Friday 2/3: Mauthausen. And some better points of the day that will be covered in another post.

Last Friday (Feb 3) was the first time I've cried on this trip. And surprisingly enough, it wasn't from being homesick. (Although that is creeping up on me.) Friday, we went to Mauthausen. Which is the largest concentration camp in Austria. As hard as I tried to mentally prepare for it, there is nothing you can really do to prepare yourself to see one of the places that caused so much horror to the world, not that long ago. It seems like WWII was forever ago when you talk about it in the classroom, but if you really think about it, it really wasn't that long ago. Which didn't help my mental state. Anyways, we started by walking around the outside of the camp to see the memorials set up by the different countries and different groups of people. I learned that a Jewish tradition is to place stones at a memorial instead of flowers, which was interesting. We couldn't even see all of the memorials because they were roped off, and from the sheer number of them. Every country who had prisoners from that camp had their own memorials. The reason there was a camp in Mauthausen, is that there is a stone quary, which is where the majority of the workforce was sent to. There were these stairs they called the "Death Staircase" because it was 120 steps and the prisoners would have to carry 100+lbs rocks on their backs, up and down the stairs, no matter what the weather was.

When we went into the walls of the camp, we saw the wailing wall, where the prisoners were made to strip down, and basically wait there for someone already in camp to die so that there was an open bed. We saw the living quarters, 3 or 4 toilets and 2 showering places.... for 300+ people. It was so haunting to be standing and walking around the buildings, an indescribable feeling (and not in the good, Aladdin way). After the living quarters came the hardest 45 minutes, not that the last hour had been anything close to easy. We went to where they burned the clothes they took from the prisoners, and where they were shaved and showered. The tour guide told us that the age that was considered 'useful' was 12yrs+ up, anyone under that, or who couldn't convincingly lie that they were 12, were immediately executed. In the shower room, there was only burning hot, or ice cold water that would come out, and sometimes the water would switch really quickly, called a 'shock shower'.

At Mauthausen, there were 3 types of execution: hanging, gassing, and being shot. We didn't see the area where the hangings happened, that had been destroyed, but we saw the others. (Right about now is when I started crying). The gas room looked like a mini version of the shower room, but there were no windows. At Mauthausen, the gas room was experimental, although many people were killed that way. It was seeing if a larger version would work in other camps. It did. So, there would be a ton of people crammed into the room, thinking they were going in for a shower because they were being moved to another camp, or freed, and then the Nazis would kill the lights, and release the gas. The shower heads that the prisoners saw were only to clean the room afterwords. The next room: the prisoners were told that they were being moved, but had to be catalogued, which meant they had to give their names and have their picture taken. That was the cover story, so that they would think they could have hope, and so they wouldn't scream. Behind the 'camera' was a gun. The worst room: the crematory. Well, it was the best, and worst room. The 'best' part only comes from that there were tons of plaques and pictures, and memorials from families and countries. The worst part was seeing the ovens.

Obviously I had learned about concentration camps, and WWII though school, but nothing, absolutely nothing, could prepare me, or compare to, standing in a camp in person. It was one of the most moving experiences of my life, and something that I will always carry with me.

More to come on the rest of Friday, but this post is overwhelming enough for now. Lovelovelove.