Mauthausen

We took a bus to Salzburg, so on the way there and back we made several smaller side stops. The first of these side stops was Mauthausen, the only Austrian extermination concentration camp from WWII. I can’t describe the way the place made me feel. It was eerie and almost haunted feeling, but I also felt undertones of pure intensity and depression. Over 120,000 people died there. Mauthausen was a foreigners’ camp, so most that died were Hungarian, Czech, or even Soviet POWs.
The bunks were tiny and hard, the barracks cold, and the barbed wire intimidating. They eeriest parts were the gas chambers and ovens, but the hardest thing there was watching a film about it. The people in the local village had no idea whatsoever what was going on just a few minutes away. There was also a quarry at Mauthausen where the inhabitants would be sent to work. The stairs to get down to it were more treacherous than I had ever seen, and I could not even imagine what it would be like to have to walk up them in the snow, a huge stone on your back, no shoes, and be half-starved. I am so lucky.