Prof. Lazarovits,(86) a holocaust survivor and I
at his book presentation in Vienna:
Journey through hell

A Hungarian memorial remembering the
Hungarians who lost their lives in KZ Mauthausen
 

Mauthausen, December 2009

In the beginning of December 2009 I attended a book presentation by professor Ernö Lazarovits in Vienna. He is a Hungarian Jew and he survived the Holocaust in Austria before the end of the war.
Ernő Lazarovits was sent to the death camp of Mauthausen, but he was freed in May of 1945 and could return to Hungary. He teaches as a professor of philosophy and holds offices in various organizations. He firmly believes in a dialogue between the different religions. His life is exemplary. Professor Lazarovits has survived the “death march” and the loss of his father and many loved ones. He wrote about his experiences in his book in Hungarian, entitled Vándorlása pokolban (Journey through Hell). He actively participates in the struggle against anti-Semitism and discrimination, believing that an attack against Jews is an affront to democracy itself. His life is characterized by his love for his family and religion.
His love and concern is not only for his Jewish religion alone, but for other religions and traditions of faiths, too.
Ernö Lazarovits’ message to the world is that a human tragedy like this one should never occur again.

The Concentration Camp today: Mauthausen was established on August 8, 1938, and
liberated on May 5, 1945 by the US Army. The day after the camp was liberated it
was known that 122,000 people had died at Mauthausen.

Ernö Lazarovits signed a personal copy I bought from him his words: “With Love and Friendship.” I felt so honored.
The lady who translated the book into German told the audience during the presentation that the translation, from Hungarian to German, was emotionally very difficult, because of his experiences during his “death march” in Austria.

I started reading the book and it was difficult for me to stop reading it. For me it was the first time to be confronted with a Jewish survivor of the holocaust. Quite often I had to cry when professor Ernö Lazarovits talked about his “journey through hell”. When I reached the part of  his writings where he entered the death camp of Mauthausen, I felt a strong urge that I had to visit this former concentration camp.
I’m a German. I was born after the war in 1951, and for me to do some research about World War II and all that Germany did against the world and especially the Jewish race, is always very heartbreaking and very emotional.
After I had met with Ernö Lazarovits, some two weeks later, I decided to travel from Vienna to Mauthausen.

March of Death: at these marches many Jews were shot in great numbers in Austrian towns.
The worst Styrian massacre was committed by the “Eisenerz Volkssturm Group” - more than
200 Jews were slaughtered near the highest point of Pass “Präbichle”; here you can see the Memorial dedicated to these victims.According to the estimations, some 22.000 people lost their lives during the “March of Death” in Austria.Ernö Lazarovits and other Jewish prisoners passed by this place.Actually until the arrival of a large group of Hungarian Jews in the last months of Mauthausen, the Jews only formed a minority in the Camp, that’s because many of them were gassed in the extermination camps.
Ernö Lazarovits never gave up in his death march driven by the SS;
he proved to be victories by the end of the war.

Mauthausen Concentration Camp (also known as Mauthausen-Gusen) was a group of 49 Nazi concentration camps situated around the small town of Mauthausen in Upper Austria, about 20 km east of the city of Linz.

I took me a two hour drive from Vienna. It was morning, it was very cold, and it snowed a little bit on the way. I decided to go this time, because I knew not so many visitors will be there touring the concentration camp. I felt spirit world wanted me to go there under such condition.
I have never visited a Nazi concentration camp before. So I was very anxious and nervous.

The beds of the barracks: The 32 wood-made barracks in KZ Mauthausen were equipped
with beds and closets which were not enough for the high number of prisoners. One room
was filled with up to 1,000 prisoners and the beds were used by 2-3 people.

When I arrived at the Mauthausen camp, I was deeply shocked and felt a tremendous sadness. I had only known such horrible scenes from holocaust movies.
I bought a ticket and went inside the camp where most inmates never came out alive. The innocent who died here because of the Nazi terror, could never see their fathers, mothers, brothers, sisters and loved ones again.
While I was standing there, history became alive for me and it was very painful.
It is a terrible feeling just to imagine what had happened to the people. This innocent people here had less value than animals. The German SS tortured, killed, starved and worked the prisoners to death. All the time my heart ached and I was always close to tears. My eyes were wet and ready to burst into tears.

I was guided by the spirit world to visit each barrack in the camp to get a feeling of what it was like at this dark time of history. It felt like my spirit went into the past, where all of these inhuman and barbaric crimes were happening. I wanted to experience, the suffering people who went through this death camp of Mauthausen. I was all alone, striding through the camp, just a few visitors were there as well. In my heart I repented as much I could do, for what my country, Germany, had done in the darkest time of German history.
German history gave birth to the religious reformer Martin Luther, poets like Schiller, Goethe and the great composer Beethoven, just to name a few.
And then Germany gave birth to such evil Nazi leaders in the last century.
How disappointing! What a contradiction in German history!

The entrance to the basement execution room: It took less than two minutes for
prisoners to be brought into this room, shot and their corpses being removed
by inmates from the crematorium commando.

When I entered the execution basement I was hesitant to go inside. I was totally scared.
Entering the site I could hardly breathe. I felt very tense. I only knew these pictures and stories about executions from holocaust movies.
And now I stood here on a spot where 65 years ago, this cruelty of human barbarism did actually take place. I wasn’t able to think clear and reasonable.

