long live dignity; dignity forever!

7/31/2019 Long live dignity; dignity forever!

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Long live dignity; dignity forever!

On my carpet with lantern to foot, n' floating

of a May dawn on along o'er the Danube river.

Now coming up on Mauthausen to my right:

a small market town in Austria.

Veering inland with passing o'er beautiful fields,

lovely houses, n' endless splendid scenery.

Seeing what appears to be a runway of some sort,

but now knowing it to be something else.

Yes, it's what remains of the notorious

Konzentrationslager Mauthausen:

Mauthausen Concentration Camp.

And there over is the todesstiege; death steps;

death stairs, death rise n' fall up out of

the Wiener Graben; the granite quarry,

n' connecting it with the camp barracks.

From up here they appear to be like any other

stone steps in a countryside park, for the quarry

with it's three pools of water is all May green.

Could never imagine that it was once the scene

of desperate happenings; a murder impasse

for thousands of men of all ages.

I'm not lingering here; no, I'm not for too painful

it is even to my knowledge of what took place.

Need to float along for memories albeit they be without

personal experience are hurting me way too much.Knowledge of what happened in such places,


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n' many such places there were is not comparable

to the personal experience of having been there.

Floating on o'er neatly kept rectangular houses

n' numerous fenceless tilled fields.

Thankfully the thoughts are remaining behind.Coming in o'er the town of Sankt Georgen an der Gusen,

n' crossing over the L569 highway, n' there to my left

is a tennis court n' football pitch.

The town looks lovely; a very pretty Austrian town.

Will now float on back o'er the Danube, n' follow with

its meandering through the beautiful countryside to Linz.

Wha what! Wha what was that; who, who was that?

A hoarse voice is shouting up from somewhere below:

Hello; hello, hello you there on the carpet?

The carpet has stopped in its floating.

Hello; hello, hello you there on the carpet?

Hello; hello, hello, yes?

Hello, you there on the carpet; have you time awhile

to stay n' listen to my pitiful story?

The voice is coming up from the town of Sankt Georgen,

yet, if this doesn't sound a bit strange, it seems rather to be

coming up as it were from somewhere beneath the town.

Good new day; good new day, where are you?

I'm down here; deep way down here I am

in a dark tunnel beneath the town.

And in a moment, I'm finding myself standing

in a tunnel, n' without my carpet n' lantern.

Pitch dark it is though seeing clearly I am.

Half sitting half leaning against a rock is a man;

a haggard, cadaverous man hardly of skin n' bones.

He's without a beard or hair on his head.

The eyes are sunken back into their sockets.

In a moment of closing my eyes n' wishing, wasn't I given

to seeing you floating on your lantern lit carpet.

Not knowing if you were real or of my dreams,

I began to call n' call up to you, n' somehow I natively

knew if you could hear me you would heed me.

Who are you?

I'm Father Sen Abhaile of Ireland.

I'm of Ireland myself, Father.

Ah, sure that well explains the native feeling then.

How came you to be here, Father?


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In the spring of '41, n' I in me 56th year of living,

wasn't I happily conducting onsite research

on the history of the Colegio de los Irlandeses

in beautiful Salamanca of Spain, when I was

taken prisoner along with many Spaniards,

n' we were brought all the way here to Austria.The reason given for their arrest was that they

had resisted the soldier Francisco Franco y Bahamonde.

I was arrested because I was a priest n' scholar.

All of us were classed AZRs - Asozialer/Reichsbehrde:

asocial prisoners delivered by Reich authorities.

They drove us over land as they would a herd of cattle;

transported us they did as goods in railway carriages,

with we eventually winding up in KZ-Mauthausen where

immediately they put us to work in the granite quarry.

Of the seven hundred of us that were taken in Spainonly four hundred n' seven-two made it

to KZ-Mauthausen; the rest having been murdered

on the way, n' their bodies discarded as nothing.

Among the group were eight elderly Spanish priests.

