186 Steps in the "Stairs of Death" in the Mauthausen Quarry

The Mauthausen concentration camp was a Class III camp where prisoners classified as "Return undesired" were sent. It was a punishment camp where the inmates had to do hard time in a granite rock quarry. Those on the punishment detail had to carry granite boulders up steep stairs on their backs – the stairs are known as “The Stairs of Death”.

There is a sign (in German) at the bottom of the stairs that reads:

Here worked prisoners of various nationalities. With disregard of even the most primitive safety precautions, and with complete brutality, extreme work performance was demanded of the prisoners.

Here one had the best possibility to liquidate prisoners in the fastest manner. With a boulder weighing often up to 50 kg on the shoulder, while being forced to run through the quarry under constant beatings, the victim soon collapsed only to die in some corner unaided. (thanks Elke).

This leads into the quarry. You can see the distorted Menorah at the top quarry. This is where the camp is – to the left, is where I made the plate below. 
     "186 Steps of Death" - Mathausen Death Camp - 8"x10" Black Glass Ambrotype      

Mauthausen is a beautiful area, this absurd and evil thing takes all of that beauty away for me.

This was even more disturbing than Dachau in some ways. Being worked to death and used for profit adds a dimension of evil that exceeds simple execution. Don’t get me wrong, we walked through the gas chambers here and saw the table where they removed skin with tattoos and gold teeth, too. There were several places where they murdered the victims, hanged them, shot them, gassed them, and tortured them. Mauthausen has it all and then some. I will never look at granite the same way again in my life.

I didn’t make any photos inside the concentration camp. Only this 8x10 wet plate in the quarry and the color digital images outside of the camp.

Tracks Headed East

A sense of urgency overtook me today and I was able to get a couple of important photographs made. I'm exhausted right now, but elated. While I call everything an experiment, it's not exactly true. For now, however, I'm calling the work experimental.

The "train tracks" image below is something I've been meaning to try for a while. Most all of the tracks here were used, at least in some part, to transport Jews and other undesirables to either bigger train stations or directly to the concentration camps. My friend, Caron, mentioned that I should look at making some images like this - I couldn't agree more.

The feeling I get when I look at this empty, quiet image is one of anxiety. I'm waiting for a train to rip through this space headed east (the direction of this image) with cars full of people going to their death. Although, it doesn't look like it, I was very close to the tracks. It made me a little bit nervous. I shot this with my new (old) CC Harrison portrait lens - wide open - what a neo-pictorialist, huh? I was lucky to find a spot where I had access to the tracks (and schlep all of my Scheise to it). Sometimes, it's difficult doing these kinds of things. I was thinking about how I would probably be arrested in the United States for doing this... you know the whole terrorist scare thing. No one was around when I made the images. It was out of the way and "in between" towns.

"Train Tracks Headed East - Bahnhof Ahead" - 29 March 2008 - 1305 - 10x8 Black Glass Ambrotype (destroyed) - Southwestern Germany (quiet countryside). 
I'm going to keep making images of memorials, tracks, and portraits (and whatever else strikes me). I'm also going to explore making images of smokestacks. All of these symbols are very powerful to me. I have no idea how all of this is translating, or will translate, but I'll keep making images, thinking out loud, writing my thoughts and ideas down and hopefully, someday put it all together.

The Transports

Train tracks in DachauMy friend, Caron, gave me a great idea for my Kristallnacht project. She suggested that I make images of train tracks and stations that were instrumental in moving Jews to the concentration camps. "The Final Solution" could not have happened without the railways, without the trains making the mass transport possible. The Germans sent 30,000 Jewish men to Dachau and Sachsenhausen on Kristallnacht by way of trains.

The photo on the left is one I snapped at Dachau one year ago (December 2007). I remember thinking, "These are the rails that carried all of those people to their death". It was profoundly sad and visually striking to me.

This is a very insightful and interesting idea on many levels. It resonates with me simply for the fact of how much we us railroad metaphors and how they take on a whole new meaning here in Germany. For example, "derailed"or "derailing", "track wreck", "just the ticket", "off track", "one track mind", "railroaded", "fast track", "express", "letting off steam", "blowing your stack", "tunnel vision", "bells and whistles" and "end of the line". I see trains here in that kind of context.

The transports were usually cattle cars. At times, the floor of the car had a layer of quick lime which burned the feet of the human cargo. There was no water. There was no food. There was no toilet, no ventilation. Some boxcars had up to 150 people stuffed into them. It did not matter if it was summer, winter, boiling hot or freezing cold. And an average transport took about four and a half days. Sometimes the Germans did not have enough cars to make it worth their while to do a major shipment of Jews to the camps, so the victims were stuck in a switching yard - "standing room only" - for two and a half days. The longest transport, from Corfu, took 18 days. When the train got to the camps and the doors were opened, and everyone was dead.