Freistadt, Enns & Mauthausen

The Danube flows through 10 countries, more than any other river in the world. It begins in the Black Forest in southwestern Germany and flows to the east into Austria, past Vienna, then on to the Black Sea.

After spending the night in Linz, I explored several small Austrian towns to the east in the Danube valley. Freistadt, on the northern border with the Czech Republic, was once at the crossroads of the valuable salt trade route. Walls and towers from the 1300s still surrounded the town.

As clouds gathered, I hurried out the main gate and crossed the street to visit the Freistädter Braucommune. You learned about the history of the brewery and toured the facilities. Sadly, samples were not provided but I bought a few bottles to try later.

A few kilometers down the road, I explored the the pretty town of Enns. Considered Austria’s oldest town, it was endowed town privileges in 1212.

I scaled the unmissable town tower (erected in the late 1500s) and looked down on the main square. In the belfry, a sign warned that when an adjacent light went off you had two minutes to clear the space or lose your hearing. Thankfully, I managed to climb up and down the original stone steps between clanging sessions.

Near Enns, I passed a road sign pointing to the Mauthausen concentration camp. I hadn’t intended to visit but made a snap decision.

I don’t how you would compare Nazi concentration camps in terms of horrors but Mauthausen (pronounced mout-howzen) was one of the Nazis’ most infamous. It operated from Austria’s Anschluss with the Third Reich in August 1938 until May 5, 1945. It was the last camp to be liberated.

I parked in an adjacent field and walked through a gate with rusty metal poles sticking up at angles over the entry. The poles once held a Nazi eagle before it was pulled down by the prisoners. The camp was located here because of a nearby quarry. The Nazis used “extermination through labor”, basically working people to death cutting and carrying rock.

SS guards would often force prisoners, exhausted from hours of hard labor without sufficient food and water, to race up the “Stairs of Death” from the quarry carrying blocks of stone. Those who survived the ordeal would often be placed in a lineup at the edge of a cliff. At gunpoint each prisoner would then have the option of being shot or pushing the prisoner in front of him off the cliff. The Nazis referred to it as the “The Parachutists Wall”.

Mauthausen was also one of the few camps in the West to use a gas chamber on a regular basis (many of the extermination camps like Auschwitz were located in Poland and to the east). I walked through the door labeled Wäscherei and stood in a large room where thousands were gassed under what they were led to believe were shower heads.

A cement operating table still stood in a nearby room where Nazi doctors performed medical experiments on the prisoners. I did not take a photo.

The crematoriums were next door so the corpses could be burned. I read a plaque that explained why wood panels were installed in one corner. Bullets wouldn’t ricochet there when prisoners were shot in the back of the neck.

Among the memorials from many countries were several from the United States for American POWs who were murdered at Mauthausen.

On May 5, 1945, elements of the US 11th Armored Division liberated the Mauthausen concentration camp. SS guards had either fled or been killed by the prisoners as the Allied armies approached.

It will take some time to process a visit to a place like Mauthausen. One thing that is immediately difficult to reconcile is how such horror could be committed in a beautiful place like this. How could educated people commit torture and mass murder? How could other people stand by and let it happen?

I drove past old churches in nearby towns which stood back then while Mauthausen was in operation.

Prisoners, arriving by train, were marched more than three miles from the station in the town of Mauthausen up to the camp. Those who lived here knew what was happening.

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Thanks for coming along on the trip. If you have questions or suggestions, tweet @JasonRMatheson. Missed an entry? Click here.