Silent Walk 31.03.2021

It was a warm and sunny spring day, as i had a bit of time I decided to visit the memorial Mauthausen. Almost the only visitor at this day, it was quiet surreal to see this horrible place flodded by the sun with summer temperatures. I was able to hear and feel the people who were murdered there during the WW2 by an political system.

Es war ein warmer, sonniger Frühlingstag, ich hatte etwas Zeit und beschloss die KZ Gedächtnisstätte Mauthausen zu besuchen. Es war einigermassen surreal diesen Platz von der Sonne durchflutet bei fast sommerlichen Temperaturen annähernd als einziger Besucher zu sehen. Ich konnte die Menschen hören und sehen die an diesem Ort von einem grausamen System ermordet wurden.

NEVER FORGET!

https://www.mauthausen-memorial.org

FACTS:

By 1945, 200,000 people had been deported to the Mauthausen extermination camp.

Mauthausen was a Nazi concentration camp on a hill above Mauthausen , Upper Austria. It was the main camp of a group with nearly 100 further subcamps located throughout Austria and southern Germany. The three Gusen concentration camps in and around the village of St Georgen/Gusen, just a few kilometres from Mauthausen, held a significant proportion of prisoners within the camp complex, at times exceeding the number of prisoners at the Mauthausen main camp.

The Mauthausen main camp operated from the time of the Anschluss, when Austria was united with Nazi Germany on 8 August 1938, to 5 May 1945, at the end of the European theatre of Second World War. Starting with the camp at Mauthausen, the number of subcamps expanded over time and by the summer of 1940 Mauthausen and its subcamps had become one of the largest labour camp complexes in the German-controlled part of Europe.

As at other Nazi concentration camps, the inmates at Mauthausen and its subcamps were forced to work as slave labour, under conditions that caused many deaths. Mauthausen and its subcamps included quarries, munitions factories, mines, arms factories and plants assembling Me 262 fighter aircraftIn January 1945, the camps contained roughly 85,000 inmates. The death toll remains unknown, although most sources place it between 122,766 and 320,000 for the entire complex.

Mauthausen was one of the first massive concentration camp complexes in Nazi Germany, and the last to be liberated by the Allies. The two largest camps, Mauthausen and Gusen I, were classed as "Grade III" concentration camps, which meant that they were intended to be the toughest camps for the "incorrigible political enemies of the Reich".Mauthausen never lost this Stufe III classification. In the offices of the Reich Main Security Office (Reichssicherheitshauptamt; RSHA) it was referred to by the nickname Knochenmühle – the bone-grinder

Unlike many other concentration camps, which were intended for all categories of prisoners, Mauthausen was mostly used for extermination through labour of the intelligentsia – educated people and members of the higher social classes in countries subjugated by the Nazi regime during World War II.The Mauthausen main camp is now a museum.