August 26

Welcome to Hell

Today's visit was going to be a lot like my visit to Spiegelgrund. Scratch that, it was going to be Spiegelgrund on crack and steroids. Today, our class went to a site of tragedy and death, a site played a role in probably the worst genocide in human history.....the Holocaust.

Today, we went to Mauthausen. Not a great place to be. It is not a place you want to visit, but a place you need to visit...because like Spiegelgrund, this place is a reminder of a terrible time, and serves as a lesson of what happens when hatred is left unchecked. Spiegelgrund is a reminder of what happens when ableism and stigma against disability is left unchecked. Mauthausen is a reminder of what happens when racism and antisemitism is left unchecked.

One thing that both Spiegelgrund/Steinhof and Mauthausen had in common was that a lot of their prisoners were sent to the same killing centre: Hartheim Castle (pictured above).

Hartheim was originally a Renaissance castle, but then it became a dystopian Hell on Earth during the Nazi era. It was also where the first gassings of the Nazi regime took place and where they developed Zyklon B, gas chambers, and gas vans. Although it was part of the T4 program, and later the 14f13 program, that sought to eradicate disabled people....disabled people weren't the only people who died here. Jews were also killed here. Not only were the Jewish patients from Spiegelgrund that were sent here, there were also Jews from Mauthausen that were sent here.

Morbid fact: there were also Jews from Dachau that were sent here.

In July 1940, at least 3,200 Steinhof/Spiegelgrund patients, among them 400 Jews, were transferred to Hartheim. While 789 patients were killed at Spiegelgrund itself, a vast majority of the people at Spiegelrund were actually sent to Hartheim in the thousands, and more often then not, being sent to Hartheim entailed one thing.....certain death.

In early 1941 the SS began ‘Aktion 14f13’, a centrally-planned killing operation of weak and sick concentration camp prisoners. Starting in August 1941, panels of doctors selected those who were seriously ill from the Gusen and Mauthausen concentration camps and transported them to the Hartheim killing facility near Linz. They were usually asphyxiated in the gas chamber shortly after their arrival and their bodies were then burned in the crematorium there. Around 5,000 prisoners from Mauthausen and Gusen and around 3,000 from Dachau concentration camp were gassed in Hartheim as part of ‘Aktion 14f13’.

Chart illustrating prisoner markings (Illustration: International Tracing Service, Bad Arolsen)

The Nazis loved using badges as a means of identifying prisoners. Those with the Red Triangle were political prisoners of the Nazi regime. Those with the Green Triangle were convicts and criminals, who often worked as kapos, who worked as the camp's overseers and were just as sadistic as the SS, if not more. Those with the Blue Triangle were foreign forced laborers and emigrants, which included apatrides, Spenish refugees from Francoist Spain whose citizenship was revoked and emigrants to countries which were occupied by the Nazis. Those with the Purple Triangle were primarily Jehovah's Witnesses (over 99%) as well as members of other small pacifist religious groups. Those with the Pink Triangle were LGBTQIA+.

Those with the Black Triangle were those deemed "asocial" and work-shy. Among those included in this category were disabled people, whose triangles were additionally inscribed with the word Blöd, meaning stupid. This category included, most notably, autistic people.

Those with double-triangle badges Yellow Badges were Jews, and they had the lowest chances of survival.

concentration camps Vs Death Camps

Contrary to popular belief, there IS a difference between a death camp and a concentration camp. Concentration camps sought to eradicate people through labor, and in the Third Reich, there were thousands of them. Death camps, on the other hand, were designed explicitly to produce corpses.

The Nazi regime had 3 types of camps: concentration camps, death camps, and hybrid camps. Concentration were places of forced labor, mass torture, and experimentation. Concentration camps did entail mass death, however, such death was only made possible because of the harsh conditions of labor, thus the principle of "extermination through labor. Death camps were not centers of forced labor, they were factories that sought to kill as many people as quickly and efficiently as possible. Hybrid camps were the camps that operated as both a death camp and as a concentration camp.

