We drove maybe 3 hours to upper Austria to
one of the concentration camps in Mauthausen. The camp was open from the
Anschluss in 1938 (when Germany was welcomed into Austria) until two weeks
before the end of WWII, making Mauthausen one of the longest running camps.
The forty of us
students separated into two groups and followed our respective tour
guides around the camp. The first thing we visited was a soccer field where
Nazi officers played just outside the camp's wall. Prisoners would watch the
games sometimes. Prisoners of war from Spain who used to play soccer were
granted extra rations and rest so they could play. I don't need to go into the
contrast between a soccer field and a gas chamber.
Our guide showed us monuments, and other
commemorative things-plaques, pictures, flowers, etc.
He told us about the prisoners experiences in
the camp--what it took to survive, which showers were real and which used
Zyklon B to kill 120 prisoners at a time.
Michelle and I separated form our group to
explore the gas chambers. I wasn't really thinking about what happened where I
stood, or what it meant or how I felt...You just have this physical reaction to
the room. You tense-up, breathing is uncomfortable, cover your mouth with your
hand, step tentatively, don’t touch anything. Every movement is an effort to
avoid rubbing against some wall or door or thought. Crouching through the low
door makes you feel vulnerable. There’s a room with a table, the plaque is
going to say prisoners had teeth extracted here, your body shrinks away,
avoiding the table as your eyes read on. It’s not nausea, but it’s close.
Our tour guide thought the world used to be
black and white, because he had grown up with old photographs.
Walking around the camp with Michelle and
Nicole.
It was so cold. So, so cold. How cold would
it have been at night, during roll-call, standing in thin uniforms for
hours in the snow?
I realized I would not have survived in the
camps. I realized I would not have wanted to survive. The ones
who made it had to steal other's bread, they had to become Kappos and beat one
another--those who survived often did the most monstrous things in the camps to
their own people.
Mauthausen began as a work camp because it
adjoins a quarry. It is home to the infamous "stairs of death", where
prisoners were forced to carry stones, up
to 110 pounds, up the 186 stairs - one behind the other. Exhausted prisoners
collapsed in front of the other prisoners in the line, and then fell on top of
the other prisoners...domino effect; the
first prisoner falling onto the next, and so on, all the way down the
stairs.
Domino effect. Death-domino-effect.
Skeletal dominoes. The clack of the stones on the stairs probably even sounded
like dominoes.
At the top of the stairs
there is a ledge overlooking the cliff the stairs windup. At the bottom of the
cliff is a deep, deep pond. Prisoners were made to line up in rows, one behind
the other--and the second line would push the first down the cliff--prisoners
dying from bashing their skulls against jags and juts in the cliff, or from drowning
in the pond. Line after line. I looked into the pond with Nicole. It would have
been really beautiful, especially now in the fall...I would never push Nicole.
I just don't understand. Why would you let pushing someone to their death be
the last thing you do...
Isn't that even worse than
your coming death? Knowing the last impact you have on Earth is pushing someone
over a cliff. I would have hugged the person around the waist and jumped--but
maybe at that point everyone would have pushed, maybe by then they were so
broken it didn't matter. I don't know.
The camp was primarily for prisoners of war. The camp also housed homosexuals, Jews, gypsies, and other "undesirables". Homosexuals, after liberation were still not welcome to commemoration ceremonies until 1983. Can you imagine surviving Mauthausen, surviving that kind of hatred and discrimination only to still be despised for 40 more years? Seeing Mauthausen reminds me humanity is seriously flawed, but it's easy to compartmentalize those flaws into old prejudices--the story about homosexuals not being invited to ceremonies about themselves, about their experiences and their survival until 1983 clearly demonstrates society hasn't advanced enough. Isn't that awful? Can you imagine surviving and not being remembered? 5 years in Mauthausen, and then 40 without recognition. The attitude implies they may as well have died.
Michelle and I were the first people back on the bus. I hadn't cried in the camp--it's just shocking, and sickening...the sadness really comes when you apply what you see to you and your family. Talking about our families on the bus, though--that's when all my emotions kind of broke through. Michelle and I both miss our moms a lot. A lot, a lot. I already said I wouldn't survive the camps, but without friends and family, I wouldn't have even tried. It became so clear that being there, surrounded by death and without people to love and be loved by...push me off the cliff, I don't care.
Mauthausen was an important experience. This Thanksgiving I feel the most appreciative I've ever been for my health, my family, my friends, my home, my country, my creativity, this century, our history, time...
