Spaniards in the Holocaust: Mauthausen, The Horror on the Danube by David Wingate Pike (review)

The inauguration of the monument to the Spanish victims of the Third Reich in the Père Lachaise cemetery on April 13, 1969, epitomizes David Wingeate Pike’s outstanding book Spaniards in the Holocaust. Mauthausen, The Horror on the Danube, which, like the monument, is about the memory of the Spaniards who fell victim to the Nazi regime. One of the most forgotten chapters of all Spanish Civil War exile history, which has been systematically excluded from the official Francoist history, belongs to the Spanish exiles who were interned in Nazi concentration camps during the Holocaust. The historiography of the Holocaust would not be possible without the memories of the concentration-camp survivors, which is what makes Wingeate Pike’s book so compelling, as it brings together the testimonies of those Spanish survivors who represented the second largest prisoner of war contingent behind the Soviets interned in the Nazi camp Mauthausen.

The book (originally published in 2000, but recently republished in paperback) is divided into four sections, which document every juncture of the Spaniards’ journey through the labyrinth of the Nazi concentration camp system until their liberation with the arrival of the United States forces in May 1945. The first section describes the detention of the Spaniards in France and their arrival in Mauthausen. Upon the German occupation of France in June 1940, an estimated 30,000 Spaniards, especially those who were interned in French concentration camps or fighting in the French Foreign Legion, were handed over to the German authorities, and of these perhaps 15,000 entered Nazi camps. Considered enemies of Nazi Germany due to their extreme antifascism in their defense of the Second Republic during the Spanish Civil War, about ninety percent of the Spaniards were sent to Mauthausen, of which an estimated 7,000 would perish. Located near the Danube River in Austria, Mauthausen was considered the most feared concentration camp where approximately 200,000 prisoners died during the seven years (1938–45) that it operated as a concentration camp. Classified as a category three extermination camp, Mauthausen was intended for the incorrigible enemies of the Third Reich, who targeted the Spaniards upon their arrival. As the number of prisoners increased, Mauthausen expanded by constructing three annex camps in the nearby village of Gusen: Gusen I (1941), Gusen II (March 1944), and Gusen III (December 1944). The first contingent of Spaniards arrived at Gusen on January 24, 1941.

The second part examines the internal organization of Mauthausen and the SS network after the arrival of the first contingent of Spaniards on August 6, 1940. The author outlines the SS hierarchy of command beginning with Franz Ziereis and Georg Bachmayer, who were the two men responsible for the fate of thousands of Spaniards. It was Ziereis and Bachmayer who oversaw the assignment of the Spaniards to designated projects such as the infamous quarry where they were forced to transport heavy granite blocks weighing 60‒70 kilograms up a flight of 186 steps, costing the lives of thousands of Spanish. Already by 1941, the Spanish had by now moved into the unenviable position of replacing the Poles as the national group with the highest death rate, with one in every four mortalities being a Spaniard, which continued to increase as the war progressed. Despite this, no national group had a stronger sense of solidarity than the Spaniards, who were the first to give an organized form to the resistance.

The third part of the book examines the struggle for survival and the subsequent need to establish an international solidarity movement among the prisoners of Mauthausen as a means of resisting the SS. This was predicated on the creation of an underground organization that became the backbone of the political work and of the national and international solidarity in Mauthausen. The principal credit for giving an organized form to the resistance goes to the Spaniards, whose military discipline and previous experience of concentration-camp...