May 29, 2009-Mauthausen/Linz

Today, we woke up really early to hop on a bus to Austria. We stopped for lunch along the way and finally made it to Mauthausen. The concentration camp looked like a fortress. The main gate was huge and made of stone. When we walked in we saw another similar gate leading to the barracks and other buildings. The barracks were as I expected, nothing too special although nicer than Birkenau's. Then we went to the gas chamber and S.S. headquarters. There was an exhibit about other camps in the headquarters and underneath were ovens and the gas chamber. At the ovens, there were numerous plaques and flowers in memory of those lost. The gas chamber was really eerie because it looked so similar to a shower and it was actually quite small. Mathausen wasn't originally created as a death camp so the gas chamber was added later and was used for punishment and not for mass killings. Right outside the gas chamber is a dissection room where doctors can examine the bodies and do tests on them. Then there were the Spanish steps. Originally, the camp was for Spanish prisoners of war but once WWII broke out, they decided to use it for Jews and everyone else as well so they made the Spanish prisoners build a huge set of stairs leading into the quarry and the rest of the buildings in the camp. Throughout the years it was used during the Holocaust, the prisoners who inhabited it were forced to go into thr quarry and bring rocks back up. Now, you might not think that this is such a hard feat but trust me, I walked down those steps today and I almost fell with every step. The steps are uneven and very thin. Imagine that with enormous rocks and 200 other people crowded around you. Essentially, they were working these people to death and many of them fell down the steps to their deaths. Mauthausen was technically a labor camp but because they were using labor as a form of murder, most of the prisoners were killed. There is at least ten different memorials at Mauthausen and one in particular caught my eye. It was a huge statue of barbed wire. What made it interesting was that behind it, there was the gorgeous countryside and the Alps. When you look through to the countryside, you get the feel of a prisoner trapped inside the camp. After we left Mauthausen, we checked into our hotel and Joy and I went to a grocery store to get breakfast and lunch for tomorrow. Then, the group ate Wiener Schnitzel (sp?) at the hotel and called it a night.