Today I managed to only go a measly (bloody anti-vaxers) 40km. It was so cold last night. I woke up at 4am and was considering putting on all my clothes. My feet went numb. It was tempting to pack up and leave. Instead I went back to sleep and didn't leave until after 10. It wasn't that tempting.
I was heading to Mauthausen today and it felt like it took forever to get there. I didn't arrive in the town until around 1 then had to ride up an enormous hill to get to the concentration camp. Those Nazis could really maximise the evil in any situation. The prisoners had to march up that hill.
The camp itself looks like a prison (der). Big walls with ominous looking watch towers. It has changed quite a bit since it was used to murder people. A lot of the buildings have been pulled down, however that didn't really take away from the experience. Some buildings weren't there but you could see where they had been.
The prison housed a lot of Soviet prisoners of war, political prisoners as well as racial and social minorities. Jewish people only made up a small fraction of the people housed there, but they were treated the worst. They had there own block and were given less food and nothing to keep them warm. They were also isolated from all the other prisoners.
In the beginning the murders were all covered up and it wasn't yet industrialised. The guards would do things like send prisoners to fetch rocks from near the fence then kill them for trying to escape or simply push prisoners into the electric fence. The prisoners were forced to work in a quarry on the site and the guards would push prisoners over the edge. This was called parachuting the prisoners and the fact they had a cynical name for it attests to how often it happened.
They would also be killed if they lost their cap. At roll call the guards would often take a prisoners cap and throw it across the yard. If the prisoner didn't retrieve it they'd be shot for not having a cap. If they did go to retrieve it they'd be shot for trying to escape. There was an horrific story about a prisoner (at a sub-camp of Auschwitz) who was raped by a Capo (a prisoner who had extra privileges because he was a snitching bastard, and fulfilled a similar role to a guard) who then stole his cap. Stealing the cap was a death sentence. Knowing that he'd be murdered at roll call in the morning the prisoner woke through the night and stole the cap from the sleeping man in the bunk above and therefore lived to tell the story (something which I would have taken to the grave). The bloke in the bunk above him was shot in the head at roll call for not having his cap.
It was only later that methods for systematic murder were implemented. It started with firing squads, then later there was a room where prisoners were ordered to stand in a corner and were shot in the base of the neck. To save bullets they developed a reusable gun, I imagine similar to the bolt guns that are used to slaughter cattle. A guard was hidden on the other side of the wall and fired this through a slit in the wall, again into the neck.
Then came the gas chambers. At first this was a truck which was modified to gas the prisoners (the stasi used these as well). Later it was a dedicated room, which is still there. Unlike in Auschwitz, where the zyclon b canister was dropped in through a hole at the top, at Mauthausen the gas was piped in through the plumbing. It really did look like the shower room, although there was no mention of the guards pretending the prisoners were just going for a shower. The ovens were right next to it so I'd say the prisoners would have known what was happening.
Currently there are a few of the barracks, the old infirmary, the walls and gatehouse, some of the ovens, the 'bunker' (which was like a prison within a prison) and one gas chamber still there. The infirmary is now an exceptional museum. One of the rooms with the ovens (just so we're clear, these were for cremating people, not baking bread) now has pictures of victims plastered over the walls. Outside the barbed wire fence on the northern perimeter was the ash dump.
The infirmary was a little confusing because there were at least 3 other places referred to as infirmary camps within the prison which were in fact places to kill people. The quarantine area and one of these infirmary camps are now a mass grave. Another of these infirmary camps is now a stand of trees, but it was where the Soviet POWs were killed by firing squad.
There was another area that had just one building and was surrounded by walls on all sides. It was for the condemned. They knew they were going to be murdered. 500 of them made an escape attempt by throwing wet blankets over the electric fence to short it out and attacking the watch towers with rocks, planks and fire extinguishers. About 400 escaped and were hunted down by the guards and local populace like rabbits. Which is why it was later referred to as the hare hunt. All but 11 were killed on site. They said 11 survived but I'm not sure if they meant they survived the war or just the hunt. None succeeded in escaping. The prisoners from that building that chose not to attempt to escape were killed that night.
One of the barracks housed a brothel. Women were brought in from the women's concentration camp and were told that if they worked in the brothel they'd be set free, which they weren't. The Capos were allowed to go there as a reward.
Where the SS barracks used to be is now a memorial park. This on its own is worth the entrance fee (it was free). Some of the countries with memorials no longer exist (Yugoslavia) and some didn't exist at the time (Ukraine). There were a couple of dozen different memorials. I took photos of most of them but won't post them all. The quarry is still there and you can walk to it down the stairway of death where so many prisoners died. I didn't though.
In the museum there was a video that showed the former guards being sentenced to death by hanging. They stood up one by one (there was 57 of them I think) and received their sentences and there was one guard in particular who looked scared and when he got his sentence his eyes flickered and his head dropped and you could tell he was devastated. I felt so much empathy for him in that moment. I found it hard to reconcile him in that court room of mass sentencing with him once being in the place of mass murder where I was standing. It was really hard to connect the dots. There are no videos of the atrocities he committed. You don't get to see the faces of the victims drop as they enter the gas chamber. I found myself hoping he did some really horrible things and I hope he alone made the decision to do those horrible things. That's a pretty messed up thing to hope for. I think when I get a chance I will try to find out what he did.
Another guard who was in charge of gassing people was charged with 51 counts of accessory to murder and was sentenced to 7 years in prison. After he was released he chose to holiday annually at Mauthausen and that really infuriated me. In the end I suppose that the courts made the correct decisions based on the events, rather than how the guards looked at sentencing or where they holiday. It just feels like there were no winners. Everyone loses.
I read yesterday there is a 91 year old lady who is going to face 260000 charges of accessory to murder. She was a radio operator at Auschwitz. Because she was a minor at the time she is going to face juvenile court. At 91. I was wondering today if any Capos were charged or sentenced. They were obviously victims too but also, from what I could tell, were complicit to a degree.
Anyway, I spent 4 hours at Mauthausen, which is why I didn't cycle very far. Tomorrow I will carry on to Melk.
I've just read back what I have written and realise it is a mess, not particularly interesting, not all that different to a Wikipedia article and towards the end makes me sound like a Nazi sympathiser. Saying that I felt empathy for a Nazi probably doesn't help. I just want to point out that I'm not trying to make an ideological point, I'm just trying to express how I felt at that moment. It felt like humanity was absent.
Photos are:
An oven
A memorial
The roll call area
The gas chamber
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