Before I made a trip to the former Mauthausen concentration camp several years ago, I consulted several travel guide books. The guidebooks all recommended that visitors to the former camp should not stay in the town of Mauthausen, implying that this was an evil place where one would not sleep well at night. Another town, several miles away, was recommended. Against this advice, I decided to rent a hotel room in the town of Mauthausen. As it turned out, Mauthausen was the most beautiful town that I’ve ever seen.
Today, when I read here about a new documentary film entitled Six Million and One, I remembered the town. According to the news article: “The first image one sees in David Fisher’s new documentary Six Million and One is a crumbling stone doorway bridged by a spider web. The visual irony is striking, with the rough yellow stone breaking down, the wispy lacework sturdy and undamaged. That irony is, perhaps, at the center of Fisher’s film.”
Spider web door on Chalet Wedl in Mauthausen, Austria
Chalet Wedl in the town of Mauthausen, Austria faces the Danube river
You can see more photos of the town of Mauthausen on my website here.
I am not sure how the irony of the spider web door fits into the documentary; the buildings in the Mauthausen camp are also beautiful.
Door in Mauthausen concentration camp
Mauthausen concentration camp
Mauthausen Commandant Franz Ziereis
You can see more photos of the former Mauthausen concentration camp on my website here.
Both of David Fisher’s parents survived the Holocaust. His father Joseph was a prisoner at the Gusen and Gunskirchen sub-camps of Mauthausen. You can read about the Gusen sub-camps of Mauthausen on my website here. The Gusen camps were an end destination for some of the prisoners who were death marched out of Auschwitz on January 18, 1945. However, Joseph Fisher might have been one of the Hungarian Jews who were sent to Auschwitz in the Spring of 1944 and then transferred immediately to Gusen and Gunskirchen to work in the munitions factories. He probably never had the opportunity to see the beautiful town of Mauthausen, nor the Mauthausen main camp. You can read about the liberation of Mauthausen on my website here.
So what does Joseph Fisher’s story have to do with the spider web door in the town of Mauthausen?
Mauthausen is a very beautiful place. I spent a few days there back in 2010, with the Ortner family. Great place, great people, and much beauty than most people give it credit for. Prior to visiting, I would recommend very highly, the book by Haunschmied, Mills, and Durda – it offers a magnificent insight into what happened there during the time of the TR. Of course, there is much more to Mauthausen than it’s history . . . but one must go there to discover this. Additionally, in 2013, I am told the Bergkristall tunnels on the outskirts of Gusen will finally be open to the public. I enjoyed my time in Mauthausen so much back then, that I can’t wait make a return trip – hopefully some day very soon . . .
Comment by N.C. Wyeth — October 31, 2012 @ 11:59 am
From the Jewish Week’s review of the film Six Million and One… “Shortly after he gets into a wrangle with David about seeing the gas chambers there, the two have an exchange that produces dialogue worthy of Woody Allen at his most mordant….The four Fishers are genuinely likeable people and their struggle to understand and master their feelings is painful and worthy of the seriousness with which the film treats it. (Indeed, I would say that the position of second- and third-generation survivors is a subject that hasn’t been sufficiently explored by filmmakers.) But somehow one feels that the last half of this film is neither the time nor the place to do it.
“Second- and third-generation survivors” – a perfect example of the semantic legerdemain employed by the Amalgamated Holocaust Industry Workmen of North America (AHIW Local 49).
Comment by who dares wings — October 15, 2012 @ 9:59 am
How could they have been marched to death when the prisoners at, say, Auschwitz, were given a choice to either leave with the Germans or stay behind and be liberated by the Red army at the end of the war? Elie Wiesel chose to leave with his captors even after having watched them throwing live babies onto fire pits full of smoking corpses. Daniel Goldhagen is playing with semantics. Language is very important in sustaining untruths about the Holocaust.
Comment by who dares wings — October 14, 2012 @ 5:29 pm
“The Gusen camps were an end destination for some of the prisoners who were death marched out of Auschwitz on January 18, 1945.” What exactly does “death marched” mean? Does it mean prisoners were marched to death, or just marched out of a “death camp.”? If it wasn’t a “death camp’” that the prisoners were marched of wouldn’t the word “evacuated” be more apropos?
Comment by who dares wings — October 14, 2012 @ 10:55 am
According to the official Holocaust story, the term “death march” means that the prisoners were marched from one place to another as a means of killing them. Prisoners who were marched out of a camp that was not a “death camp” were also marched as a means of killing them; for example, the prisoners who were marched out of Dachau. Daniel Goldhagen explained this in his book “Hitler’s Willing Executioners: Ordinary Germans and the Holocaust.” If you don’t agree with the theory that prisoners were marched as a means of killing them, you are a “Holocaust denier.”
Comment by furtherglory — October 14, 2012 @ 12:01 pm
I’m hoping Carlo Mattagno will publish a book examining the documentary and scientific evidence on the claimed Nazi execution method of “marching”.
Comment by The Black Rabbit of Inlé — October 14, 2012 @ 8:11 pm