In my post "Ebensee" I mentioned that I have been reading for my PhD while travelling to different places in Austria. As I was on the train to Ebensee, I was reading Dirk Lange's Trauma Recalled: Liturgy, Disruption, and Theology. The focus of this book is how. How do you put a traumatic event into words? How do you describe it? How do you recall it? How do you remember it and bring it about in repetition? He writes, "What does it mean to witness or remember an event when the truth of the event cannot be represented?" (69). This reading set me up for what I was about to experience in at the former concentration camp location in Ebensee.
Not much remains of the camp. There is the main entrance, the now cemetery which was and is the location of mass graves, and the tunnels in the mountains about a 5 minute walk away. The town has built up and on the camp. As I was walking around I thought back on Lange. How does one remember, continue to remember, when living amongst the shadows of the past? Seeing how the main gate goes across a street, and a car even drove through the gate as I was standing there, how can one forget?
I walked on to the cemetery. It isn't very big. There are signs to indicate what has been done to restore dignity to the victims, those they identified, and where they are buried. The cemetery also contains memorials from various countries who wished to commemorate those of their countrymen who died at this camp. What was interesting to me in light of reading Lange was to see the language that was used on the memorials. Some memorials used the word "victim," others "the murdered" or "the fallen" or "the dead." A few memorials didn't use words at all but either a sculpture or a picture depicting suffering. The memorial from the Netherlands was the only one to list all of the Dutch who died there and their date of birth. The inscriptions of some memorials were in the language of the country and in German, others were just in their own language.
"How is the unexpected remembered?" writes Lange (97). Language is so very important. When an event is wrought with so much despair, evil, and unknowns, what words do we use to incapsulate it? What words do we not use because they might denigrate those who experienced the event? What written or spoken language do we use to remember? Do we only use our language as a way to protect or do we also use their language so that they cannot say they do not know and then forget? Are words even good enough for this task of remembering?
I saw this play out as I looked at the memorials from the different countries. Granted, I am and American English speaker who had learned German trying to decipher what is on the memorials. A large part of language is culture and so the weight I give certain words may not be what was intended by native speakers decades ago. Some memorials simply used "the dead." Other memorials used words to indicate the people's roles or agency in their own deaths (victim, murdered, fallen). The Jewish memorial included the manner of death saying that the people were tortured. Some inscriptions were in German and the language of the country, but just as many were not. The cemetery is surrounded by the town of Ebensee. Was German included so that the Austrians would not have a reason to forget? Was German not included on the others as a way to protect the victims or a form of protest against the people who perpetrated the crimes? "You took their lives and you will have no part of them in death." The memorials that used art instead of words resonated with me the most. With such a horrible event, sometimes words cannot do justice to the experience and what remains. It was also interesting to see the differences in describing WWII. For some countries, the people in the camp died because of Nazism, for other countries they died in the cause against fascism. France wrote that the people died for the freedom of the world. Language matters.
I have included photos of some of the memorials below and translations of the inscriptions. Most of the translations, especially where there is no German, are courtesy of Google.
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This is what remains of the main gate. Lange wrote that traumatic events irrupt into life. To me this is a visual representation of that. For people who live there, this stone structure breaks into their everyday lives. The inscription: In memory of more than 8,000 people who died in the Ebensee concentration camp.
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| Dedicated to the memories of the Dutch victims of KDO Ebensee. |
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Azerbaijan remembers its sons and daughters who fell here in the fight against fascism.
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| The sons of Ukraine--who were victims in Ebensee concentration camp. |
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The base of the Soviet memorial. Inscription: To the Soviet citizens who died in the Ebensee concentration camp between 1943 and 1945.
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The inscriptions on this monument are in Hebrew, English, Polish, and German. Inscription: In blessed memory to our brothers, tortured and murdered victims of Nazi crematoriums and concentration camps. Jewish Settlement, Bad Ischl
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| In memory of the Yugoslav fighters of the People's Liberation War and victims of fascist terror murdered in Ebensee from 1941-1945 - the peoples and communities of the socialist federal republic of Yugoslavia are grateful. |
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| Honor to the French victims of Nazi barbarism who died for France and the freedom of the world |
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| One of Poland's memorials |
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| In memory of the Greek victims of national socialism in Ebensee, Greek embassy in Austria |
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In memory of the German victims. "Others should be allowed to live better and happier lives than we died." Vater Alfred...
I was not able to make out the whole inscription of who said the quote. |
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| Hungary's memorial. Inscription: The memory of the dead animates life. |
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| A different kind of memorial at the cemetery--one for the US soldiers who liberated the camp. |
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