Rising from the Ashes of Ascension

Chapter 29

Disclaimer: As much as I might wish, I do not own Stargate: SG1, Highlander: the Series, or any recognizable characters from either show. If I did, I wouldn't be working in the public schools system. However, any characters that are not from either show are mine and I will use and abuse them as I see fit. Everyone else will be returned eventually, for I am only borrowing for awhile, but they might end up a bit scuffed.

Warnings: Potty language, violence, and occasional sexual references

"The first thing I noticed was the smell," Daniel began, his eyes taking on a distant look, traveling back in the past. "It was god-awful. It hung in the air, so thick you could almost see it. I would smell that smell for months after that. Even years later, every so often something, some sort of odor, will trigger that memory and I am back there."

"What are you talking about?" Jack asked, confused.

"Mauthausen," Daniel replied, sighing.

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The Mauthasen-Gusen concentration camp system, located near Linz, Austria, was one of the worst of a purely evil system. The main camp, Mauthausen, was a category III camp – a special category for camps with the harshest regimen, was notoriously harsh, even for what one would expect to find in a concentration camp.

The prisoners, before 1940 were mostly Germans, Austrians, and Czechoslovakians: socialists, communists, anarchists, homosexuals, the Romani people, Bible Students and Jehovah Witnesses. After 1940, a large number of Poles entered the camp: artists, scientists, Boy Scouts, teachers, and university professors. During the war, the new arrivals were from every category of the "unwanted." The educated, political prisoners, Spanish Republicans, Soviet POWs, Dutch and Hungarian Jews, prisoners from Auschwitz-Birkenau, and Allied POWs were some of the many that were chewed up and spat out of the nightmarish machine that was Mauthausen. Unfortunately, most people did not make it out of the camps alive. The Nazis were extremely good at working people to death, those that they did not shoot or gas right away.

The prisoners worked in factories and in a quarry. Most were literally worked to death. There was one really sick torture device used by the Nazis to entertain themselves: The Stairs of Death. Prisoners forced to carry blocks of stones up a hundred and eighty-six stairs at the Wiener-Graben quarry. They were narrow and steep. Many prisoners collapsed while in line on the stairs, creating a domino effect. One person collapsed and fell backwards on top of the person behind them, then that person fell on the person behind them, and on and on, creating a domino effect until the bottom of the stairs was reached.

Another sick aspect of the Mauthausen quarry was a rock wall, called "Parachute Wall" that prisoners were shoved off, dropping to their deaths. Other times, they were forced to chose among themselves who would fall to death, causing prisoners to fight each other to see who would live and who would die. In the end though, the victors were then forced over the cliff's edge, dying just like those before them.

The Nazis beat people to death; forced them to take icy showers in the middle of winter, and left them out in the cold to freeze to death. There were mass shootings, medical experiments, hangings, starvations, drowning prisoners in large water barrels, and they would throw prisoners on to the electric barbed wire fence. They also would force prisoners out of bounds then shoot them because they were "escaping." The life expectancy for a prisoner from 1940-1942, was six months; by early 1945, a prisoner would last on the average of three months.

According to some survivors' accounts, several Soviet prisoners were engaged in cannibalism; they were seen biting off chunks of the dead which were stacked outside of the barrack because coal was not available to fire up the ovens, in order to keep death at bay for them just a little while longer. Other survivors reported seeing rats gnawing on the dead, disfiguring the bodies to the point they were unrecognizable.

At first prisoners that were slated for extermination (too weak to work) were transferred to other camps to be killed in the gas chambers. By 1940, this was judged to be too expensive so a mobile gas chamber was created that could exterminate one hundred and twenty people at a time. Eventually, a more permanent gas chamber was built, to make murder a more efficient process.

Because people died so quickly or on their way to the camps, records were not as pristine as the records of other camps. It is estimated that as many as 320,000 people perished in the Mauthausen-Gusen camp system, possibly more.

Bastards.

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"We happened to find the camp by chance. We were brought there by a representative of the Red Cross and two German soldiers on 5 May 1945. I was with the41st Recon Squad, 11th Armored Division of the US Third Army by this time. Apparently someone had taken a liking to me and transferred me in early 1945. They were in need of translators as they pushed further into Europe and I was snatched away from my old assignment. Needless to say it sucked, but I sucked it up. I didn't want to give anyone cause to take things out on me because I had spent the early part of the main invasion of Europe as a REMF," Daniel reminisced.

"The Gusen sub-camp was first liberated. We freed the prisoners and a fight broke out. Five hundred prisoners were killed by their fellow inmates. We couldn't control the prisoners and we were forced to move on. We them moved on to the main camp where the prisoners were better organized," he said quietly.

"What then?" Jack asked.

