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An American soldier inspects one of the crematoriums at Mauthausen after the camp was liberated in the closing days of WWII. PHOTO COURTESY OF THE HOLOCAUST RESEARCH PROJECT.
Death camp visit spurs questions about present-day war economies
By Bob Berwyn
As I sat on a cool granite stone wall after touring the museum at the Mauthausen concentration camp, I wondered if the person who chiseled the rock from the nearby quarry was buried in the peaceful hilltop cemetery nearby.
He — or she — might have been a Jew or a Gypsy, a Russian, Hungarian, Romanian, Turk, American, Chinese, a Jehovah’s Witness, a homosexual, or even one of the 7,000 Spanish and Cuban anti-fascist fighters who were executed here at the Nazi-run extermination site. All were victims of the National Socialist nightmare of ethnic purity.
Traveling in this part of Austria isn’t all schnitzel and soccer. Adolph Hitler, the pathological mastermind of the Third Reich, was born just a few miles away, and even now, several generations later, you can still hear the faint echo of jackboots goose-stepping across some the broad plazas that were designed for displays of totalitarian might.
Mauthausen was the last of the major camps to be discovered and liberated by Allied forces. In May 1945, just a few weeks before the end of WWII an American scout unit, based in Linz, reported back to headquarters, noting that there were thousands of prisoners near death in the rows of cellblocks.
I visited the Mauthausen camp with my parents when I was about 10, and last summer, I took my son, who was the same age. I wanted to try and pass on what, to me, is one of the most important lessons in recent history. The Nazi era signifies humanity at its absolute worst, showing what we are all capable of with only a little encouragement from overly zealous and nationalistic politicians who base their leadership on lies, hypocrisy, xenophobia and fear-mongering.
The museum was featuring a special exhibit: “The Technicians of the Final Solution.” The displays focused on an Erfurt-based company called Topf & Sons, manufacturers of the crematoriums that were used to incinerate millions of victims after they were shot, hung, gassed, beaten or simply worked to death in the European slave labor and death camps between 1939 and 1945.
Just in case there was the slightest bit of doubt in anyone’s mind about what went on in the camps, historians compiled a meticulous record: Page by typed page of order forms, invoices, letters of commendation, company officials asking for a raise after explaining how hard they were working, original blueprints for the ovens.
There was money to be made from genocidal death and destruction, and some patriotic German industrialist was going to profit, ethics and morals be damned, They were just serving the best interests of their country.
The “just-following-orders, my-country, right-or-wrong” mentality hits close enough to home to be scary. As I rested on the cool stone wall, this bleak chapter of human history drew me toward a comparison between then and now. With deep family roots in this part of the world, I tried to imagine what it was like to live under a true reign of terror, reflected in the ghost-like faces and skeletal bodies I’ve just seen in the old photos from liberation day at Mauthausen.
I wonder if future historians will do the same legwork that’s on display at the Mauthausen museum to tell the story of the war in Iraq? I can’t help feel a small spark of curiosity about what a look at defense contractor invoices and memos between those contractors and the U.S. Government would show?
Could it be that economic imperatives and the profit motive are the true drivers behind our current Mid-eastern entanglement? Only time, and a careful examination of the historical record, will tell the real story.
But one thing is for sure. Citizens of every country, especially where we enjoy freedom and democracy, must constantly be on guard against deception, manipulation and distortion.
Among the many memorial plaques to victims at Mauthausen, one side of a wall dedicated to ordinary citizens who resisted the Nazi regime, offering comfort and help to victims of ideological oppression, food for women and children who were forced into slave labor, and to those harbored fugitives and stood up to speak out against tyranny and evil.
We all need to make sure we’re on the right side of that wall when the story of our time is told.
Filed under: Summit County Colorado, Travel Tagged: | Austria, concentration camps, genocide, Mauthausen, Nazis, Travel
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…just when i was about to sit down to a bowl of steaming steel-cut oats…
thanks for telling this, bob. brought me back to 9th grade when my history teacher backed me up against the classroom wall and demanded of me, “well, do you want to learn or do you want to surf?” when i said “learn”, he thrust a tattered paperback copy of “Treblinka” into my chest, a wrenching retelling of the liberation of Poland’s most notorious death camp.
it’s amazing things ever could have gotten that far. as in many other calamities, the question has always been, “Where was God?” I’m reading Michael Lerner’s “Jewish Renewal”-A Path to Healing and Transformation. First off, he asks, “How could God have allowed Auschwitz?”
Lerner asserts that God (S/He) is here, was there, but chooses not to intervene. “God wants us to develop real autonomy, possible only by allowing us to make our own mistakes without constant interference from divine aid. God respects us, respects our dignity and possibilities. It is precisely because God respects our dignity and our potential embodiment of divinity that S/He will not any longer interfere (Egypt) with the world and it’s evil.
“Accumulated evil in the world, manifested in the Nazis, is not some product of God’s choice, but rather a set of human choices. Having been given the freedom to choose, some human beings made choices not to recognize one another as human beings.”
Kind of a hardline approach, but practical, but ultimately offers hope. Lerner puts that ball squarely in our court: “There was nothing secret about Hitler’s plans. He talked about them in “Mein Kampf”, written in the 1920s. The Left was well-warned about the anti-Semitism that was at the core of Hitler’s plan. Yet it did virtually nothing to counter the growing anti-Semitism in society or within its own ranks. In fact, many of the left-wing parties in Europe were filled with anti-Semites.”
Interesting to note that the Allies did little for the European Jews as things were escalating. Our country shut its doors to refugees from Europe. Boats of Jewish refugees were turned away, some of them even sinking in turbulent seas, passengers drowning, Lerner reminds us. The world basically turned its back.
As if to deny all that occured-but really to validate what can transform-Dr. Lerner explains that “for the Jews, God is emotional, passionate, and in need of human beings as partners in the process of creation.” Allowing that there’s every reason to be angry at this God, that a certain amount of ‘bitching’ needs to be engaged in as an indispensable first step in “opening one’s self up to God, God is still the force that makes for the possibility of transformation. ”
This has become a little longer than i’d expected, but it’s strong stuff, like your travelogue. I grew up with several russian aunts/uncles who were sporting numbers on their forearms. as a young’n, it took quite a while to put that into context. If Judaism can move forward (but never forget), embrace “a God which can produce more healing and repair in the world,” then, “I have no reason to believe that this (us) will be God’s last experiment with life, and with hope, and with consciousness.”
Thanks Matt, for your thoughtful comment. I spent years as a student reading, writing … trying to understand how and why this could have happened. I still don’t fully understand or comprehend, but I know we have to be on our guard, against ourselves, and against those who would manipulate us, to prevent it.