May 22: Mauthausen Concentration Camp

We meet at the institute bright and early this morning to drive to the Mauthausen Concentration Camp. The bus ride was unremarkable, except for the view, which was beautiful. Austria continues to amaze me with it’s natural beauty. Everywhere I turn there’s a picturesque landscape staring back at me. 

When we arrived at Mauthausen, the imposing brick walls stood guard all around the front of the building. We got audio guides which let us to the tour by ourselves and at our own pace, and I think that was a very good idea because a place like that is best taken in by yourself. The part of the camp I found the most fascinating were the statues that lined the road up to the main entrance. There were statues from Israel to the Soviet Union, all dedicated to the thousands that had died at the camp. The next paragraph isn’t meant to dismiss or minimize the atrocities at the camp, but they are my personal feelings about the camp. 

While the camp was very humbling and sobering, I don’t think it affected me as much as the other people on this trip. That’s because I went to Rwanda in 2017 and toured the country’s memorials and the actual locations of attacks. While Mauthausen had the gas chambers and the cemeteries, in Rwanda we saw actual skeletons of victims at the National Genocide Memorial in the capital city of Kigali. Later in the trip we went to a Catholic church in an rural area. The church was used by the Tutsi to hide during the genocide, but they were discovered by Hutu militias. Hundreds were killed in the church, and now the church is used to house the bones of victims while the government desperately tries to build enough graves for everyone killed. When we went into the church, the bones were stacked to my shoulders and I had about a foot of clearance either side of me as I walked to a back room. When we walked in there was a wall that was a dark brown and severely damaged in one specific area. Our tour guide told us that’s the spot where they hit babies against the wall to kill them, saving ammunition. My point is even though Mauthausen stands as a gruesome testament to the horror man can do one another, it seemed more clean and polished than others I’ve seen. 

After Mauthausen we took the Dr. Richards bus to the city of Salzburg. When we arrived we went straight to our hotel to put our stuff away. My first impression of Salzburg was that it was much cozier than Vienna, mainly because it was smaller. We met up with our tour guide to take us on a brief tour of Salzburg. We went to a few highlight the sound of music tour and went around the historic shopping area of the city. What I found most interesting on this day trip was how the signs outside shops used to be a 3D representation of what they did there. To end the day, we went up to he castle on top of the large hill in the city. Apparently it was build hundreds of year ago to protect the town from invading forces, and it has never been conquered by force before. Salzburg’s historic is quite an interesting one indeed. 

After the castle I was exhausted and so I voted for going to the local Penny MARKT and getting dinner. Once we got all our food for sandwiches we went back to our hotel and ate together as a group. I can tell all of us are really clicking and that makes trips like these so much more enjoyable.