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.

The Holocaust Did Not Begin in the Gas Chambers...

Cyanide pellets - for the gas chambers.Holocaust did not begin in the gas chambers - it began with words.

Jan. 26, 2009
IRWIN COTLER , THE JERUSALEM POST
On this United Nations International Holocaust Remembrance Day, words may ease the pain, but
they may also dwarf the tragedy. For the Holocaust is uniquely evil in its genocidal singularity,
where biology was inescapably destiny, a war against the Jews in which, as Nobel Peace Laureate
Elie Wiesel put it, "not all victims were Jews, but all Jews were victims."

Let there be no mistake about it: indifference in the face of evil is acquiescence with evil itself - it is complicity with evil.

Nazism succeeded, not only because of the "bureaucratization of genocide," as Robert Lifton put it, but because of the trahison des clercs - the complicity of the elites: physicians, church leaders,
judges, lawyers, engineers, architects, educators and the like. As Elie Wiesel put it: "Cold-blooded murder and culture did not exclude each other. If the Holocaust proved anything, it is that a person can both love poems and kill children."

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.

"Ich bin ein Berliner?"

My first impressions of Berlin were, "Ummm, this is Berlin?" In other words, I wasn't that impressed. It's a large city, some 3 - 4 million people. It's spread out and takes forever to get anywhere (by foot). The U-Bahn is good, but again, somewhat inconvenient. However, I think the biggest let down was the "industrial" feel of the place. I'm not going to kvetch about the entire trip or city, because there are some very good things in Berlin to experience.

 Suckin' the espresso!
The Jewish Museum Berlin: This is an amazing place. Moreover, we got to see an exhibit called, "Typisch - Klichees von Juden und Anderen" ("Stereotypes - Cliches of Jews and Others"). The show consists of common stereotypes about groups of people as well as out right racial and ethnicity issues. It's frightening when I think about all of the subtle racial and ethnic beliefs we all have. There were a couple of very moving/interesting pieces in the show. The first was "49 Jewish Noses" from Dennis Kardon. It was interesting to find the "nose" of Nan Goldin in this piece. She's a photographer that I like (and met once). When I met her, I was challenging her on her view, and what she had said about the work of Donna Ferrato. She said I was "belligerent". I thought that it was uncalled for at the time, but I my passion sometimes translates as aggression. Another piece that stood out was called, "You Don't Have To Be Jewish To Love Levy's Real Jewish Rye" by Howard Zieff. I bought the catalog/book.

"49 Jewish Noses" 

Anne Sprinkle, Tit Print

 
"A Bookend"


"You Don't Have to be Jewish..."

The museum is huge. You could spend days in it and not see everything. I had flashbacks of the Louvre when we were walking through it. It starts at the beginning of the Jewish history and works its way through the Holocaust. Daniel Liebeskind did an amazing job with the architecture. If you look at an aerial of the building is looks like a broken star of David.

Jeanne and Quinn The Memorial we were iin.
  
This is the memorial we were in (above photo)
those are olive trees growing on the tops of the
pillars - the ground is uneven and disorienting.

One place that was especially moving is called "The Holocaust Tower". Jean and I were the only ones in it for a few minutes. It's very dark and very cold. There is one bit of light at the top (way up there) and you can hear the outside world. It was eerie. When we tried to leave, I couldn't open the door (I was pulling and should have been pushing) it freaked me out!  There was a large room with metal "faces" called "Fallen Leaves" this too was very moving and eerie - I've uploaded a video here.

Inside the Holocaust Tower
When we were finished at the museum, we headed over to "Checkpoint Charlie" and "The Wall". It was a great day, and like all of our adventures here, will be indelibly burned into our memories!

Checkpoint Charlie: East Germany met West Germany

West Berlin - US Soldier photo.

 
"The 'real' still standing wall that separated
the East from the West - mind blowing history"

  
East Berlin - Soviet Soldier photo.

