Violence and murder of Spaniards deported to Mauthausen. A quantitative analysis

Abstract

The recovery, access, collection, and addressing of the methodological complexities arising from the study of the mortality recorded at the Nazi concentration camp at Mauthausen have enabled historiography to produce highly precise overall assessments regarding the elevated levels of violence that occurred and were deliberately concealed within the facility. However, the Spanish case remained pending a necessary revision that would situate it within the European debate on Nazi deportation. Building on the ongoing efforts and following a meticulous analysis of the documentation salvaged from the camp; the listings compiled by the American authorities responsible for investigating war crimes in the camp after Liberation; the volumes published by the French Ministry for Veterans and War Victims; the existing and accessible lists of survivors; documentation produced during the post-war period; and the more than twenty databases from projects as ambitious as that of the Austrian Mauthausen Memorial, it has been possible to develop a new analysis of Spanish mortality in the Austrian camp based on an essentially definitive accounting. The results obtained allow for the identification of significant patterns in the murder of Spaniards, an operation concentrated between 1941 and 1942 that became particularly systematic in the Gusen subcamp and in Hartheim Castle. The final outcome of these measures was an extremely high mortality rate among this cohort, which stood at fifteen percentage points above the camp’s average.