A Sobering Stop

We left Vienna this morning to head west for a week in the Berchtesgaden area of Germany (just west of Salzburg).  Along the way, we decided to stop at the Mauthausen Concentration Camp and Memorial, which is almost halfway in between.  It was a moving visit, even with two rambunctious kids who didn't understand where they were.  

Mauthausen is located next to a quarry and by 1940 was the largest labour camp in Nazi controlled Europe.  It is estimated that approximately 150,000 people died here, either from being worked to death, killed because they were unfit to work, simply transported here to be killed or committing suicide.

What is left of Mauthausen Concentration Camp

Only a small portion of the original camp has been preserved as a memorial and museum but what is left is more than enough to give you a sense of the incredible suffering and inhuman cruelty that happened here.

This was the only entrance gate to the camp.

The crematorium had two gas chambers underground on each side of it.

One wall just inside the entrance to the camp is lined with plaques from countries commemorating the death of their citizens at the camp.  There are not only plaques from neighbouring countries but also from as far away as the United States - if you were a minority or your country was at war with the Nazis, chances are your people suffered here.

Outside the camp are almost a dozen larger memorials, again mostly from countries whose citizens were killed or suffered at Mauthausen.

Russian Memorial

Italian Memorial - this is the back side of the memorial with plaques from different Italian provinces as well as numerous photographs of individual Italians who were killed.

Jewish Memorial

German Memorial

Mauthausen was a concentration camp and if you weren't executed, you worked in the quarry just outside the camp.  Fed on barely enough rations to keep them alive, prisoners walked down the 'stairway of death' into the quarry each morning, performed hard labour in the quarry all day and climbed the 'stairway of death' back to the camp at night.  If the couldn't work or didn't work, they were shot.

The quarry is now overgrown with trees and shrubs and the guard towers around it are crumbling but you can still clearly see the 'stairway of death'.

The stairway of death leading down into the quarry.

The one thing that I found while visiting Mauthausen was that some areas were well preserved, with modern aspects to them while other areas were run down and falling apart.  It was almost as if there is this ongoing struggle between the overwhelming desire to forget the pain and guilt of what happened here and the need to bear witness so it will never happen again.