Mauthausen Concentration Camp

Mauthausen Concentration Camp

This trip was possible one of the most intense places I have been to, but I feel it is something everyone should experience.  An Austrian tour guide brought us through Mauthausen Concentration Camp, explaining the horrific details from the entrance of the camp to the execution chambers. 

The first portion of the tour was spent in the Memorial Park; this area was part of the working camp, and is now dedicated to the countries in which victims had suffered.  These countries actually own the land the monuments are built on.  The picture to the right is from the Russian memorial.

These doors were the way into the concentration camp; guards would tell prisoners when they arrived that they would be "going in these doors, and out the chimney." Mauthausen was not exclusively an execution camp, it was actually a working camp.  Prisoners would die of exhaustion, starvation, illness, and execution.  The entire camp was built by rocks prisoners carried up the "stairs of death"-- grown men that weighed only 80 pounds, carrying 60 pound rocks up a steep hill from the quarry several times a day.

Stairs of Death from the Quarry

Prisoners would also die from guards lining them up, and forcing them to push each other off the side of the mountain.  Guards would also push one prisoner over, causing them to all collapse down the stairs and many to die.

The camp was surrounded by electrified barbed wire, which
is still original and present today.

This is part of the cleansing room, one of the first places victims went.  All hair was shaved off, they were showered, and stripped of everything they owned.  Uniforms with symbols and numbers were given instead.

We were also able to tour one of the original barracks where almost 1,000 people were forced to live.  They were over crowded, unsanitary, uncomfortable, and inhumane.

One of the last stops on the guided tour was to the Extermination section of the camp; this area was hidden from residents and often they assumed they were going to shower when they walked into their death.  All shower rooms, gas chambers, etc. had original pipes, flooring, walls, etc.  It was really hard to imagine what had happened in those very rooms not too long ago, and that I stood where all those innocent people died painfully.

Room connected to the gas chambers, where bodies were
stored to be cremated.

Original furnaces used to burn bodies.

Overall this experience was extremely difficult to understand; it is hard to imagine how people could be so cruel to treat another human in this way. I think it is important to continue educating the community and to never forget.