morale dividing and conquering, and they cannot be allowed to do this, we must remember the signs always, and be vigilent against them, lest the mundane evils at the heart of wicked men, career men, find their way to the fore front of their phsyche and see the light of day. For to be seen is all evil needs to spread and all evil needs to suceed is not just for "good men to do nothing" but for all people to do nothing, to "speak no evil, see no evil, and hear no evil" as if it might deny the reality of evil. One need not be a good person, or someone who does the right thing all the times, when a person makes the choice to love and care instead of hate and be disgusted by.
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