There were thousands of concentration camps, located all over occupied Europe. Among these camps was Mauthausen, focus of today's trip.

There were 4 death camps, all of which were located in Poland: Treblinka, Sobibor, Chelmno, and Belzec.

There were 2 hybrid camps that operated as both concentration and death camp, both of which were located in Poland: Auschwitz and Majdanek.

Mauthausen, one of thousands of concentration camps

Auschwitz and Majdanek, hybrid camps

Death camps

Christian Wirth (1885-1946), director of Hartheim from 1940-41. Commander of Belzec and Sobibor death camps from 1942

Erwin Hermann Lambert was a master bricklayer who oversaw the construction of the crematorium and gas chambers for the T4 program at Hartheim, Sonnenstein, Bernburg and Hadamar. Then he supervised construction of gas chambers at Sobibor and Treblinka during Operation Reinhard.

Hartheim and the death camps

The ways in which Aktion T4 and the Holocaust are connected can be seen in the connection between Hartheim and the Nazi death camps. Many of the staff at Hartheim later became commandants of Nazi death camps. This is because the experience they gained while murdering disabled people at Hartheim would be important for implementing the Reinhard Program, which was basically the ""euthanasia"" on crack and steroids.

In the case of Hartheim alone, one could see how the T4 program was the opening act of the Holocaust.

Franz Stangl (1908-1971), Wirth's deputy and successor in Hartheim. Later, he became commander of Sobibor and Treblinka from 1942. He was sentenced to life imprisonment in 1970.

Franz Karl Reichleitner served as an assistant supervisor (alongside Franz Stangl) under officer Christian Wirth. Later, he would become the 2nd and final commandant of Sobibor from 1 September 1942 to 17 October 1943

the town of Mauthausen

Mauthausen concentration camp is located in the town of Mauthausen, from which it derives its name. Unlike the hellish camp, the town is quite lovely, with cute little markets, small town vibes, and lots of trees. However, because of the camp, the town has a dark history. During the Holocaust, the locals of Mauthausen knew what was happening, everyone did. The SS who operated the camp of Mauthausen intermingled a lot with the locals, and in fact, the amount of SS people who operated in the camp were about as big if not bigger than the local population. Many SS guards had families with the locals.

Some thoughts on Mauthausen....

This is disgusting, just disgusting. It's morbid, and it's sadistic to the core. The fact that human beings could be capable of such cruelty is horrific. It's easy and tempting to view the Nazis as these one-dimensional comic book Disney villains that are demons born from the deepest fires of Hell. However, they're not that at all. These Nazis were human beings, who had families, normal lives, and yet.......they did this to other human beings while taking pleasure in it and exploiting from it?!

This in many ways goes back to the movie The Zone of Interest, which centers on the life of Rudolf Höss's family at Auschwitz. In the movie, they rarely show what happened behind the walls of the concentration camp. Rather, you heard what was happening behind the walls of the camp, almost as if it were muffled background noise. You could hear people screaming, dogs barking, SS guards shouting, and gunshots being fired. You saw Rudolf Höss and his family living normal, everyday lives. Rudolf's kids were playing around, trying out new clothes and toys (which were stolen from the Jews). It's almost as if the Jews and other prisoners, and the horrors of Auschwitz, were background figures, as if they don't matter in the movie. Yet ironically, it is through this type of technique that the film is able emphasize a crucial point: from the perspective of the Nazis, these people didn't matter. The Nazis treated the horrors of Auschwitz and other concentration camps as being totally normal and as a part of the backdrop/background, and were able to go on with their days completely unbothered by what was happening. Even with the smells of the dead bodies, the smoke, the screaming, and the sadism, it didn't matter. The Nazis didn't care that they were murdering people because they didn't see those people as people. That's the danger of dehumanization. When you dehumanize a group of people to that degree, you become perfectly okay with committing absurdly vile atrocities and don't feel any remorse for what you're doing. The Zone of Interest was an interesting gem, and I had to rewatch it multiple times because there was so much that I missed the first time I watched it. It's one of those movies that forces you to pay attention. It's almost like a psychological/analog horror film.

