Today was another depressing day with a trip to the infamous Mauthausen Concentration Camp. I don’t really wanna have to describe it all, so I’ll copy the main description from Wikipedia:

“The Mauthausen–Gusen concentration camp complex consisted of the Mauthausen concentration camp on a hill above the market town of Mauthausen (roughly 20 kilometres (12 mi) east of Linz, Upper Austria) plus a group of nearly 100 further subcamps located throughout Austria and southern Germany.  The three Gusen concentration camps in and around the village of St Georgen/Gusen, just a few kilometres from Mauthausen, held a significant proportion of prisoners within the camp complex, at times exceeding the number of prisoners at the Mauthausen main camp.

The Mauthausen main camp operated from the time of the Anschluss, when Austria was annexed into the German Third Reich in 8 August 1938, to 5 May 1945, at the end of the Second World War. Starting with the camp at Mauthausen, the number of subcamps expanded over time and by the summer of 1940 Mauthausen and its subcamps had become one of the largest labour camp complexes in the German-controlled part of Europe. As at other Nazi concentration camps, the inmates at Mauthausen and its subcamps were forced to work as slave labour, under conditions that caused many deaths. Mauthausen and its subcamps included quarries, munitions factories, mines, arms factories and plants assembling Me 262 fighter aircraft. In January 1945, the camps contained roughly 85,000 inmates. The death toll remains unknown, although most sources place it between 122,766 and 320,000 for the entire complex.

Mauthausen was one of the first massive concentration camp complexes in Nazi Germany, and the last to be liberated by the Allies. The two largest camps, Mauthausen and Gusen I, were classed as “Grade III” (Stufe III) concentration camps, which meant that they were intended to be the toughest camps for the “incorrigible political enemies of the Reich”. Mauthausen never lost this Stufe III classification. In the offices of the Reich Main Security Office (Reichssicherheitshauptamt; RSHA) it was referred to by the nickname Knochenmühle – the bone-grinder (literally bone-mill). Unlike many other concentration camps, which were intended for all categories of prisoners, Mauthausen was mostly used for extermination through labour of the intelligentsia – educated people and members of the higher social classes in countries subjugated by the Nazi regime during World War II. The Mauthausen main camp is now a museum.”

Anyways. I got an audio guide and went through the camp alone, starting at the main gate, then it guides you along part of the outside of the camp. The first main stop is a big empty grassy field, with only a few small concrete foundations remaining. It was a main camp for Russian POWs, where most were killed by sickness and disease. Thousands in this field died. Then it guides you to the quarry. I remember reading about it a long time ago, and how horrible the quarry was. This is where the namesake of the post comes from. To get down into the quarry you have to go down a set of stairs, which were nicknamed the Todessteige. (Stairs of Death). Prisoners were forced to work in the Strafkompanie (Penal/Punishment Company) and had to dig granite which was an important building stone in the area. The reason for the name is, prisoners would have to harvest large chunks of stone, and carry them up the stairs – granite is not light! The stones could be around 100 pounds. Now imagine if you’re a really weak exhausted prisoner, and you make it near the top, and suddenly you collapse or drop the rock… it will come crushing down on you, and tumble down on everyone in the line behind you… So yea…

Another punishment in the quarry was to simply shove prisoners off the top, or make prisoners push each other off the high cliff side on to hard rock far down below. The guards would mockingly call these prisoners “Parachustists.” The quarry was offlimits, and they was a sign in the main office saying the quarry was closed until further notice, though in other times you could go down.

Then after that it guides you through the memorial park – a big area with tons of monuments and memorials for each ‘type’ of person, and nationalities – Italian, French, Albanian, Polish, Russian, etc… The monuments to the murders gays, and Sinti/Roma etc weren’t added until decades later.

Then from there it guides you into the main prison area, where all the main buildings were – bed halls, kitchen, offices, etc. Many of the original have since been demolished, as they have in virtually every other camp, many here still stand. In one building near the prisoner entrance there was an actual former prisoner in the camp giving an interview. It then guides you around some of the former barrackses, which are now just foundations in dirt, before taking you to the cemeteries on the camp grounds. Thousands of bodies are buried in a small field. You then walk through some doorways to the K-Block, or Block 20, where a bunch of Russian officers were kept. It was one of the worst in the camp, giving far less food than even the other malnourished prisoners, and they received no medical care, and were beaten, and harassed more often. One night they staged a huge breakout, attacking guards by surprise, and beating them, and throwing a wet blanket over the electric fence causing it to short out. About 500 burst out of the camp began, and an event nicknamed the “Mühlviertler Hasenjagd” (Mühlviertler Rabbit Hunt) began. The SS began hunting down the escapees, shooting them on sight, and enlisting the police and even residents of Mauthausen to shoot and capture the prisoners. Only 14 survived. Mühlviertel is an area in northern Austria. After that it guides you through the former infirmary, where only a select few special prisoners ever got medical treatment. Starvation, and especially disease were the main killers in the camp. There’s text, and artifact displays in here, showing the history and liberation of the camp. Then it takes you down below where the gallows, gas chamber and ovens are located. Not exactly a cheery place. So many were dying they later added in a second set of ovens. *Which no longer exist as they were demolished. Then even later on in the last couple months of the war, they were not able to burn the bodies fast enough so they built yet another set of ovens and it still wasn’t enough. In the final months of the war, approximately 200 prisoners a day were died, and the bodies just kept piling up higher and higher. The prisoners were forced to deal with this gruesome task  of burning the bodies instead of the guards.

Then after that it finally guides you down into the main courtyard and out the main entrance. Unlike many of the other camps, this has no metal door with a saying like Arbeit Macht Frei, it’s a rather large fancy wooden door. The whole camp is on two levels. There’s the main courtyard on the lower level with a staircase going up, and the main camp with all the structures up above, as the camp is situated on a hill. The path on the sides takes you up and around the camp.

The trip to Mauthausen was quite an experience, not much better or worse than the numerous other camps I’ve visited.

There’s both a bus line and train that conveniently go back and forth between Linz and the town of Mauthausen. Though walking to the camp is a pretty long distance if you don’t get off at the right stop, or have a taxi. So when I got back in Linz I made trip to the main Linz Cathedral again (luckily the last stop of the bus goes quite near the cathedral!), this time for a closer inspection. It’s really neat, though I didn’t get any information on it. I also took a visit through the underground crypt, because hey, what’s a cathedral crypt of saints and holy people compared to a mass torture camp of death!?

Images here!