  
"Quinn and Jean in front of a piece of the Wall"

Wet Plate Collodion Photography: Kristallnacht

I feel comfortable enough now to start telling people about what I'm doing here - in a more public way. It's a difficult position to be when you want to keep the idea to yourself until you know (or at least think you know) you can pull it off and getting attention and support for it. Ultimately, I'm going to have to get a lot of attention on this project for it to be able to do what I want.

Unfortunately, I don't have much confidence that the German people will respond well to this project. It's an unhealed land and people in a lot of ways. Forgiveness and the acceptance of forgiveness isn't evident to me - this is still a very taboo topic here.

Wet Plate Collodion Photography: Kristallnacht

The Dachau Concentration Camp

"Arbeit Macht Frei": The Dachau Concentration Camp

22 December 2007

Words seem so weak and meaningless when I think about how to describe our visit to Dachau’s concentration camp Saturday.

Even that sentence seems trite and cliché – “Oh yeah, the Holocaust, sad, terrible, blah blah blah, we’ve heard it all before.” I recently wrote a paper about my Kristallnacht project and it begins like this:

“Ian Kershaw said, 'The road to Auschwitz was built by hate, but paved with indifference.’ The Holocaust is a topic most people prefer to know only superficially, or to ignore altogether. I believe that an understanding of its complexity, as well as its violence, is critical to an understanding of our world and our humanity”.

I believe this is how most people respond to or think when the topic of the Holocaust is brought up. Most Americans feel like they have "Holocaust Fatigue" (and you can imagine how the Germans feel).

It’s not that people don’t think that it was tragic and terrible; it’s that they don’t really understand how tragic and terrible it was and what that means to them today (i.e. losing personal freedoms and all those slippery political slopes we seem to find ourselves on lately). There is relevance and meaning in these events that we need to talk about and keep alive; both for the victims and for our own lives; politically and personally.

Munich (München) is about 200 miles southeast of us. It should be a little less than 3 hours to drive there. However, on Saturday, it took us over 4 hours because of “Staus” or traffic jams. Dachau is about 10 miles outside of Munich. It’s where the concentration camp is located and where we stayed.

When we arrived, we checked into the hotel and dropped off our (minimal) luggage. We stayed in nice place called Central Hotel Dachau. Denise was kind enough to pay for the rooms (thank you!) We only spent a few minutes in the room(s) and we were off to see the concentration camp. It was amazing to me that the camp was only 1.5 kilometers outside of the city! I was blown away! I thought about the crematorium and the ashes that must have fallen on Dachau, unbelievable.

It took less than 5 minutes to drive to the parking lot of the concentration camp (it’s weird to say that). We got out of the car and started unloading and getting dressed for the weather. Summer mentioned something about the smell. I could smell something like old onion soup and tin or metal. I thought it smelled kind of like body odor. She agreed and said that she was about to gag. Jean and Denise said they couldn’t smell it. We could smell it again outside of the barracks area. Later on, we realized that it got into our clothes (like smoke) and we could all smell it. It wasn't a good smell and we're not sure what it was.

It was very cold there Saturday – a damp cold. It was foggy and bleak too. The first time I realized that I was really there was when I saw that infamous, “Arbeit Macht Frei” slogan on the gate. What an insult this is – I could picture thousands of prisoners being marched in and out of that gate everyday to forced road marches, meaningless labor and ultimately death. That phrase must have haunted them.

The moment I walked through the gate, there was an eerie silence and expanse of space that was cold and gray. I immediately felt very alone. In fact, I felt an overwhelming sense of loneliness. I felt abandoned, scared and very small at that moment. I’m not easily spooked, but this place scared me in a weird, surrealistic way. It was very quiet. The only thing I could hear was the sound of my shoes crunching along the gravel with each step I took. I couldn’t feel my legs and I felt hollow, or outside of myself somehow. All of a sudden, a scene of isolation ran through my mind. I “saw” and “heard” static and then I “saw”, or felt, myself standing in a cold snow-drifted land with the wind rushing across my body. It was like a scene from a movie. I was standing at the far right of the frame facing the viewer and wind was blowing hard from my left. I just stood there looking into nothingness. The feeling of expanse, abandonment and loneliness never left me.

