Life & Death in Mauthausen

"Nazi guards offered starving workers a break from hauling heavy stones up a stairway - only to shoot them dead if they said 'yes', it has been revealed.
Inmates at Mauthausen, Austria's largest concentration camp, were made to carry granite blocks up the 186 steps of the 'Stairway of Death' in brutal 12-hour shifts.
Former inmate Aba Lewitt recalled the brutal practice as Austria marked the 70th anniversary of the liberation of Mauthausen - a camp known by Nazis as the 'Bone Mill'.
He said: 'The guard said, "Well, then, sit over there" - then he shot him. He said the inmate tried to escape the camp. That happened umpteen times every day.'
More than 20,000 people attended the anniversary which feautured somber speeches by dignitaries and funeral marches by scores of flag-carrying delegations from Europe and beyond.
One of the longest-existing concentration camps in Hitler's Reich, Mauthausen received its first railway wagon of inmates in 1938."
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3075479/Thousands-attend-commemoration-Mauthausen-camp-liberation.html#ixzz3ZsjqXGMF

 

None of these places were holiday camps, but Mauthausen has always seemed to me to have been particularly cruel.

 

I'm not surprised at all......there are people all over the world, at present, that would do the same thing....who knows what other unknown ''acts'' that went on at these and other places..? I see it says 12 hour work days, ....this seems to be the norm in these camps......... plus low rations=death, long term hunger........brutality in many different forms, .....how many of us have been hungry, really hungry for more than a few hours?? these prisoners were hungry all the time...... that itself is long term mental torture........
from what I've read, US POWs were not fed enough...food was a major preoccupation....so I can see these camp workers being in hell!

 

Uh yeah, none of this is new. Just read any survivors account from Mauthasen.

 

No-one suggested it was, it was posted for info.