Mauthausen

In 1938 Hitler's Germany annexed Austria, creating the Anschluss and bringing Austria into WWII. The Mauthausen Concentration camp functioned in Austria from 1938 to 1945. Over 100,000 people died in the camp during these years, or about half of its 206,000 inmates.

The camp has been left largely as it was found upon Allied liberation in 1945. A walking guide provides commentary on the different sites of Nazi atrocities, and a museum documents the history of the camp as well as other concentration camps in Germany and Poland.

I had studied the Holocaust and the problem of evil in A Light in the Darkness, my capstone course at Augustana. Reading the stories of survivors, watching the films, and discussing the shoah's implications for humankind had prepared me for the visit, but standing on the grounds of the camp had a greater impact than anything I had read or seen on screen.

In response to this manifestation of evil in modern history, we declared, "Never again," but genocide is happening again, and again and again. Evil persists. Right now genocide is raging largely unchecked in the Sudan, and the international community is turning a blind eye. The Human Rights Council is woefully absent, and "never again" sounds suspiciously similar to "it's not so bad" or "what can we do?"

Gary Kasparov, chess grand master turned human rights champion, wrote in a recent Foreign Policy article: "Nations that value democracy and human life now control the greater part of the world's resources as well as its military power. If they band together and refuse to coddle the rogue regimes and sponsors of terror, their authority will be irresistible." Another reminder of our potential for good, just as the Mauthausen and its ilk stand as a reminder of our potential for evil.