This is sickening to the core!

Apparently, right outside the walls of Mauthausen, there used to be a soccer field (which of course, was constructed from forced labor) where the locals of Mauthausen and SS alike can gather for soccer games where soccer teams consisting of SS people played against other soccer teams of SS people from other concentration camps. Again, this is just like The Zone of Interest! I wouldn't be surprised if you could hear people screaming and gunshots being fired from within the walls, all the while you were watching SS people play in a soccer team. If I were there, I'd be discomforted from such a thing. However, the locals and SS people were perfectly okay with watching a soccer game while this hell was going on behind the walls. It's like the Nazis WEREN'T even TRYING to hide what they were doing, but rather, they seemed to be NORMALIZING it. It's like those things were being treated as background noise, as backdrops, as though the torment of the prisoners didn't matter. To think the prisoners were being dehumanized to the extent where such atrocious things were totally normal is just disgusting.

This reminds me of a quote spoken by Am Spiegelgrund survivor Friedrich Zawrel, and I think this quote applies to Mauthausen and practically any center of mass murder under the Nazis: "The children in my class knew, they talked about concentration camps, it seems that all adults at the time must have been deaf."

They knew.....they knew what was happening.....and they were okay with it.....because "they were doing their duty".

They say they were "doing their duty" (looking at you, Kurt Waldheim). Yeah, you definitely were doing your duty, and you did it well. As Friedrich Zawrel, Am Spiegelgrund survivor, best put it: "Why they did it, I don't know, but they have fulfilled their duty. The Führer must have been happy." That's exactly what they did by doing their duty, they made Hitler happy, and in doing so, murdered countless innocent people.

to Respect or To disrespect:

Recording the Horrors

Initially, I planned on recording my trip to Mauthausen in order to document it in a series I’m doing that will detail the horrors of Spiegelgrund, Hartheim, and finally Mauthausen, to showcase how the skills learned from Aktion T4 were applied on a larger scale to the Holocaust. I think recording such atrocities is important as a historian. As a historian, it is important to document historical events, no matter how uncomfortable they may seem. Emmanuel Ringelblum, himself a historian, and leader of Oyneg Shabbos, resisted the Nazi regime in the Warsaw Ghetto not through armed rebellion, but rather, by documenting the horrors of what he experienced through photos, journals, diaries, and all sorts of archives...in the hopes that someone (like a fellow historian) might find the archives and be able to bring the Nazis to justice using the evidence. By documenting this stuff, you can weaken the grip of Holocaust deniers by showcasing how it was real by merit of the fact that you saw it yourself and you were at the site where it all took place. After all, Holocaust denial is still a problem, and many of such deniers are Neo-Nazis and/or antisemites, people who would've gotten along fine with Adolf Hitler had he lived. It was people like this that enabled Hitler to rise to power, and if we are to ensure that this doesn't happen again, we must learn from it. However, in order to learn from it, you must document it, as thoroughly and as rigorously as possible.

