"Those who forget the past are condemned to repeat it," is my favorite quote, and to that end I want to do a blog on Mauthausen, the World War II concentration camp in Austria. I've always been interested in World War II and the Holocaust, but reading about it is no substitute for actually being there.
We went there last weekened with two delightful young men. Anweh Dayal (Andy), from India and a Georgia Tech alum, is an engineer at Hotwell, and Robert Forbes is an American teenager doing a summer internship at the company.
Bob and me with the camp behind us.
Andy and Robert.
First opened in 1938 and unlike many other camps, Mauthausen wasn't designed to be an extermination camp although between 122,000 and 320,000 people died there (of whom 38,00 were Jews). The exact number of deaths is unknown because the Germans reused identification numbers and destroyed many records. Mauthausen is located about 13 miles east of Linz and two miles northwest of the picturesque village of Mauthausen.
This is a map of Mauthausen and its sub-camps throughout Austria.
This is a map of the major Nazi concentration camps throughout Europe. I am pointing to Klingenbach where we live.
Mauthausen and nearby Gusen I were "Grade III," the toughest camps for the extermination through labor of the intelligentsia of Germany and other countries. By the end of the war the complex had 101 camps, including 49 major sub-camps throughout Austria and southern Germany. Inmates were worked to death at quarries, munition and arms factories, mines and ME 262 fighter-plane assembly plants. Mauthausen was the most profitable camp and was used by 45 larger companies and many small local firms and communities. Prisoners were also rented out to remove bomb rubble, work at local farms, do road and residential construction, Danube River banks reinforcement and archaeological excavations. As Allied bombing increased, prisoners dug large tunnels into which war production was moved.
This is a plan of Mauthausen's main camp as it existed during the war.
Not all prisoners were equal, and their treatment depended on their assigned category. Early inmates consisted largely of German, Austrian and Czechoslovak political prisoners, Roma (gypsies), and those being persecuted on religious grounds. Then large numbers of Poles were transferred to Mauthausen, primarily artists, scientists, Boy Scouts, teachers and university professors. Most inmates were designated as either "unwanted but educated" or political prisoners like Spanish Republicans who had escaped to France from the Franco regime and then been captured by the Nazis. Lower down and considered sub-human were Russians and Jews. Soviet officers were the first group to be gassed in the new gas chamber. Hungarian and Dutch Jews were singled out for extreme abuse before they were gassed. Whenever Auschwitz became overcrowded, the "overflow" was sent to Mauthausen. Toward the end of the war as the Russians neared many camps in the East, the Nazis began transporting people from one camp to another to prevent them from being liberated. Many prisoners died during death marches of exhaustion or hypothermia, were killed before they could be registered at a new camp, or were packed into tent camps where they were deliberately starved to death. The gas chambers and crematoriums were working at peak capacity.
Approaching the camp.
This is the main gate of the camp.
When a person first arrived at Mauthausen, he had to strip and line up at the "Wailing Wall" where he was systematically abused by invective and beatings, often for several hours.
In the roll call area, inmates had to line up two or three times a day to be counted and further abused. It wasn't paved then and must have frequently been a sea of mud, snow or ice. Jewish prisoners were sometimes required to sleep here during winter with no blankets. Mauthausen conditions were among the worst, even by concentration camp standards. Malnutrition, overcrowding, constant abuse and beatings, and exceptionally hard labor contributed to the high death toll.
This is one of the many guard towers.
The SS administrative offices were in that upper story.
This is where new inmates were deloused, completely shaved and washed.
These were real showers.
These are the barracks where the inmates lived.
Kapos were prisoners recruited by the Nazis to police their fellow prisoners. They received more food, higher pay in the form of coupons which could be used to purchase cigarettes, and received brothel privileges. They were encouraged to mistreat and beat their fellow inmates. This is the common room where the kapos slept in the corner and tyrannized the other prisoners.
In a typical barrack designed for 300, sometimes up to 2,000 prisoners were crowded. If prisoners were lucky, there were only two to a bunk.
This is where the prisoners washed up each morning.
These are the urinals.
Mauthausen was a camp for men until September, 1944 when women were transported from Auschwitz and later Ravensbruck, Bergen Belsen, Gross Rosen and Buchenwald. Attractive women were forced to work in the Mauthausen brothel, then after six months were punished for doing so (for being immoral) and frequently executed. If a woman became pregnant, she was forcibly aborted with no medication; some women died of this procedure.
Juveniles were sent to Mauthausen in increasing numbers, becoming almost 20% of the total by the end of the war, a much higher percentage than other camps. Polish, Czech, Russian and Balkan teenagers were preferred for slave labor because they were stronger. Other youths were classified as political prisoners (usually members of banned religious sects), Jews, Russian, Roma, Spaniards or from "anti-social elements."
These are some of the children at Mauthausen.
Even with all the "regular" abuse, it seems that some prisoners deserved worse treatment. This is the camp prison, or "bunker," used for interrogations, official punishments like beatings and executions. Executions were carried out primarily by hanging or a shot in the back of the head.
