Larry Brenner - December 13, 1981
Visiting Mauthausen 2
Anyway uh, the camp is there as it was, mostly, mostly. Now, naturally the cells are not there anymore because those were temporary put up there. But the barracks, about part of the barracks which is there with the beds with the description on it, how many people in a room and, and, and uh, what condition they were laying there. And this barrack uh, shows that only no people stay more than two days because they were, they were sent to the concentration camp after two days. And there all kind of documents... Museums saying that the original, original uh, orders saying that Jews who arrive in this camp cannot leave more than... Was it two weeks or less? Well, anyway, official...
Yeah.
...official uh, and Russian officer... soldiers so and so describe the gas chamber, what kind of a, what kind of a gas they use on there. And going through and showing all the torture chambers, the original torture chambers describing how they tortured them. Pictures. And especially, I think as I remember they... About midgets, how they experimented with midgets there. There was one of uh, a couple of midgets which shows what they did to them. Going through there we arrive to the uh, crematoria and the gas chamber. Showed the gas chamber how they opened the gas up there, show like outlet, shower outlets. And uh, I don't know, my wife... Did you feel a smell there or not? Smell in the crematoria. I, I felt the smell and I couldn't go through and I felt it's uh, human burning flesh smell. Now, probably it wasn't, but it was something I associated it with such and I just couldn't go further because then I felt almost like sick, I had to stop. And the camp, they had uh, all kind of monument, monument built to, to people who are uh, gassed and, and executed there from different countries, from Yugoslavian government, the Hungarian government, the Polish government, the American Liberation Front put up great monuments over there. And there is a church, a very... There is, there is a cemetery with all crosses in it and with ??? And it was quite an experience, which naturally you can imagine how I felt when I went through there, crying like a baby because uh, still remembering all those thing and asking the question, how could it happen, how the world let it happen and uh, nobody gives a damn. And still, even today situation as such do exist again, after that horrible Holocaust, because after all, what happened in Cambodia, killing two, three million people or in Vietnam. It's, uh... What the difference how you die. I mean if they kill you, still, the outcome's still the same. There's still genocide going on in the world. The question ask of you, what did it taught us? Not to happen again. It's happening in front of our eyes again.
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