Mauthausen Concentration Camp: Because Turning Away is Never an Option

Yes, of course, the four Central European capitals we visited on our Danube River Cruise with Grand Circle – Prague, Czech Republic, Vienna, Austria, Bratislava, Slovakia and Budapest, Hungary – overwhelmed with their impressive history, expansive promenades and architectural grandeur. But it was an experience in Linz in Upper Austria that most impacted me – a visit to the Mauthausen Concentration Camp, one of the first to be built and the last to be liberated.

- Fyllis Hockman

By way of a little background, as a teenager I had my first visual exposure to the horrors of the Holocaust in some newsreel depictions of the liberation of some camps after the war – the emaciated survivors with their sunken eyes, gaunt bodies and harrowed auras. I called my mother, who had told me of the Holocaust my whole life, and said: “Mom, I finally understand.” Now 6 decades later, I came to understand even more.

Mauthausen, one of the largest of the camps, was built high upon a hill in Linz, where Hitler was once a resident, near a large quarry. The rationale behind concentration camps evolved over the war years from imprisoning people, enslaving them and engendering fear among the general populace to simply one of extermination. Mauthausen was considered a Level 3 Camp where the guiding principle was that no one left – everyone was to be killed in some way or other.

The roots of genocide, according to our guide, were fostered in antiSemitism, an us vs. them mentality, a de-humanization of others who are seen as “less.” It was hard not to draw some parallels to today’s world.

Many bodies engulfed “the stairs of death” leading to and from the quarry where malnourished and mistreated prisoners were forced to carry very heavy stones up very high stairs and often died in the process. Others were simply pushed down the steps. It becomes difficult to hear the stories as they became so visually enshrined.