The Parachutist’s Wall and the Stairs of Death: The Holocaust Labor Genocide
How do you properly describe the most repulsively gruesome genocide known to man? There are no words in existence that can express the horrors of the Holocaust. Led by Adolf Hitler, the Nazis swept through countries and took millions of people as prisoners. During this approximately seven year period, many people of varying races were exterminated through terrible methods of torture. KZ Gusen, a German sub-camp, laid claim to two infamous structures: “The Parachutist’s Wall” and the “Stairs of Death”. Both of these constructions were utilized by the SS as murder sites for the prisoners. It is important to know where these structures were located, how they were used …show more content…
They would often place bets on which prisoner would make it to the top first, and also cheered on or took part in the beating of fallen prisoners. For example, in 1944, a group of soldiers led forty-seven Dutch, American, and English prisoners barefooted down the flight of stairs and to the bottom. Then, the soldiers began to conduct a game of the prisoners’ labor. The guards would give all the men a piece of granite to heave to the top of the quarry. In “The Stairs of Death”, the author explained that, “On their first journey up the 186 steps they forced the men to carry twenty-five kilogram stones on their backs.” For each successful climb and descent, the guards would increase the weight of the load. They would watch on gleefully as the inmates lugged the stones up and down the cliffside. If the prisoner fell, they would brutally beat him. By the end of the day, all forty seven prisoners had been killed by this treatment. SS soldiers would also amuse themselves by acting merciful to the convicts, only to kill them once they had let their guard down. In an article written by Julian Roberts, Aba Lewit, a Mauthausen survivor, recalled that “Nazi guards offered starving workers a chance to sit down while they were hauling stones up a stairway - only to shoot them dead if they said 'yes'”. In this example, the emaciated workers would gratefully accept the offer, thinking that for once, …show more content…
That meant that they burned as many records of their slaughtering and concealed as many corpses as they could. Barbara Gluck mentioned that the forced leaps of the prisoners were “recorded in official camp documents as ‘suicide by jumping.’” Thus, the documents were worded so that the inmates would seem to be at fault, and not the SS. Despite their efforts to conceal their crimes, many Nazi guards were imprisoned by the Americans after the invasion of the Allies. Then, under less barbaric conditions, the Americans condemned the Nazi guards to the labor and ridicule that they had forced on the concentration camp prisoners. The former SS soldiers were forced to work in the Mauthausen quarry, guarded by American soldiers. Afterwards, the Weiner-Graben quarry, along with “The Parachutist’s Wall” and “The Stairs of Death” were seized by the Soviet Union. Years later, the concentration camp was retouched and turned into a Holocaust memorial. As said by Bernadac in “Stairs of Death (Todesstiege) — the 186 steps at Mauthausen”, “Those who visit the Mauthausen quarry today, don’t see the same thing, for since then, the steps have been redone – a real stairway, cemented, and regular.” Because the steps have been redone, the public can no longer see what daily life was like for the prisoners. The view of the stairs now would not be able to show how the inmates suffered everyday as they
How do you properly describe the most repulsively gruesome genocide known to man? There are no words in existence that can express the horrors of the Holocaust. Led by Adolf Hitler, the Nazis swept through countries and took millions of people as prisoners. During this approximately seven year period, many people of varying races were exterminated through terrible methods of torture. KZ Gusen, a German sub-camp, laid claim to two infamous structures: “The Parachutist’s Wall” and the “Stairs of Death”. Both of these constructions were utilized by the SS as murder sites for the prisoners. It is important to know where these structures were located, how they were used …show more content…
They would often place bets on which prisoner would make it to the top first, and also cheered on or took part in the beating of fallen prisoners. For example, in 1944, a group of soldiers led forty-seven Dutch, American, and English prisoners barefooted down the flight of stairs and to the bottom. Then, the soldiers began to conduct a game of the prisoners’ labor. The guards would give all the men a piece of granite to heave to the top of the quarry. In “The Stairs of Death”, the author explained that, “On their first journey up the 186 steps they forced the men to carry twenty-five kilogram stones on their backs.” For each successful climb and descent, the guards would increase the weight of the load. They would watch on gleefully as the inmates lugged the stones up and down the cliffside. If the prisoner fell, they would brutally beat him. By the end of the day, all forty seven prisoners had been killed by this treatment. SS soldiers would also amuse themselves by acting merciful to the convicts, only to kill them once they had let their guard down. In an article written by Julian Roberts, Aba Lewit, a Mauthausen survivor, recalled that “Nazi guards offered starving workers a chance to sit down while they were hauling stones up a stairway - only to shoot them dead if they said 'yes'”. In this example, the emaciated workers would gratefully accept the offer, thinking that for once, …show more content…
That meant that they burned as many records of their slaughtering and concealed as many corpses as they could. Barbara Gluck mentioned that the forced leaps of the prisoners were “recorded in official camp documents as ‘suicide by jumping.’” Thus, the documents were worded so that the inmates would seem to be at fault, and not the SS. Despite their efforts to conceal their crimes, many Nazi guards were imprisoned by the Americans after the invasion of the Allies. Then, under less barbaric conditions, the Americans condemned the Nazi guards to the labor and ridicule that they had forced on the concentration camp prisoners. The former SS soldiers were forced to work in the Mauthausen quarry, guarded by American soldiers. Afterwards, the Weiner-Graben quarry, along with “The Parachutist’s Wall” and “The Stairs of Death” were seized by the Soviet Union. Years later, the concentration camp was retouched and turned into a Holocaust memorial. As said by Bernadac in “Stairs of Death (Todesstiege) — the 186 steps at Mauthausen”, “Those who visit the Mauthausen quarry today, don’t see the same thing, for since then, the steps have been redone – a real stairway, cemented, and regular.” Because the steps have been redone, the public can no longer see what daily life was like for the prisoners. The view of the stairs now would not be able to show how the inmates suffered everyday as they