I entered the gas chamber where many thousand people were gassed to death. The next room I entered was the place where prisoners were hanged at the gallon. The next room was the death chamber. And in the next room were the crematory ovens. How horrible. How was it possible that “a human being” commits such cruelty to another human being, I asked myself.

Why did this happen? Why? Why?
I’m a believer in the living God, but I asked this question: “Why didn’t You, God, intervene and stroke those evil SS soldiers? Why didn’t you wipe them out?”
I was in tears and praying, then I felt very strongly an impulse from the spirit world that I should place the small picture of True Parents, which I have always carried with me for the last ten years, in one of the crematory ovens. I noticed that many religious items had been placed in the crematory oven.
Then I prayed that all those killed here in Mauthausen might go to high places in the spirit world and be comforted by Heaven. Tears were flowing from my eyes.

Mauthausen was the only Category III Concentration Camp, the classification with the most brutal detention conditions.
By the summer of 1940, Mauthausen-Gusen had become one of the largest labor camp complexes in German-controlled Europe.
Almost 200,000 people from practically every European country, as well as non-European countries, were deported to Mauthausen on account of their political activities, their "criminal record", and religious convictions, homosexuality, for "racist" reasons or as prisoners of war. More than half of them died there.
From 1940 until 1945 some 119,000 people were murdered at Mauthausen, whether by execution, starvation, exhaustion or diseases.
The “Amicale de Mauthausen” discovered that 198,000 people of 25 different nationalities (10,000 of them French) were deported to Mauthausen. About 38,000 of these were Jews.
Only approximately 80,000 survived the Holocaust in Mauthausen-Gusen.

An Italian Memorial Wall at Mauthausen: There are many national memorials to
remember the 119,000 people who were murdered there.

The granite quarry below the camp: The stairs leading down to the quarry were known as the "Stairs of Death"; uneven, rocky and dangerous with almost 200 steps, the prisoners had to walk up and down them with blocks of granite that weighed up to 60 kilograms (about 110 pounds). Some of the steps were one meter high. The SS guards would taunt, hit the prisoners with their guns and chase their German shepherd dogs on them while they were walking up and down. If one prisoner stumbled, they all went tumbling down like dominoes. Of course, this was extremely frequent, as the prisoners were fed about 1500 calories per day and, like I mentioned, were carrying huge blocks of granite. They have since then evened and smoothed the steps for the visitors, but still we had a hard time getting up those stairs, and we weren't carrying anything and were all well-fed. The SS guards would also push prisoners at the top of the stairs, intentionally knocking everyone over, for their own amusement.

Finally, the 11th US Tank Division, on May 5, 1945 liberated Mauthausen concentration camp and the remaining prisoners.
It was the last concentration camp being liberated by the Allied Forces.
Thank God that the brave Allied Forces, like the USA, France, England and Russia got control over Nazi Germany.
But I asked myself again: “Why couldn’t these Allied Nations come years earlier, crush Nazi Germany and liberate Europe? Why only after years of German terror?
Wasn’t this known to those brave Allied Nations and their political leadership?”
Yes it is true; so many questions accompanied me during my visit in the death camp.

The estimations are that between 1939 -1945, the Nazis established some 15,000 camps in the occupied countries in Europe.

Why weren’t there more German people like Oscar Schindler, a NSDAP member, who later understood Hitler’s senseless war in Europe and rescued 1200 Jews from the gas chambers of the Auschwitz concentration camp in Poland?
The world, the Germans, and I value Claus Von Stauffenberg, who tried to kill Adolf Hitler. There were others too, trying to kill the evil dictator.
I asked myself sincerely: “Would I have done the same brave actions like Stauffenberg or Oscar Schindler?” I salute them from the bottom of my heart.
According to “National Geographic”, there were 42 discovered plots to kill Hitler and none of them was successful. It seems, like Hitler got all the protection from the devil and survived all of these attempts on his life, to stay years in power, until he finally killed himself.

What I learned from Mauthausen, is that as far as we think we have come, we still have a long way to go. There is still a lot of learning to be done.
There still is a long road to go, until we have a lasting peace established on our beautiful planet, mother earth.
Today, there are still many dictators in this world, and they are forcefully and brutally oppressing their own people to remain in power. Again, I came to the conclusion that the means of military force is still necessary to protect the free world from this treatment.

Reading the book from Ernö Lazarovits “Journey through Hell”, a holocaust survivor, and seeing the former concentration camp of Mauthausen, I can’t help but be grateful for my live.
And when the difficulties arise, there are nothing compared to what the people had to endure during Hitler’s concentration camps.

Important Decoration of the French Republic bestowed on Sir Ernö Lazarovits.

H.E. the French Ambassador and wife, Sir Ernö Lazarovits, 86 years old (second from left),
H.G. the Prime Minister of the Federation and Lady Anna Popper.

The Magisterial House of the Sovereign Order of Saint John of Jerusalem, Knights of Malta, Federation of the Autonomous Priories, (KMFAP) is proud to inform that on the 25th of March 2009 our Knight, Sir Ernö Lazarovits, was decorated by H.E. Mr. René Roudaut, the Ambassador of the French Republic in Budapest, acting on behalf of H.E. the President of France, Mr. Nicolas Sarkozy.