Mauthausen Concentration Camp
Mauthausen. One of dozens of large concentration camps created by the Nazis for the exploitation of slave labor, for humiliation, torture, abuse, and murder. One of the many places where, in the 1930s, a branch of hell appeared in Europe—where representatives of the “master race” enthusiastically carried out satanic deeds. A prisoner who passed through the gates of the camp ceased, in their eyes, to be human. The value of his life was annulled along with any, even the most minimal, rights.
Today, on the site of the camp, there is a museum-memorial. From the central station in Linz (the city where Hitler spent his childhood and youth), from March to October, runs bus route no. 362, bringing passengers almost to the very gates of Mauthausen. This place, filled with horror, contrasts with the peaceful, beautiful landscapes around it—rolling hills, groves, and charming Austrian villages with solid, well-kept houses. People here live comfortably, prosperously, even wealthily.
The Surroundings of Mauthausen
The same pleasant, peaceful landscapes delighted the eyes of local residents more than eighty years ago. Austrians (though in the Third Reich they were considered Germans) tended their gardens, went to work, visited friends, and attended Mass in Catholic parishes. And at the same time, right next to their cozy houses and flowerbeds, the diabolical machine of Mauthausen was reaping its bloody harvest, aimed at exterminating those not fortunate enough to belong to the “master race.”
The camp gates (the section where the prisoners were kept)
The camp remains grim even now, though it has been somewhat adapted for visitors. Not far from the main entrance an information center has been built, with a cafeteria inside. I do not know if it is ethical to offer coffee and pastries just a few dozen meters away from where thousands of innocent people, including many starved to death, were tortured. Perhaps it would be more fitting to serve tourists thin beet soup (from the camp “menu”), so they might have a chance to taste the realities of those terrible years. Apple strudel and a latte do not harmonize with Mauthausen—unless you are a secret admirer of the SS men, who enthusiastically fulfilled their role as executioners.
Prisoners were thrown down from this cliff
The “Stairs of Death”
The diabolical machine of Mauthausen drained every ounce of strength from prisoners working in the stone quarry. Once they were “used up,” they were replaced with new slaves, abundantly supplied from the ranks of POWs as well as the civilian population of occupied territories.
Most of the prisoner barracks have not survived. In the remaining ones, information panels and historical materials are displayed. They are curated fairly well, without the excessive distortions of events of those years that, sadly, have become common in some European countries. It should be noted that on the territory of Mauthausen there are also Soviet monuments, erected in the first years after its liberation. To the Austrians’ credit, despite revisionist trends, they have not waged war in the twenty-first century against the memory of Soviet soldiers or the symbolism of the USSR.
Monument to General Karbyshev
Perhaps one of the central monuments in Mauthausen is the memorial to General Dmitry Karbyshev, depicted encased in an icy block. On the “Wall of Torture,” or the “Wailing Wall” (a few meters from the monument), there is an information plaque in Russian and German, telling how the Nazi executioners murdered the general by dousing him with cold water in freezing weather. Among some Orthodox Christians there is the opinion that Karbyshev’s death was analogous to the repose of the Forty Martyrs of Sebaste, who gave their lives for Christ in the icy lake over 1,700 years ago. I cannot judge the appropriateness of such a comparison, but it is nevertheless symbolic that the general’s death is also described as “martyrdom.” I think this talented military commander, scholar, and patriot, born in the nineteenth century into an Orthodox noble family, may well have preserved his faith in Christ, even while in German captivity.
Memorial plaque dedicated to General Karbyshev
For us, as Russians, Mauthausen is known not only for the cruel extermination of Soviet prisoners of war (with citizens of the USSR holding the tragic first place among those killed). It gained a grim notoriety also because of a peculiar “camp within a camp”—Barrack No. 20, where “incorrigible criminals” marked with the letter “K” (from the German Kugel—“bullet”), mostly Soviet officers, were kept.
In that barrack, prisoners were given practically no food, no medical help, and were forced to sleep on the floor—essentially doomed to a torturous, if not always swift, death. In a building of about 500 square meters, sometimes up to 1,800 people were crammed; each sufferer had only 0.27 square meters of “living” space. It was a savage inferno in the hell of the camp.
The Site of Barrack No. 20
But it was precisely the prisoners of this barrack—seemingly the weakest and most exhausted—who managed to rise up against their tormentors. On February 2, 1945, the inmates overpowered the machine gunners on the guard tower, cut off the power to the barbed wire, and scaled the high stone wall. Many perished in the very first minutes of the uprising, but 419 rebels managed to break out beyond the camp perimeter into the surroundings of Mauthausen. In the winter, without warm clothing, they found themselves in an area without vast forests such as there are in Belarus or Ukraine. Perhaps survival might have been possible with the help of local residents, the Austrians—if, of course, the locals had been willing to shelter the sufferers, risking their own freedom and even their lives.
Sadly, this did not happen. On the contrary, the locals behaved, to put it mildly, in an un-Christian way. They refused even the appearance of “neutrality”; instead, they actively helped in the search for the fugitives, joining the operation cynically called a “rabbit hunt.” Prisoners who were found were handed back to the executioners. Sometimes civilians killed them themselves—with shovels, axes, pitchforks, knives. It turned out to be all too easy to kill a starving, barely standing man. All the more so since, for Austrians stupefied by Nazi propaganda, the escapees were not really people at all, but rather members of an “inferior race,” for whom there was no place in the land of “Greater Germany.”
Soviet Monument to the Victims of Fascism in Mauthausen
Out of the 419 prisoners who broke through the electrified barbed wire and the guards’ machine guns (and who so longed to return home), only eleven survived. The miracle of the survival of these eleven lies in the fact that among the thousands of the godless—subjects of Germany, actively “hunting” the “enemies of the Reich”—there were a few righteous ones, for whom human life proved more valuable than Hitler’s precepts or the orders of military command. Perhaps it was for their sake that the Lord preserved the little villages in the environs of Linz from the fate that befell German Dresden, razed to the ground by Allied aircraft.
Every year in Mauthausen, a memorial service is offered by the clergy of the Austrian Diocese of the Russian Orthodox Church. Orthodox prayer is very important for Mauthausen, which speaks of suffering, pain, and betrayal, and at the same time of courage and heroism. For the Christian, this place opens an understanding of the fallen nature of man, the realization of how vile service to satan is, when hatred of one’s neighbor clouds the mind. Yet Mauthausen also reveals the greatness of the Christian struggle—shining in the hearts of innocent people who accepted a martyr’s death, and in those few local residents who, despite threats, were not afraid to shelter escaped prisoners.
And what if, in February 1945, when the twilight of Hitler’s Germany was already obvious, not just a few, but hundreds of local Austrians had acted in a Christian way? How many of the condemned from Barrack No. 20 might have survived, returned home, embraced their loved ones?
Alas, we shall never know.