And within the first three weeks in KZ-Mauthausen

seven of them passed way due to the harshness of the labour;

due to the severity of the cruelty inflicted upon them

by the SS guards n' the capos.

Two died on the todesstiege; one was shot for refusing

to push other prisoners to their death off the edge

of the quarry; the place which the SS guards jokingly

referred to as "Fallschirmspringen" - the spot to

parachute down on to the quarry floor without a parachute.

Another died under a "dolmetscher" - a whip, by order of

the camp commander's adjutant, SS-Hauptsturmfhrer Zutter.

Another was hanged, n' another flung by SS guards

on to the electrified barbed wire surround fence.

And the seventh was drowned in a barrel of water

by two capos while the rest of us were forced to watch.And then there was but two of us priests remaining.

I've no idea how we managed to survive there in the quarry,

for the work was unbelievably hard: braking stones,

n' carrying them, n' dropping them while being beaten

to pick them up again, n' to carry them up the steps to the top.

A fifty kilo rock needs a stomach as much as a back

n' legs to carry it; nothing in the stomach n' the legs

n' the back have the greatest of difficulty.

The strain is felt throughout the body;

the eyes are seeing blind, n' the gums are bleedingwhile the collarbones are ever becoming more exposed.


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Oh, the terrible rasping in the throat groaning from yourself,

n' from those in front, beside, n' behind you.

Thrice it happened that SS guards kicked someone nearing

the top of the steps which caused a falling of all back down.

And they laughed n' laughed at us as we struggled there below:a pile of bones n' rocks knotted together by sinews.

Back on our feet; stepping on one bloodied step, then a second.

Some days I counted 186 steps, another189, n' some a thousand.

All day long were heard the cries of men; blasts, rock breaking,

shouting of the SS guards n' capos, swishing of whips,

n' the shots, the shots, the shots, n' the shots.

And there were the all too familiar screams announcing

that insanity had finally taken hold of a man.

A donkey braying in a caravan would sound prettier

than the nightmarish screams of those once healthy men.

These sounds went on all day long n' deep into the night.

And the night too had its sounds; the uncontrollable sobbing.

And there was the wolfish barking of the dog named 'Lord'.

And the raw smells of blood, filth, sickness, smoke, n' death

was ever in the nostrils; ever revolting the mind n' stomach.

If a thousand men were sent out to work of a day in the quarry,

maybe seven to eight hundred would make it back alive

to the barracks that night; to those freezing windowless barracks.

It was extermination by hard labour, n' by any other means

at the discretion n' disposal of the merchant, n' carpenter:

SS-Standartenfuehrer Ziereis - the camp commander who took

his orders from either the violinist SS-Gruppenfhrer Heydrich

or the lawyer SS-Obergruppenfhrer Kaltenbrunner, who

in turn took theirs from the chicken farmer Reichsfuehrer-SS

n' Chef der Deutschen Polizei Himmler, who in turn took his

from the soldier, artist, writer Fhrer und Reichskanzler Hitler, who

in turn was fully allowed to be what he wanted to be by the global

collective of business, political, n' religious leaders.

With the greatest of ease was he given free rein to do as he pleasedby the We Leave Things Happen n' Respond Way Too Late.

And beneath the commander n' his adjutants were the SS guards,

n' the capos; who in peaceful times were most likely ordinary

everyday people, but who now finding themselves encaged in do

or die orders, n' engulfed in dreadful fears for self-preservation,

did day n' night behave as if they were willingly overdosing on

some kind of freely available morality insensitive hallucinogen.

Yet, mingling amongst them too were those whose hearts were

as black as chimney soot, n' whose relentless pleasure was

none other than inflecting the greatest of discomfort, pain, n' grief.


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Then sometime in the spring of '44 many of us were marched

across the fields from the Mauthausen camp, n' here to

Sankt Georgen an der Gusen; to be more precise to

the Gusen II Concentration Camp which to our heartbreak

we were soon to discovery was upgraded hell on earth.

