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= GMST 581 Wikipedia Assignment =

Test Page
This page will share some brief information on the Spanish Civil War and consequential mass exodus of Spanish Republicans into France, and a summary of the trajectory of Spanish Republicans from France to the Nazi concentration camp in Austria: Mauthausen.

Table of Contents

 * Spanish Civil War
 * Spanish Refugees in France, 1939-1940
 * Spaniards in Mauthausen

Spanish Civil War
On 12 April 1931, national elections were held in Spain after the dictator, Miguel Primo de Rivera, was forced to step down in January 1930, after seven years in power. The election of 1931 officially inaugurated the Second Spanish Republic, ending 57 years of monarchical governance in Spain. The early years of the Republic brought bold and sweeping changes to the social, political, and economic structures of a country steeped in traditions, introducing freedoms previously unseen in the country. When the Republic began to reform the military and secularize the state, two major institutions which for years enjoyed a privileged position in the country,staunch opposition arose from traditionalists, who thus began plotting against the Republic.

Overall, the Republic can be described as polarized, even among its supporters. On the 17 July 1936, a coup was launched against the Republic by generals Emilio Mola and Francisco Franco -- marking the beginning of the Spanish Civil War: the culmination of bubbling tensions which had been building up since the Republic was proclaimed in 1931.

The war was fought between the Nationalists (also known as Falangists or Francoists) and Republicans. Both sides included a broad spectrum of political positions: The Nationalists were supported by traditional conservatives, staunch Catholics, monarchists (Carlistas) and Franco's Falangists (Fascists); whereas the Republicans were supported by moderate democrats, liberals, socialists, anarchists, and communists.

Francisco Franco led a brutal war against Republicans. Francoists viewed Republican Spaniards as "godless Bolsheviks who needed to be eradicated in order to create a new Spain," and portrayed the war as a "crusade" or a "holy war" against a "Judeo-Masonic-Bolshevist" conspiracy.

Mass atrocities and political violence plagued the streets and battlefields of Spain, carried out by belligerents eager to take down their political opponents on both sides of the fight. It is estimated that 500,000 people died in the Civil War, with about 200,000 of them having lost their lives as a result of systematic killings, mob violence, torture, or other brutalities. The Nationalists waged a brutal war against Republicans, which did not cease with the end of the Civil War on 1 April 1939.

For more information on the Spanish Civil War, see the Spanish Civil War webpage through the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum website.

Spanish Refugees in France, 1939-1940
An estimated 100,000 Republicans were executed by Nationaists forces during the war, and between 20-50,000 more were sentenced to death after the end of the war in the spring of 1939. Additionally, thousands were placed in concentration camps and prisons across Spain, and martial law remained in the country until 1948 -- nine years after the war ended. As a result, several million Spaniards were displaced. After April 1939, an estimated 500,000 Republicans fled to France, where many were subsequently placed in internment camps in the south.

Many Spaniards in France, Republican veterans of the Civil War, joined the French Resistance following the Nazi occupation of the country in June 1940.

In September 1940, the Vichy government in southern France introduced a law wherein all male foreigners aged 19-54 who were "a burden on the French economy and who could not return to their country of origin" were subject to enlistment in the Groupement de travailleurs étrangers, or Groups of Foreign Workers. As many as 15,000 Spaniards were enlisted for this free labour across France. Through this, and through their involvement in the Resistance, Spanish Republicans began to face deportation to Germany and beyond by the Nazis. An estimated 30,000 were deported (or sometimes forced to walk to) to German stalags (prisoner of war camps), beginning as early as May 1940. Some 15,000 entering Nazi concentration camps -- most commonly Mauthausen.

Spaniards in Mauthausen
The first convoy of Spaniards to arrive to Mauthausen were deported from the largest German stalag in Moosburg, Stalag VII-A, on 6 August 1940. Convoys of hundreds of Spaniards arrived steadily throughout 1940-1942, with smaller groups continuing to arrive through to April 1945. The Spaniards who arrived in the early days of the camp were put to work helping construct the ever-growing Lager - particularly the infamous camp quarry and the SS offices and barracks. Those unable to keep up with the work pace, weakened by the camp conditions and hard labour, were executed by the SS or transferred to Gusen -- a Mauthausen subcamp and killing site where a significant number of Spaniards would perish.

When Spaniards first arrived to Mauthausen en masse, they occupied the lowest ranks of the camp hierarchy, and were therefore not only assigned the hardest Kommandos, or work units, but were also subject to the maltreatment and hostility of deportees who wielded more power – namely the Austrian and German criminals who comprised the majority of the camp population at the time and held favourable work positions. By the end of 1941, however, some Spaniards began occupying positions of relative safety within the camp – rising to fill administrative and technical roles in the camp. In their "privileged" roles, Spaniards were better able to begin organizing a nucleus of resistance. In fact, the first resistance committee in Mauthausen is said to be formed by Spaniards. Perhaps the most famous eample of Spanish resistance born out of Mauthausen comes from the efforts of Francisco Boix: Catalonian Republican veteran and Mauthausen photography lab technician. Boix, nicknamed el fotógrafo de Mauthausen (the photographer of Mauthausen), developed SS negatives in the camp photography lab, and documented labour, prisoner death, and important or unusual events in the camp -- exposing Boix to the inner workings of the Lager, making him a direct witness to the Holocaust. By 1943, three Spaniards (Boix, Antonio García, and José Cereceda) were employed in the lab at a crucial point in the War and the Holocaust: the German defeat at Stalingrad in February 1943. Following this turning point, Boix recalls that Berlin ordered that all camp photographic film be destroyed – a task which fell to Boix. However, rather than comply, Boix and other resistors, including García, began making extra copies and hiding thousands of negatives which documented official visits from SS who would later try to deny involvement in the camp, as well as executions and other atrocities at Mauthausen. This act of resistance, making extra copies of the negatives, hiding them within the camp and smuggling them out, remains one of the most notable acts of resistance to come from within the camp, and have been useful in building an understanding of the events which took place within the camp in the years following its liberation in May 1945. In fact, Boix's photographs were used as evidence during the Dachau trials and Nuremberg trials in 1945 and 1946 -- where Boix was the only Spaniard called to testify. During his testimony at Nuremberg at the end of January, 1946, Boix constantly tried to provide additional details of life and death inside Mauthausen. As he tried to elaborate on how Spanish Republicans were sent to concentration camps, he was interrupted by the lead attorney: Charles Dubost. BOIX: "… We heard that the Germans had asked what was to be done with Spanish prisoners of war who had served in the French Army, those of them who were Republicans and ex-members of the Republican Army. The answer…" M. DUBOST: "Never mind that…" (Trial of the Major War Criminals, 267) Brenneis, Spaniards in Mauthausen: Representations of a Nazi Concentration Camp, 1940-2015, pp73

Over half of the approimately 7000 Spanish Republicans deported to Mauthausen died in the camp.