This door leads to the bunker.
Down in this basement executions were primarily by shooting.
This way to the gallows.
These are the cells where prisoners were held during interrogations or to wait for execution.
This is an example of the barbed wire which carried a charge of 380 volts. Many inmates were thrown onto the wire by the SS, and probably a few committed suicide. Sometimes it didn't kill right away, and inmates would burn and "sizzle" all night, only to be shot in the morning.
Many prisoners were forced to work in the notorious granite quarry. To be assigned there was a death sentence. Temperatures ranged from -22 degrees Fahrenheit in winter to breathlessly hot summer days. Food rations were limited, and the average inmate weighed about 88 pounds. On the infamous "Stairs of Death," prisoners were forced to carry stones weighing as much as 110 pounds up the 186 stairs, one behind the other. Many exhausted prisoners collapsed and fell on top of prisoners behind them, leading to a horrific domino effect.
This is the quarry. It's overgrown now, but you can tell that it's quite deep. Note the nearby farms. The universal claim of those who lived near concentration camps was they didn't know what was happening. How could they not?
Those who survived the Stairs of Death would often be lined up at the edge of a cliff laughingly known by the SS as "The Parachute Wall" (because the prisoners did not have parachutes). Each prisoner had the option to be shot or to push another prisoner off the cliff. If the SS men were bored, they'd just throw prisoners off the edge themselves.
The most efficient way to exterminate large numbers of people was the gas chamber.
This is the anteroom to the gas chamber.
This is the gas chamber, a room Bob estimated to be approximately 20 feet square. Having read about the process and knowing how many people died this way during the war, it felt very eerie to stand in this room.
This explanation of Zyklon B is part of the display.
The Nazis learned that gassing large numbers of people left them with the enormous problem of body disposal so they developed very efficient crematoriums.
These are the furnaces where prisoners were cremated. I thought using the flags to represent some of the nationalities of the murdered was quite moving.
On the far right in this picture behind the fence is the Ash Dump where the ashes of prisoners were discarded.
After the war one survivor reported 62 ways the SS had murdered people in the camps. The primary methods ranged from beatings, hypothermia, mass-shootings, medical experiments, hanging, starvation, gas vans, lethal injections, drowning in barrels of water, electrocution, and of course gassing. I don't even want to know the rest of the methods. And woe upon a prisoner who became ill and went to the sick tent, the Krankenlager. No medication was available. It was the last stop before extermination.
As the war neared an end and liberation loomed, the SS destroyed much of the evidence so that only 40,000 victims could later by identified. In the final days Himmler ordered that all the prisoners be killed and the tunnel factories blown up. The Polish, Soviet and French prisoners prepared a plan for an assault on the SS barracks in the event of a mass-killing event. On May 4, 1945 most of the SS fled, and the 30 who were left and many of the kapos were killed by the prisoners.
Elements of the U.S. 11th Armored Division of Patton's Third Army liberated the camp on May 5. Among the inmates liberated was Lt. Jack Taylor, an American member of the OSS who later testified at the war crimes trials. Another Mauthausen survivor was the famous Nazi hunter, Simon Wiesenthal. A third was a young Hungarian Jew, Tibor Rubin, who vowed to join the American Army and later won the Congressional Medal of Honor in Korea.
This plaque honors the American liberation of the camp.
The American Army created this cemetery on the former SS sports field for prisoners who died following liberation. The remains of other concentration camp victims were transferred from cemeteries in Mauthausen and Gusen and also from SS mass graves.
Mauthausen fell within the Soviet zone of occupation. They used the camp as army barracks and looted the underground factories. In summer, 1947 after blowing up the tunnels, the Soviets withdrew and turned the camp over to Austrian civil authorities. In 1949 it was declared a national memorial site and in 1975 was opened as the Mauthausen Museum.
People from 40 nations were imprisoned at Mauthausen, including Americans. I don't know how many Americans were incarcerated here, but 34 died, 27 of them POWs. I wonder how the seven American civilians who died here got caught in the Nazi net, but I suspect their stories are lost forever. How many Americans survived Mauthausen is also unknown.
There are memorials by various countries inside the camp.
These dedications are in many different languages.
Pictures of the lost.
In the old camp infirmary where privileged prisoners were treated, a large room contains plaques, pictures and flags of some of the prisoners' countries.
In the old laundry barracks this chapel was built in 1949.
This wall contains dedications to the dead of many nations.
A memorial park is located outside the camp. These memorials were erected by different countries.
There is no writing on this one, but I think this may be an American memorial. The standing soldier is dressed like U.S. soldiers during the war, and Bob said his rifle is likely an M-1. The other soldier wears a Nazi helmet and uniform.
The only way for me to put all this into context is to hope that people do learn from the past. I was pleased to learn that all Austrian schoolchildren come here on a field trip. I suppose that's a start.