I felt alone there; alone there without the one friend

I'd had since we had been taken back in Salamanca.

Some nights before we left for KZ-Gusen II,

the sadist of the camp: SS-Hauptsturmfuhrer Bachmayer

for the sheer fun of it had ordered him outside into minus

15 degrees centigrade temperatures, where he then

splashed him with cold water before leaving the helpless

forty-nine year old man there to perish to death.

Others, n' I had offered to be sent out in his place, but

Bachmayer wasn't interested in having his way recast.

My friend; our friend, Father Amadeo Mara Snchez.

Unlike KZ-Mauthausen, in KZ-Gusen II we were sent down

here into the tunnels to work on military aircraft assembly.

I'd never in my life done any mechanical work; loved books,

but for survival sake I said I could make rivets.

Sometimes, I was able to say mass in rock niches like this

one here for a handful of fellow prisoners who could be

trusted to keep it a secret, at least for as long as they could.

And then one fatal day, someone in the group, n' surely it was

in a moment of weakness n' forgetfulness betrayed us to a capo;

betrayed us he did for a cigarette butt.

Five, including our betrayer were shot on the spot,

n' I was taken to a roll call clearing in the tunnels

where I was made a living spectacle for all to witness.

What they didn't do to me before they finally

took my body away from my spirit I can't tell you

for the words themselves refuse to come to me.

Most people have their spirit leave their body,

but in my case my body was taken from my spirit,

for such was the barbarity they inflicted upon me.It was as if they were taking every ounce

of hatred they ever had for Christianity out on me.

All I could think of as it was happening were the priests

back in 17th century Ireland who were persecuted,

n' mercilessly murdered just for being a priest.

And I experienced for the first time Jesus suffering;

knowing him to be me, n' me to be him.

For these past sixty-eight years, I've been wandering

in these tunnels giving solace to the thousands of sprits

that are still trapped down here beneath the living above.


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The landscape above no doubt has changed, n' no doubt

people have forgotten, n' have been getting on with their lives.

Beautiful houses no doubt have been built in places where once

witnessed tremendous suffering, sorrow, n' death.

And perhaps even camp administrative buildings themselves

have been renovated n' are being lived in as if they hadnever been occupied by the worst of our humankind.

Please; please let not the memory of what happened

in KZ-Gusen II, in KZ-Mauthausen, n' in the numerous

other camps scattered throughout Austria, n' across

the continent be forgotten.

And if there existed around the world others of alike,

then let these also not be forgotten.

Keep in the memories the memories, n' avoid any

tendency to pretend they n' we never even existed.

Let there by joyful living, but no denial of the historical facts.

Move on with life sure enough, but let not the memory

of we individual people be erased from hearts.

We're not numbers or statistics; no we're one by one by one

individual human beings who were not meant to have

what happened to us happen. It was all preventable.

We're all alike in having family n' culture backgrounds;

even those who done us wrong came not from outside

the human race; no, they were as ordinary in their backgrounds

as anyone ever living in any place in the world.

However, that which distinguishes us from each other

is our dignity for each n' every human being; respect

for human dignity being the touchstone of truth.

Can I do anything for you, Father, n' your fellow spirits?

Yes; lead us home to our native places; lead me back to Ireland,

n' let us to be resting in peace with our ancestors.

Then come, Father, let us away from out of this dreadful place!

And with lovingly calling forth into the depths, tens of thousandsof spirits did with delight ascend into the fresh clear new day sky,

n' like a great flock of swallows followed on behind the carpet.

And by place by place did each n' every spirit happily descend,

n' joyfully enter into the welcoming bosom of their ancestors.

Now rest you all in the blessed fragrances of your native place.

Long live dignity; dignity forever!

12 May 2012 RmSweeney

Painting courtesy: http://allart.biz/photos/image/vasnetsov_flying_carpet.html


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Photographs courtesy: http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/KZ_Mauthausen

More information: http://www.gusen.org


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long live dignity; dignity forever!

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