"They told us we were entering through the gate and leaving through the
chimney." ---- A Mauthausen survivor. ---- Known even during the war asthe "Spanish Camp," this center of confinement, death, and forced labor
opened in the summer of 1938 with prisoners from the Dachau camp who
were transported for its construction near the granite quarries in
Austria. Initially, the Mauthausen concentration camp was financed by
the German Dresdner Bank, the Czech Escompte Bank, the German Red Cross,
and the "Reinhardt Fund," a foundation that managed the wealth stolen
from prisoners in other concentration camps. By the end of 1939, it was
overcrowded with prisoners, so construction began on the Gusen
concentration camp on a nearby site.
Mauthausen was located about twenty kilometers from the Austrian city of
Linz, a sparsely populated area with numerous veins of granite,
necessary for rebuilding major German cities. Although it was initially
a concentration camp for common prisoners and sex workers, both this
concentration camp and Gusen I were soon given "Grade III" status,
intended for incorrigible political enemies of the Reich. Many members
of the so-called "Intelligentsia," or German enlightened intellectuals,
ended up in this camp complex.
However, from 1940 onward, it became a set of subcamps around the
Wienergraben and Kastenhofen quarries, both owned by Deutsche Erd-und
Steinwerke GmbH (known as DEST Company), a Nazi SS enterprise exploiting
slave labor. All of this, in turn, was part of a vast network of
concentration camps in Austria and southern Germany, which, in addition
to granite quarries, included other types of mines, arms factories, and
aircraft assembly plants. This increase in subcamps continued throughout
the war to cram into barracks the thousands of prisoners captured during
the global conflict.
The gradual and constant arrival at hell, a Spanish-German pact.
Beginning in August 1940, Spanish anti-fascists from stalags, i.e.,
prisoner-of-war camps, began to be gradually transferred to this
Mauthausen camp until 1945. Many of these Spaniards had been exiled from
Spain in 1939 after the defeat of the People's Army of the Republic and
the workers' militias that fought in the Spanish Revolution and Civil
War. After having spent time in concentration camps run by the French
authorities, such as Argelès-sur-Mer, Le Vernet d'Ariège, and Barcarès,
under deplorable conditions, with the invasion of France by Nazi
Germany, they were recruited into the French Foreign Legion.
Many of those captured by the Germans in the initial moments of the
invasion of French territory, following the agreements between Franco's
Spain and the Third Reich, began to be enslaved in forced labor
battalions, under completely grueling conditions and in deplorable
conditions. Since Franco's dictatorship had proclaimed that it did not
recognize Spaniards outside its national borders, Spanish anti-fascists
were forced by the Nazi authorities to wear a blue triangle as a sign of
statelessness, with an S (referring to "Spanier") in the center. From
1943 onward, the majority of captured Spaniards were voluntary members
of the "Resistance" against Nazi Germany on French soil. It is estimated
that some 40,000 Spaniards participated in the Second World War in the
fight against Nazism, of whom 9,328 ended up in German concentration camps.
A total of 7,251 Spaniards spent five years in Mauthausen, of whom 4,747
died under various circumstances, although 65% were murdered in the
Gusen concentration camp. The use of prisoners for German war production
increased sharply after 1942, the year in which the eastern war front
against the Soviet Union was also opened. Living conditions were
inhumane, with poor nutrition and diseases that provided no adequate
medical care. All of this was also the origin and direct cause of many
of the deaths that occurred in this group of concentration camps,
although there were also numerous shootings, hangings, mobile gas
chambers, and high-altitude evictions.
Organization in the camp and the conviction of an anti-fascist victory.
At Mauthausen in particular, a staircase of 186 stone steps separated
the granite quarry from the overcrowded barracks, and many Spaniards
were forced to climb up and down it, carrying heavy stones, up to a
dozen times a day. Meanwhile, the authorities often pushed them or beat
them with batons, resulting in deaths from violence or exhaustion. At
the top of the quarry was a steep wall, which the Nazis began to call
the "paratroopers' wall," as many prisoners were thrown from above,
falling into the void. Starting in 1941, some Spaniards began to perform
specific tasks in the camp as bricklayers, administrators, interpreters,
and tailors; this fostered the creation of an organized network of
Spanish anti-fascists who distributed medicines and food, and carried
letters and messages. Ultimately, this clandestine survival network
ensured that when new deportees arrived, some of the acquired knowledge
was passed on, building a foundation of mutual support that was vital.