To go into details of what we saw wouldn’t do them justice. I even had second thoughts about writing anything about our trip. It’s safe to say that it was emotional and moving to be in a place where so many people lost their lives in such terrible ways.

For the first time in my life, I’m beginning to understand why it’s so important to remember. Why memory is so crucial to our progress. We truly are destined to repeat these kinds of things if we don’t.

This is probably my favorite image I shot there. This beautiful red rose, covered in frost and dying, lying on a box of ashes of some of the victims of Dachau. The wall says, "Never Again" in five different languages. That is the message I got - to keep these memories alive. The stones are from Jewish people that have visited and placed a stone on the box of ashes as a symbol of erecting a tombstone for the dead.

The infamous gate - "Arbeit Macht Frei" - I will never think about that phrase the same way again.

The plaque says, "Execution Range with Blood Ditch". There are a couple of these on the camp. Summer is placing stones on the memorial. The "blood ditch" is right in front of the plaque.

A photo shot in 1945 right after the liberation of Dachau showing the remains of some of the victims. They could fit up to 9 bodies in these ovens. Nine people? Can you imagine how emaciated the people were?

These ovens WERE USED to cremate people. This is in the "old" Crematorium.

In so many ways, this is what Dachau felt like to me.

I was very moved by this memorial - "Crematorium - Remember How We Died Here"

The (very moving) sculpture in the center of the camp by the artist, Nandor Glid. The emaciated bodies entangled with barbed wire - It says, "Forgive, but never forget".

This is the ONLY color in the camp. It's a bas relief that shows the different "badges" worn by the camp's prisoners. Jews, A-socials (Gypsies), Homosexuals, Jehovah Witnesses, and Political and Religious prisoners all had different symbols and color combinations of symbols in order to quickly identify their "crimes". The piece is three links of chain connected by bars with the badges on/around each chain.

Summer peering into the Jewish Memorial on the far south side of the camp.

These were the victims found in the room I photographed below. This is just mind blowing to me!

This is the room where the (above) victims were piled up. It was cold and eerie. The whole thing was surreal.

Jean and Summer peer through the window inside the (new) Crematorium.

The barracks - rebuilt in 1964. It was amazing how strict the SS was on the cleanliness and order of the barracks - just another testament to the sickness of it all.

This is the "old" Crematorium directly across from the "new" one.

Bodies in front of the "old" Crematorium (see photo above this) in 1945. Obviously, these victims were going to be cremated.

Detail of the (used) ovens in the "old" Crematorium.

Denise looking into one of the ovens of the "new" Crematorium.

Electric fence and guard tower. I wonder how many died on these fences?

Entering into the concentration camp at Dachau.

I'm at one of the "Execution Ranges with Blood Ditch". I wanted to stand there to see what it felt like. I was looking for bullet holes in the concrete.



The "new" Crematorium and gas chamber building.

2/3 of all of the prisoners were non-Jewish, political prisoners with Polish Catholics in the majority. 1034 Catholic Priests died at Dachau. This is a memorial to them.

This is a gas chamber that was used at Dachau. I could barely stand up in it - it freaked me out. I was amazed that I got this image with the moving body in it.

This is, "The Grave of Thousands of Unknowns" - the ashes from the Crematorium were dumped here (as well as other places).

A photo from 1945 showing the bodies of some of the victims piled outside of the Crematorium.

This is some of the train track just outside of the main gate.

"Dachau can and shall be a lesson! Therefore we dare not be silent about it, although the memory of it is sad and grievous." Dr. Johannes Neuhäusler, Auxiliary Bishop of Munich and former Dachau inmate, June 17, 1960