Sneaking up and playing their skins, three Spanish prisoners in Mauthausen, where they were assigned to the offices of the Nazi death camp, managed to get the documentation of the compatriots with whom they shared hell. That documentation, transmitted by the survivors, has been fundamental for, 75 years later, the website that they have presented this Thursday, at the Cervantes Institute, the Secretary of State for Democratic Memory, Fernando Martínez López, and the historian Juan Manuel Gascón, of the Amutic Association of Mauthausen and other fields. The page (https://fallecidosenloscamposnazis.org) collects personal data and, where possible, a small biography of the 5,258 people who died, of the 9,000 deported from France between 1940 and 1944 to the different fields of the Nazism.
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A single example is that of Joaquín Moya Braulio, born in Ejulve (Teruel), in December 1900. His peasant family moved to Sant Cugat del Vallés (Barcelona), he was a stoker in a pottery and was a member of the Unification Workers Party Marxist (POUM). He fled Spain in early 1939 and the Nazis arrested him in May 1940 in France. He died on October 15, 1941 in the Gusen camp.
Martínez explained that this database, "the most complete in terms of dead people", arises from the Historical Memory Law that was passed in 2007, during the Government of José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero, and recalled how thousands of Spaniards, who had fled to France from the advance of Franco's troops, they were in refugee camps in the south of the French country and then enlisted in the Foreign Workers' Companies. Its destination was, above all, the defensive construction of the Maginot line, along the French border with Germany. However, about 7,000 fell into the hands of the Nazis when they took France.
The other 2,000 - until completing the 9,000 deportees - did not fight with spikes and shovels, but with weapons because they were in the French Resistance and were captured from 1943. Finally, there was a small number of "Jews with Spanish nationality, in mostly women, "added the secretary of state. Everyone was identified in Mauthausen with a blue triangle sewn to their clothes.
Calvo Gascón explained the operation of the website Mortal victims of the Nazi camps , whose sources have been relatives of the victims, associations, historians ... There is a database in which people can be searched by name and surname, date and place of birth, date of death and field in which he died. This investigator, who belongs to the board of the Amical association, said that the data belongs to the victims between August 1940 and 1945, the period of which they have proof of deaths and that, after a debate in their organization, it was decided to leave out to those who lost their lives months later, as a result of the subhuman conditions suffered in the fields.
The cold data shudder. Mauthausen was the main point of extermination of Spaniards: 4,758 fell there. A long distance away, Dachau, with 138. Another quick consultation on the web, for months, lets you know that the winter of 1940-1941 was the most dramatic moment, with almost 2,400 fatalities. The dead have also been classified by age, which shows that there were children, one with 7 years and one with 8, "were probably Jews and had arrived there with their mothers," Calvo added, "and children were also born in those places ". The bulk of those who did not return were between 22 and 40 years old. The oldest of all was 71 years old.
In addition, a check can be made by the places of origin. Catalonia was the most affected, with 1,169 deaths recorded (in Barcelona, 576), followed by Andalusia, with 1,002. The most punished Andalusian province was Malaga, with 152.
The presentation ceremony was attended by relatives of victims from the Nazi camps, who recalled the role of Franco's diplomacy, especially in France, so that those Spaniards would end up in death camps. A fact that Calvo resumed to warn that the presence today in the Spanish political life of the extreme right seeks to provoke, "through motions of political parties, the confrontation between victims, Jews and Spanish Republicans, as if they were to different categories. "