August 24th

Entrance to Mauthausen

Barracks within camp

Outer walls of Mauthausen

Path leading down into the quarry 

On August 8,1938 political enemies of the Third Reich began to arrive at Mauthausen concentration camp from Dachau. Mauthuasen was a prime location for a concentration camp as it had a rock quarry that provided building materials for Hitler’s potential building plans within Germany that would emphasize the power of the National Socialist Party. Many individuals died as a result of hiking up the death stairs that lead from the campsite down into the rock quarry. Prisoners were forced to carry stones weighing 50 Kg; on their backs while SS guards beat them often to death. Of the 200,000 victims who were placed in Mauthausen, 100,000 died in captivity from starvation, cold, and execution. Mauthausen was open from 1938 until 1945 when US Army divisions, including the 11^th armored division liberated the camp in May of 1945 at the end of the Second World War. Ruth Kluger however is not in favor of concentration camps being used as memorial sites. “The various shoah museums and reconstituted concentration campsites do the exact opposite. That’s why I find them so hard to take: they don’t take you in, they spit you out. Moreover they tell you what you ought to think, as no art or science museum ever does. They impede the critical faculty.” (Kluger pg. 198). Kluger feels that the concentration camps that still stand do not accurately convey the sheer depravity that existed there during the years of operation. A person cannot really get anything personally out of their experience because they are taken through these sites as tourists and with the information they hear, formulate their opinions because of what they are hearing from that informational guide. I disagree with Kluger on her point that the camps that still stand today impede one's critical faculty. I had a very emotional experience at the camp even though the horrors of the camp were not visible to me. It was a place that oversaw the suffering of countless innocents and I constantly thought about this as I went through the camp. When our class was led into the gas chamber at Mauthausen the exact same way prisoners would have walked to their deaths, was something that to me, was just not right. Our tour guide said that we might be the last class to ever walk into that gas chamber because they might close it permanently. To me there was no reason to be marched into a room where people met their death. To me it was very disrespectful and after standing there, my emotions got the best of me. That experience of utter sadness reflecting on those unfortunate people who lost their lives that way allowed for me to come to the conclusion that I would never visit another concentration camp. I agree that families who lost loved ones should be able to honor their loved ones who died at Mauthausen, or other concentration camps around Europe by visiting those places to honor the memory of their loved ones.Kluger is quite adamant that all the individuals are lumped into one general experience. Kluger argues that with these campsites being used as memorials, individuals who died in those awful installations, are just lumped into one collective body, with their unique experiences not mattering in the course of history. I disagree though with Kluger on her point that individuals are just lumped together into the collective dead. In the crematorium of Mauthausen, there are individual plaques with pictures of individuals whose family left to ensure that their loved one would not be forgotten among the countless dead of Mauthausen. Their pictures show a joy for life that was extinguished in the most depraved method imaginable. Mauthausen for those family members who lost loved ones, can be used as a proper memorial. Sadly most of the deceased were not given a proper burial. Even though the site has such a dark, tragic history, realitives of loved ones lost can use the site to pay their own individual respects to those who were lost.