When I went to Am Spiegelgrund, I went in with this type of mindset. What I said in the paragraph above is not just applicable to former concentration camps, but rather, it is applicable to any instance of a site where mass murder took place. When I went to Am Spiegelgrund, I recorded a lot of it, while keeping in mind where I was standing. I was at Am Spiegelgrund, a site where 789 disabled children were killed, a site where those who survived lived through terrible trauma and were denied compensations for what they went through, a site where those who weren't killed at Spiegelgrund itself were sent to Hartheim to be killed. Interestingly, a staff member at the museum of Spiegelgrund noticed that I was recording, and I told the staff member that I was making a documentary on Am Spiegelgrund (for both my video project and for a bigger series I plan on making in the future). The staff member wasn't upset by the fact that I was recording at a site where 789 disabled people. In fact, she gave me a card with a phone number on it and said, "If you have any questions on how we can help your documentary, feel free to call this number." It was as if they wanted me to record this stuff, as though I were doing them a favor by doing so. I couldn't blame them, really. Spiegelgrund as a whole is a story that is seldom documented and talked about, a story that is often drowned out by the bigger picture that was happening during the Nazi era. By recording what I saw at Spiegelgrund, I can ensure that the memory of what happened there can be preserved. By doing this, I can preserve the memories of Spiegelgrund victims like Herta Schreiber, Elizabeth Schreiber, Alfred Wödl, and others. By doing this, I can preserve the memories of Spiegelgrund survivors like Friedrich Zawrel, Leopoldine Maier, Alfred Grasel, Ferdinand Pauer, Alois Kaufmann, Ernst Pacher, Karl Hemedler, Karl Jakubec, and Ferdinanz Schimatzek. One reason why Spiegelgrund doctors like Heinrich Gross were able to get away with what they did was in part because there was a lack of evidence, a lack of DOCUMENTATION, at the time. Thus, documentation can be a powerful tool. It was only when Spiegelgrund became more and more studied and documented during the 90s and 2000s that people were able to at least try and convict Dr. Gross for what he did (though by that point, he was an old-ass man and was deemed unfit for trial).

When I went to Mauthausen, I went in with the same mindset as I did with Am Spiegelgrund. After all, Mauthausen is not as well known as other concentration camps like Auschwitz. Last year, during Winter Quarter, I took HIS 142A: History of the Holocaust. Our first lecture focused on why it's important to study the Holocaust. While some Holocaust survivors like Ruth Klüger argue that places like Auschwitz teach us nothing and are useless, other Holocaust survivors believe it is essential to preserve former concentration camps as a way to remind us to ensure such evil never happen again. One such survivor is Theodor Adorno, who wrote Education After Auschwitz, which was one of our assigned readings in HIS 142A. Adorno argues, "When I speak of education after Auschwitz, I mean general enlightenment that provides a climate in which a recurrence would no longer be possible, a climate, therefore, in which the motives that led to the horror would become relatively conscious." An alarming trend we learned in HIS 142A is that fewer and fewer people know about the Holocaust.

In a PEW Research survey that detailed what people know about the Holocaust:

69% knew when the Holocaust happened
63% knew what ghettos were
45% knew how many Jews died
43% knew Hitler was democratically elected

Think that's alarming? You don't believe me?! That's not the only instance of people forgetting about the Holocaust! In a Claims Conference survey, the following alarming statistics were found:

55% could name ONE concentration camp or ghetto
62% knew what the Holocaust was
64% knew about Auschwitz
67% knew when the Holocaust happened
49% knew how many Jews were killed
39% knew Hitler was democratically elected

More and more, the Holocaust is being forgotten, and in my nihilistic and cynical psyche, I fear that Holocaust deniers could easily weaponize peoples' stupidity and ignorance in order to convince people that the Holocaust never happened and manipulate the unenlightened masses to repeat this horrifying history. Hell, they might not even need to try to deny it if people forget it! This is the dilemma of Holocaust remembrance. We must always document this, and remind people of what happened. Otherwise, it will be forgotten. When this evil is forgotten, then another Holocaust will happen again because people will not be aware of the beginnings.

Knowing this, I made it my mission to record my trip to Mauthausen as part of a documentary series titled Dysthanasia, which will detail the following places: Am Spiegelgrund, Hartheim, Mauthausen, and Gusen.

At least, that was the plan..........

Into the Delousing chamber

That was when I started contemplating over whether or not I should continue.....

Should I stop? No, I must keep going to ensure that this never be forgotten! No! YES! Stop? Keep going?

