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It was a pleasant late morning in Vienna. After visiting the famous Schonbrunn Palace, doing a step or two to the tune of the Emperor Waltz there in the crowded ballroom, and after buying a souvenir, a beautiful cup and saucer with the portrait of Empress Elizabeth Sisi, we were on our way to Mauthausen enroute to Salzburg. The sylvan surroundings of the Austrian countryside and tune of ‘The Vienna Woods’ humming in my mind, we halted at one of the inns for our lunch. I tucked in a dish of smoked meat, Selchfleisch, served with the inevitable sauerkraut and dumplings, an apple strudel and a very refreshing creamy coffee. It set me in a soft dreamy mood till I reached Mauthausen. I have read volumes on the WW-II but nothing shocked me more than a single visit to Mauthausen (concentration camp) Memorial.
Mauthausen is not a pleasure stop. This is a memorial to those who died, rather those who were murdered in the name of ethnic cleansing. Mauthausen was a concentration camp, like the Auschwitz, Birkenau, Krakov, Babi Yar and many other such man-made hells on earth. In this camps more than 6 million Jews and a millon others were slaughtered, including Russians, gypsies, Jehovahs’ Witnesses, homosexuals and others. Here men and women were made to work (rather overwork) for 18 hours a day. They were over-worked, underfed, and when they were no longer of any use they were killed. They were already dead in spirit long before their tryst with the gas chambers – what was killed was their empty shell, the body.
The killing machine worked non-stop, feeding the crematoria constantly, the emaciated and hollow shells of what was once intelligent, healthy and productive human beings. The memorial is a reminder of the inhuman and brutal system of the Nazi regime, a dream of one man that turned into a nightmare for the world at large. There are records in the Memorial Room of over a hundred thousand people killed here. Those who were weak, old, and infirm, and had outlived their usefulness were sent to the gas chambers immediately upon their arrival at the camp. One gets a creepy feeling upon seeing the crematoria which must have worked non-stop to destroy the human spirit.
The surroundings at Mauthausen are beautiful and peaceful – one finds it difficult to imagine that in such a place a devilish mind was delivering the Satan’s masterpiece. As we moved on we said a silent prayer for the souls of the ones who perished here and also prayed that such gory and dehumanizing act will never mar the history of mankind ever again. These gory memorials are historical reminders to the world never to allow such a catastrophe again. There are no victors in wars. Only pain and sorrow.
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