These Spanish anti-fascists also always maintained a firm conviction in
the defeat of Nazism; most of them had political ideas that allowed them
to remain morally steadfast in their victory despite the barbarity
surrounding them. Without this internal organization within the
concentration camp, the events of the final days before the camp's
liberation would not have been possible. From the beginning of 1945, a
large number of deportees from other evacuated camps arrived at
Mauthausen, and it became increasingly crowded with prisoners, many of
whom died in the final months from severe epidemics. However, it was one
of the last camps reached by American troops on May 5, 1945. Two or
three days before the arrival of these Allied troops, the German Nazis
had withdrawn, so it was the organized network of Spaniards who truly
spearheaded this self-liberation.
When a few dozen Americans arrived, they saw that the surviving
Spaniards had been organizing camp life for two days. By the time the
U.S. Eleventh Armored Division arrived at the camp in vehicles, the Nazi
symbols had been removed and a huge banner had been created in which the
Spanish anti-fascists saluted the liberating forces. According to
firsthand accounts, the iconic image was taken the day after the actual
liberation, on May 6, 1945, which is when the photograph was taken. This
end of the World War did not mean peace for these Spaniards; many of
them were never able to return to Spain, as the Franco dictatorship
continued until the 1970s.
The Persistence of Memory, a Remembrance for the Current Struggle
In 1946, the Soviet authorities returned this territory to Austria, and
the first of the Mauthausen memorials was erected. Subsequently, other
countries and organizations built their own monuments once much of the
old barracks were destroyed. In the early 1960s, a cemetery was built
inside the memorial, where thousands of remains from mass graves used by
the SS and from cemeteries in nearby towns would be relocated. Finally,
in 2003, the Mauthausen Visitor Center was opened, with free access to
all. A decade later, two permanent exhibitions and the so-called "Hall
of Names" were inaugurated in the completely remodeled former infirmary
building, in memory of all the dead of Mauthausen and its subcamps. It
is worth noting that a virtual tour is available in English on the
Mauthausen Memorial website.
The Amical de Mauthausen association was founded clandestinely in 1962
and legally recognized in 1978 to safeguard the material and moral
memory of the Spaniards in the Nazi concentration camps. It has been
made up of dozens of survivors, family members, friends, and
sympathizers from both Europe and America. Every year, a tribute event
is held at the former Mauthausen concentration camp, and 2025 will be a
special date, marking the 80th anniversary of the end of the global
conflict and the genocide on European soil.
In Madrid, behind the historic Plaza de la Villa, there is a sculptural
group that pays tribute to 449 anti-fascist Madrid men and women
deported to Nazi concentration camps during World War II.
Also in Almería, in the Almadrabillas Park, there is a monument in
memory of the 142 Andalusians who ended up in that concentration camp.
Dozens of plaques from the project called "Stolpersteine" (from the
German word for "stone you find on the road"), initiated by the German
artist Günter Demnig, are scattered throughout the Iberian Peninsula.
These are small cement blocks covered with a thin sheet of brass on
which the details of the deported victim are engraved and placed in
sidewalks next to the deportee's known home or workplace. There are more
than 75,000 of these memorial plaques in twenty different countries
worldwide.
Memory must stir our consciences today. These spaces of memory are
necessary to keep that memory alive, and it is a memory that should not
be understood as nostalgia, but as something that connects us to the
revolutionary struggles we face in the present and to the truth of our
working class. A truth, a justice, and a reparation that speaks not only
to the past, but also to the far right and its current practices, which
we must confront. Today, we must remember that we are because they were.
Ángel Malatesta, Liza activist.
https://www.regeneracionlibertaria.org/2025/05/06/campo-de-concentracion-de-mauthausen-gusen/
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