Memorial Mauthausen

The memorial in honor of the victims of camp Mauthausen from 1958 was designed by Gérard Choain. Mauthausen was notorious for its long, high staircase with 186 uneven steps. Forced labourers, mainly Russians and gypsies, had to drag up chunks of granite from a lower quarry, a task to which most of them eventually succumbed. That was also the only function of the stairs where SSérs made bets on who would succumb first. The monument depicts a naked emaciated man in bronze, weighed down by a heavy load of granite at the foot of a seemingly endless staircase. The bronze statue is by M. Hohwiller. The artist's choice was to reconcile sobriety and cruelty. The monument consists of seven blocks of granite from the quarry of Mauthausen, 25 km from Linz in Austria.

Inscription on the right side is:
" Mauthausen, Camp d'extermination hitlérien. 12.500 Français y furent déportés, 10.000 y furent exterminés. Les 186 marches de l'escalier de la carrière furent le calvaire de ceux qui devaient sous les coups des SS les gravir en portant de lourdes pierres. Ce monument perpétue leur mémoire et leur combat pour l'indépendance française. Souvenez-vous. "

Translated it says:
"Mauthausen, Hitler's extermination camp. There 180,000 men and women were imprisoned, 154,000 died being tortured, gassed, shot, hanged. So that their sacrifice contributes to stopping the road to oppression forever and to opening the way for humanity to a better future in friendship and peace between peoples. Keep remembering."

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