I felt conflicted. I didn't feel conflicted about recording at Am Spiegelgrund. Hell, the Spiegelgrund museum staff were okay and gave me some help with documenting Spiegelgrund. But at Mauthausen, I started to doubt if this was right.... Was it because at Spiegelgrund, I was alone, whereas here, I was with a class and thus I didn't want to be seen as rude?

Stop thinking.

"Richie, are you sure if it's okay to be doing this?", a classmate asked me. Then, I stopped.....

These were my last photos of my day at Mauthausen. I didn't take any more photos. I didn't take photos of the gas chamber, nor of the crematorium, nor of anything else. I had done something wrong. I wanted to keep what I already had, but I didn't want to do this anymore. So I put down the camera for the remainder of the trip and spent the rest of it staring into space, horrified by the remaining ghastly things I saw at Mauthausen. I hated myself for thinking I was actually doing the tormented of Mauthausen a service. Maybe I was being stupid....maybe it was never about them.....

That was what I told myself. "Shame on you for being disrespectful!", I told myself. I didn't regret recording at Spiegelgrund, and am still glad that I documented my trip there. Yet here at Mauthausen, it was different.

What's the point? Why didn't I continue documenting Mauthausen? Why DID I continue documenting Am Spiegelgrund?

After all, I made it my mission to ensure that both the Spiegelgrund victims/survivors and the Mauthausen victims/survivors be remembered. I had to. Right? Why was it that I was okay with recording and documenting as much as I could of Am Spiegelgrund, whereas at Mauthausen, I stopped halfway?

Were they not both places of mass murder? Were they not places that need to be remembered? If it was disrespectful to record at Mauthausen, then by that same logic, it was disrespectful to do the same at Am Spiegelgrund. And yet, the Spiegelgrund museum staff were okay with me doing so, and even gave me advice on where to find more information on Spiegelgrund and helped me with my documentary. The Spiegelgrund museum staff encouraged me to document my journey there. Meanwhile, I was perfectly okay with doing the same at Mauthausen, but then when a classmate confronted me, I immediately stopped without hesitation.

That was when I realized, it wasn't about whether or not I was being disrespectful. It was about peer pressure. Cancel culture, the idea that you must adhere to social norms. Makes sense. I went to Spiegelgrund by myself, and the staff were okay with me documenting my trip. I went to Mauthausen with the class, and I didn't want to offend them.

Disrespecting the victims/survivors of Mauthausen was never part of the picture. What I was worried about was not being seen as disrespectful by my classmates.

When Recording/photographing is disrespectful....

The act of recording itself is not an act of disrespect. The way you go about recording is what determines whether or not it is respectful. If you act like a moron and record yourself doing it, and record yourself making jokes in the presence of a dead body (like Logan Paul in Japan), then you're disrespectful. If you record yourself in a Nazi uniform, that's disrespectful. If you take some cheesy ass selfie without any regard as to where you're standing, you're being disrespectful. If you do whatever the hell TikTokers did with the "Holocaust trend", then you're being disrespectful. If you record at a concentration camp and act recklessly for the sake of clout and internet fame, that's disrespectful.

Here are some examples of instances in which taking photos and videos at Holocaust memorial sites is disrespectful.......

Apparently, this was a trend from TikTok called """the Holocaust trend""", where clout-chasing TikTokers cosplayed as Holocaust victims/survivors in order to "sPrEaD aWaReNeSs" of the Holocaust.......

In reality, they're disrespecting the victims and the survivors.....all for the sake of clout and internet fame.

What the hell is wrong with TikTok?

Yolocaust?! ARE YOU SERIOUS?!! People these days will do anything for clout, and it pisses me off!

This is no time to be posing all sexy-like, goddammit! YOU'RE IN AUSCHWITZ! SHOW SOME RESPECT!

YOU'RE AT A FREAKING MEMORIAL! Those are gravestones commemorating the deaths of innocents, not stepping stones!

kill me

No. Just no.

That's a crematorium where the corpses of countless innocents were burned to ashes....and you're posing all cutsey-like for the sake of clout.

