What’s left to say?

Mauthausen, Austria The day started innocently enough with a farmers’ market in the central square in front of our hotel.

It was raining and very cold, however, which perfectly suited our destination for the day — the Mauthausen Memorial slave-labor and death camp that functioned from 1938 to 1945. The first prisoners there were Hitler’s political opponents and all dissenters to his autocratic rule, then it went on to house Jews and other “undesirables,” as well as POWs from Eastern Europe.

We have been to death camps, where people were sent to be exterminated. Here they were sent to be worked to death, and about 100,000 of them were. One of the fortunate survivors was Simon Wiesenthal, who dedicated his life to hunting down Nazis and making sure they paid for their crimes.

The work done here primarily centered on excavation of a granite rock quarry, which one can look down into. Prisoners walked down a long road to the quarry and came back with rocks on their backs — or were killed on the spot.

Memorials now dot the area, and the aptly named “Stairway of Death” is currently closed. But the freezing rain today made the thought of climbing up that road from the quarry even more painful.

The large open area inside the camp was used for roll call several times a day; some original barracks remain, and were just as cold inside as out.

One barrack is now a museum, with relics and memories carefully recorded, including a joyful picture of the camp on liberation day in 1945.

All in all, this was an incredibly painful experience, made even more so while this history seems to be starting to repeat itself in my own country. We were supposed to “never forget,” and, yet, look what is boiling up all over again.

A tough day.