"Well, we discovered Lieutenant Jack Taylor of the OSS at the camp. Also interred there was Simon Wiesenthal, the famed Nazi-hunter. It was so surreal. We rolled into the camp area in our tanks, and these barely alive skeletons came out of their barracks, waving at us, grinning from ear to ear, cheering. I remember giving away all of my chocolate bars, but it wasn't enough. Nothing I could do was enough. There were bodies everywhere. I remember watching an American bulldozer pass back and forth several times, moving all of the bodies that were lying around, creating a mass grave in what had been the camp's soccer field. There were times where I was supposed to be translating what was being said by three or more different nationalities and I would just get lost, staring at this horrific example of man's ability to be so inhumane."

"Dear God," Jack breathed, his hands tightening on the wheel to the point where his knuckles went white. "You know, I never could figure out why you didn't get more emotional when we came to Cassandra's planet. With all of those bodies everywhere, at the time I expected you to go to pieces and you didn't. You were so detached at the time from all of it and I couldn't figure out why. Looking back, I guess after all you've seen it hardens your heart somewhat."

Daniel shook his head. "No. After everything I have seen back on Earth and out there," he waved his hand vaguely at the sky, "the only thing that gets easier is the ability to compartmentalize everything mentally and no longer be surprised at how shitty people can be. You know though, the most moving moment from Mauthausen, besides seeing Austrian citizens being forced in their Sunday best to help bury the dead, forced to touch the diseased and decaying corpses with their bare hands was upon our arrival of the main camp, a band was formed by the prisoners and they struck up the Star-Spangled Banner to greet and honor us. I have never had a moment where the national anthem brought me to tears before or after that moment."

"I guess that also explains, beyond your natural stubbornness and curiosity, you were so insistent we really look into the background of Euronda," Jack said, realizing what those people represented to Daniel. He felt ashamed of himself.

"It just seemed too perfect Jack for my likings," Daniel said, not wanting to dredge up that past near-disaster and when their friendship was on the brink of crumbling into pieces.

"What happened to the Germans that were guarding the camp? Did they escape?"

Daniel smiled a non-pleasant smile. "Some might have, but many were trapped and killed by the prisoners. There was one SS guard, a corporal, who was found hanging from the rafters. The Soviet POWs took turns throwing a kitchen knife at the body. Many of the guards were beaten to death by the prisoners. Many only had wooden shoes, but fueled by rage and exhilaration that the end had arrived, despite their frail bodies, some weighing barely eighty pounds or less, took their revenge on their captors. The Commandant of the camp, Franz Ziereis, was shot by us. He tried to escape, wearing prisoner's clothing, hoping that somehow we wouldn't notice the stark contrast between him and the real prisoners. Before he died, he made a full confession of his, and those under him, crimes. Also, after the liberation nearly three thousand of the survivors died due to a typhus epidemic. It was so sad to have these people die anyway after they had been saved. It was so hard to see that, knowing that all around me these fragile, brave people would die no matter what, while I remained physically untouched and allowed to live eternally. We were forced to douse the place and the people with DEET to kill the lice that were spreading the disease."

"So what is your response to those that deny the Holocaust?" Jack asked, looking sideways at his friend.

"Well," Daniel hedged. "I've tried reasoning with some people, referring to the well-documented evidence to hopefully convince them of the truth of what happened."

"Why am I hearing the word but in that sentence?"

"One guy, after I came back to the US and took Siler on as my student, some loud-mouth, asshole redneck that was a card-carrying member of the Klan started mouthing off about how it was all a great Hoax, throwing around tons of disgusting racial slurs and the like. He never walked again. I didn't solve anything and sure as all hell didn't change his mind by breaking his back, but I just couldn't listen to that asshole preach to people, especially children about the Holocaust like that. It was so wrong." As Daniel confessed his moment of irrationality, he did so unemotionally, never letting know that there was a part of him that was ashamed of hurting someone like that nor letting Jack know that he felt a certain glimmer of pride for his actions at the same time.

"Damn," was Jack's reply.

A/N: Well, what do you think? Crap or not? Hit the shiny review button and let me know what you think. Please?

The information from this chapter came from several sources. I took info from: class notes; A History of Civilization; wiki; /camps/Mauthausen; /forgottencamps/camps/Mauthausen/eng.html; /mauthausen/KZMauthausen/Liberation/index.html; /history/mauthausen/mauthausencamp.htm. There was another site that told the story of the US liberators of Mauthausen. I don't remember the site, but it deserves credit. I chose Mauthausen over more "remembered" camps like Auschwitz because the US Army did not liberate Auschwitz (the Soviets did) and with what I have written earlier, Daniel had to be in the US Army. Also, the41st Recon Squad, 11th Armored Division of the US Third Army did exist and they are the ones who first encountered the camps. I pulled a lot of the imagery from their tales and other sources. I only hope I did it justice and that no one thinks I am mocking the memories of those who fought and died in WWII.

Thank you to everyone for reading my stuff and dropping me a review (hint-hint). I appreciate it all. Feed the plot bunnies, least they die! I know that this was a downer, but I hope to have a lighter tone in the next chapter or two. Again, an extra-special thank you goes out to Lorilei for finding my mistakes and making it all shiny.