Wednesday, June 20, 2012

Mauthausen forced labour camp


Today in Social Sciences we have seen our exams about Alphonse XIII, Fascist Italy and Nazi Germany. After that Paqui has said that we have to give her the 4º of ESO book and if we want we can take the 3º ESO book for us. Today some classmates have done the make-up exam because they failed the first one.

After that Paqui has said that she is going to put us a video about 8 spanish survivors that were confined in Mauthausen, a forced labour camp, not an extermination one, in Austria. In this concentration camp there were 140,000 people, 7,000 spanish, and we the camp was destroyed only there were 2,100 survivors.
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/5/51/KZ_Mauthausen.jpg/280px-KZ_Mauthausen.jpg

In this video we could see the experiences in this force labour camp of 8 spanish people ( nowadays only 2 of the 8 men are still alive, they are Manuel Alfonso and Ramón Milá, because the documentary was filmed more or less in 2000). This 8 men told some experiences (good and bad ones) about their time there. Some interesting things that impressed me were the photos, and when one of the men said that he lived near the electric fence, and he could listen to the electricity passing along the fence, and he said “is the death that is passing”. This people received only 1,000 calories and the normal rate for a person during a day is 3,000 calories. They ate for example turnips potatoes, slice of bread, sausage… The people in Mauthausen had to wake up very early and they went to a granite quarry to work there. Some people died there because of their tiredness, and other ones for example were killed by throwing them from a cliff. The people from the video also talk about their clothes. In this clothes they have an special symbol to recognized them, for example the Spanish ones had an S inside a triangle, that means in German “Rot Spanier”, that in English means “Red Spanish”.

http://www.andalan.es/wp-content/uploads/logo_republicanos_espanoles_mauthausen.jpg
Near the Mauthausen camp there was the Gusen, this was a Kommando were they took the people to kill them. In this camp they received only half of food, and they didn’t have any clothes. 
In Hartheim Castle there were the gas chamber, but they use a lot the crematorium.

One thing that had shocked me was that one of these men, Joan de Diego had only 4 fingers in one hand!
All this things were horrible! I like the documentary because you learn a lot, but is too sad and shocking for me… I also like the aria of Puccini's Tosca: E lucevan le stelle, ( one of my favourite) that appeared in this video.

http://www.forumperlamemoria.org/local/cache-vignettes/L220xH280/jpg_Mauthausen_3-b3d8f.jpg
Then the bell rang and Paqui said that if we like this documentary, and she has collected the make-up exams.

We have learned one new word: to broadcast- emitir.

Sorry for the delay, but that's musicians life!

Bye bye

1 comment:

Paqui Pérez Fons said...

Hello Enrique,

These are my corrections:

- We can keep the 3º ESO book.

- 140,000 prisoners died at Mauthausen. There were more prisoners there.

- "Spanish" in capital letters.
- When the camp was released....It was not destroyed. It still exist and can be visited.

- Forced labour.

- The calories a worker in the quarry needed were 3,000, but they only received around 1,000.

- In these clothes they had a special symbol to recognize them.

- Near Mauthausen there was another camp called Gusen.

- In Hartheim Castle... they used a lot the crematorium. Remember the smell to roasted meat the prisoners told about.

- All these things were...

- I also liked "E Lucevane stelle", Puccini´s aria on "Tosca".

- Paqui has said if we liked this documentary

That´s all. I hope you correct the mistakes.