MAUTHAUSEN
This camp began in 1938 as a concentration camp for German and Austrian "criminals". Prisoners of war were sent here, and Jews began to enter the camp in 1942. The average life expectancy of someone entering Mauthausen as a prisoner was 2 months. An estimated 50,000 people died here, and another 50,000 or so died at sub-camps surrounding Mauthausen.
There is a stone quarry down the hill from the barracks where the prisoners would hew away stone and carry it up the hill to build more buildings. Sometimes for fun the officers would push prisoners off the cliff of the hill once they got to the top. They called it "parachuting".
When a contingent of 500 Russian prisoners attempted an escape, those who were found were brought back to the camp in the cold of February, chained to a wall, and hosed down with cold water until they froze to death.
In the summer, overseers closed all the windows and doors to their sleeping quarters. Their rooms reached temperatures of 100 degrees. In winter they left all the windows and doors wide open.
As Mauthausen was a men's camp, a brothel was set up made of women from a German concentration camp. These women were used, abused and totally uncared for until they were mentally incapacitated- then they were sent back to their own camp and replaced by a new group of women.
I'm not trying to say this to be morbid or to spread doom and gloom. But what happened there was real. I could feel these people's spirits. By the time our tour group reached the gas chambers, I couldn't handle it because I was crying so hard. But whether or not there was crying involved is irrelevant. Everybody in our group was shaken.
The American troops came in to free the prisoners in May of 1945. By then the Gestapo had already left the camp in the care of the Austrian Fire Brigade, and there was no fight when the liberators came to help those ailing prisoners.
I felt such sorrow inside. The stark contrast of the camp's harsh walls and harsh history to the beautiful rolling hills and valleys that surround Mauthausen was a little eerie. But I concluded as we left Mauthausen that for every spot on earth where there is or was a concentration camp, that God has given us 100 times more beautiful and lovely things, like the sun, wind, trees, animals, green grass, family, faith, good friends, beautiful music and countless other blessings.
These satanic prisons couldn't last more than 6 years. But God's creations are renewed each year in beautiful and glorified splendor. And we ought to choose to live in the present, reminded of the past, and hopeful for the future. I will never forget Mauthausen.
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