THIS IS NO TIME FOR SELFIES!

You're at Auschwitz! If you can't be mature, don't go!

Are these people doing the Nazi salute?! Are you serious?! People will do anything for clout!

Stop!

Stop it, those are shoes of Auschwitz victims!

This is not a good place to be doing yoga, ma'am!

Wipe that creepy smile off your face!

However, I wasn't doing any of that!

The people you saw disrespecting Auscwhitz and other Holocaust memorials didn't have any regards for the victims/survivors. They didn't even care about documenting their journey there. What they did care about was clout! That's all it was about for them, clout!

Going to Spiegelgrund and documenting my trips there wasn't so I could attain clout. If I really wanted clout, I'd go for a more touristy place like the Höfburg, Schönbrunn, Klosterneuburg, or something. If I wanted clout, I wouldn't be making a serious video on Am Spiegelgrund. Rather, I'd be aiming for some dumb video like the "Romp Through Vienna" or the "Vienna Rap" video.

If you look closely, in practically ALL of the pictures that I did take of Mauthausen, notice how the camera is not facing me. If you look at my photos of Am Spiegelgrund, you see the same thing. This was intentional, for I didn't want to make this about me. I wanted to make this about the place, the people who died there, and the people who survived it and suffered terrible trauma. The focus was on the place and the people who suffered, not me. I wanted to tell a story, not about my visit to Spiegelgrund and Mauthausen, but rather, I wanted to tell a story ABOUT Spiegelgrund and Mauthausen through my first-person point of view. You are seeing this through my eyes, as though you were in my shoes, but I am not the focus of the picture, but rather, a humble guide relaying what happened.

As you navigate your way through this website and read my blogs, you might pick up on something interesting. Almost every blog entry has a vlog that corresponds with the day of that entry, except for these days: August 8, 19, and today. This is because August 8 and 19 were the days when I visited Am Spiegelgrund, and today was the day I visited Mauthausen. Given the goofy nature of my vlogs, I figured, for the more serious aspects of this program like Spiegelgrund and Mauthausen, I'd make a completely separate series where it's less about my travels in Vienna, and more about a dark history that needs to be remembered so it may never be forgotten. It's no longer about my stay, it's about the darkest chapter of human history. It'd be better to have Spiegelgrund and Mauthausen not as part of my vlog series, but rather, as its own separate series titled Dysthanasia: The Merciless Death in Nazi Germany, which was originally going to focus solely on the Nazi "euthanasia" program. However, now I realized I might as well include Mauthausen in there, especially when considering that it (as well as the sub-camp Gusen) are connected to Hartheim in that sick prisoners were sent there during Operation 14f13. Meanwhile, Spiegelgrund patients were also being sent to Hartheim. The word "Dysthanasia", which is the title of my documentary series that I plan on making, is the complete opposite of "euthanasia". "Euthanasia" means "good/mercy death". The word "Dysthanasia" means the opposite. Dysthanasia means "bad/merciless death", a slow and painful death. Thus, the word Dysthanasia is a fitting title for Aktion T4, 14f13, and "wild euthanasia" because as you have seen, the "euthanasia" killings were anything but merciful and quick. They were slow, painful, and prolonged. The word Dysthanasia is also a good description of the type of murder that occurred at Mauthausen, as well as any concentration camp, because these people also suffered a type of death that was rather merciless, painful, sadistic, and long.

I think including Mauthausen in my vlog series would be a disservice. There's only so much to cover in one video, and by doing that, I'd be doing this place a disservice. Additionally, if I included it in my vlogs, I'd be implying that this is about me when it's really not. Thus, it'd be better to have it not be part of a vlog, but rather, a documentary. Therefore, it's more fitting that Mauthausen and Gusen be part of my Dysthanasia: The Merciless Death in Nazi Germany documentary series rather than as part of my "Life in Vienna" vlogs.

Page updated

Google Sites

Report abuse