Small is a relative term. And in the case of Mauthausen, it was a small concentration
camp. It was your run-of-the-mill hell incarnate for Jews and outcasts. More than
130,000 people lost their lives here. This camp is famous for its stairs of death on
which emaciated prisoners were forced to carry 30–50 kg granite rocks over and
over again, despite many of them weighing around 45 kg.
If you fell and were maimed, rendered unable to work — you were usually executed
fairly shortly thereafter. Or you were left in prison to suffer for a few days first. There
were countless horrifying games that guards played with prisoners, the details of
which I won’t get into here.
At the end of the war, as the camps were liberated, they began cleaning out and
inspecting Mauthausen. One inspector was patrolling through the dark and
shadowed cells of Block C, an area where nearly all who entered either died or left
only to attend their own execution.
Inside of one cell, he found, scratched on the wall: “If there is a God, he will
have to beg for my forgiveness.”
The line sent a chill down my arm. It brought the image of a God on his knees,
begging for his life, about to be murdered by one of his own creations. It is important
to remember lines like this. Our minds tend to become soft and presumptuous of our
luxuries. The paradox of happiness is that it requires we acknowledge suffering of
others.”
This brief story may be profound or disturbing. Your assignment for this
activity is to make two decisions. You may view the possibilities in our
response as to both mood disorders or personality disorders.
Considering the extreme nature of the story, you could consider either or
both.
• Assuming that the persons or any one person who would torture others in
Nazi Germany would possibly meet a requirement for a mental disorder. Find
in your research or reading of text or the reviewing of online resources or the
DSM5, what you think would be an appropriate or accurate diagnosis for
anyone of the torturing punishing individuals. Support you answer with
two or more sentences and list the name of the mental illness of
mental disorder you chose. Answer:
• Read carefully the quotation or the message found on the wall of the cell
described above. Imagine the condition, the mindset and more specifically a
psychological diagnosis of the person who may have left this message. Find in
your research or reading of text or the reviewing of online resources or the
DSM5, what you think would be an appropriate or accurate diagnosis for
anyone of the TORTURED individual who scrawled and left this message on
the wall. Support you answer with two or more sentences and list
the name of the mental illness of mental disorder you chose for
this victim of the holocaust. Answer: