Mauthausen Reaction

The following day our class was focused on reacting towards what we had experienced yesterday and what we had learned from the tour and our readings.

I said this in my last post regarding Ruth Kluger, I think she is wrong in saying that we should not have the concentration camps serve as memorials. I do not agree because of how I felt when I was there. In my opinion, for people who did not experience the Holocaust first hand, you do not know as much as you could unless you see it with your own eyes. It adds another element to your knowledge, you can picture everything going on, yet you really have no idea how bad it actually was. So although you still have no clue as to how bad it was, you do have a more solid understanding of what you are reading when you have a Holocaust book in front of you.

The biggest thing in all of our minds was the power of the Nazis and the lack of opposition from the citizens. We all were thinking the same thing, how could all these people around just let this happen? They knew what was going on, they were helping build these places, they saw the people walk through the city on their way to the camp, how could they? The normalcy of the whole time is hard for us to understand, but at the same time, we all agreed that if you were in that situation, you would probably want to do something, but you would NOT actually do anything. The Nazis put fear into the people around them and if you were to stand up against them, you would end up in a camp.

Propaganda at the time I think played a role in all this, because from visiting the Military History Museum and seeing some of the posters that were everywhere, it had to become somehow a part of every citizens life at the time. You walk around and you are constantly reminded where you are and who is running the place. Gezi talked about how they censor information on Google and don’t have Facebook because they don’t want anything bad about China circulating through. North Korea is the same way. The Nazis just took it to another level and all that combined with their ability to control the people made it so that their actions were just part of everyday life.

Somebody was telling me that they did not understand why the US had to put up a plaque on the Wailing Wall because we are glorifying a few people that died, whereas other countries had tens of thousands. It is interesting but I think that it is similar to what the Italians did by personalizing there memorial, every person that died should not be forgotten. Also, I think that just because it was the US makes people immediately think that we are doing something wrong, if it was any other country I think that this person would have acknowledged it and just walked by and not said anything to me.