Francisco Boix

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Boix as a witness in the main Mauthausen trial that took place in 1946 in the Dachau internment camp

Francisco Boix Campo - in Catalan Francesc Boix i Campo - (born August 14, 1920 in Barcelona ; † July 4, 1951 in Paris ) was a Spanish photographer, fought against Franco in the Spanish Civil War , was then imprisoned in Mauthausen concentration camp and resigned after War as a witness in trials of war criminals.

Life

Boix was the son of the left tailor Bartholomäus and his wife Ana. He had two sisters. At the age of 17 he became a member of the United Socialist Youth of Catalonia . In 1936 and 1937 the first photos of him appeared in a youth magazine. From 1938 Boix took part in the Spanish war against the coup general Francisco Franco and worked in the 30th division of the republican army as a front photographer.

After the victory of the Franquists in the spring of 1939, he fled the fascist terror to France. He was interned first in the southern French camp Le Vernet , later in Septfonds . After his release he joined the resistance against the Nazis with other Spanish exiles. In the same year he was arrested in the Vosges Mountains and finally deported to Mauthausen on January 27, 1941. With more than 7,000 other Spaniards, he was imprisoned in Mauthausen concentration camp until May 1945.

Boix was called as a witness by the French prosecutor in the Nuremberg trial of the main war criminals to explain some photographs taken by the SS in Mauthausen. Boix was able to acquire these pictures in the Mauthausen camp when he was working for the SS identification service; Under the direction of Paul Ricken , many pictures were made to document life in the camp. These photos gave an impression of the conditions under which the prisoners in Mauthausen had to live and do heavy labor. Two pictures showed inmates who had been driven to suicide. Further photos provided evidence that well-known Nazi leaders had visited and got to know Mauthausen. These included Albert Speer and Ernst Kaltenbrunner , who had been photographed during a visit to the camp itself and the Wienergraben quarry.

When the Americans reached Mauthausen on May 5, 1945, Francisco Boix was waiting for the soldiers with a Leica camera that he had stolen from the SS. He used her to take photographs of the liberation and a little later also documented the interrogation of the camp commandant Franz Ziereis , who had been arrested on the run and brought back to the camp.

Boix was later also a witness in the main Mauthausen trial , which took place as part of the Dachau trials .

Between 1945 and 1951 Boix worked as a photographer for the left-wing French press, including for L'Humanité . Boix died in Paris in July 1951 of kidney failure as a result of his concentration camp imprisonment.

Before his death, Boix gave many of his negatives to his friend Joaquin López Raimundo, another Mauthausen survivor. This passed it on in 1973 to the writer and journalist Montserrat Roig , who wrote a book about the Catalan prisoners in the Austrian concentration camp. In this way they ended up with the Amical de Mauthausen association in Barcelona. The more than 600 negatives formed the basis of their archive and were handed over to the Historical Museum of the City of Barcelona in 1996 .

In 2013, money was raised to buy 1,368 negatives made by Boix.

Boix was first buried in Thiais . In June 2017 his bones were transferred and buried with full honors in the Père Lachaise cemetery in Paris .

Movies

  • Francisco Boix, un fotógrafo en el infierno ( Francisco Boix, a photographer in hell ), documentary by Llorenç Soler, Spain 2000
  • El fotógrafo de Mauthausen ( Francisco Boix - the photographer of Mauthausen ), feature film by Mar Targarona, Spain 2018

literature

Web links

Commons : Francisco Boix  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ^ The trial of German major war criminals: proceedings of the International Military Tribunal sitting at Nuremberg Germany. Retrieved January 4, 2020 .
  2. ↑ http://www.barceloninsdeportats.org : BIOGRAFÍA Boix Campo, Francisco. Retrieved January 28, 2020 (Spanish).
  3. ↑ Clara M. Oberle, Agnieszka Pufelska, Hildegard Frübis: Photographs from the camps of the Nazi regime: preservation of evidence and aesthetic practice . Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2018, ISBN 978-3-205-20268-4 ( google.de [accessed on January 28, 2020]).
  4. ↑ Memoria histórica: El homenaje que la democracia española le debe al héroe Francesc Boix. Retrieved March 8, 2019 (Spanish).
  5. ↑ El Fons photographic de Francesc Boix | Photoconnexió. Retrieved January 28, 2020 (Catalan).
  6. ↑ Carlos Hernández: París entierra con todos los honores al fotógrafo español de Mauthausen (Spanish) in eldiario.es, June 16, 2017, Paris bury Francisco Boix, the Spanish photographer from Mauthausen, with all honors summarizing German translation
  7. ↑ orf.at of October 13, 2019: Mauthausen concentration camp - graphic novel about the savior of images ; accessed on October 13, 2019
personal data
SURNAME Boix, Francisco
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Boix Campo, Francisco; Boix i Campo, Francesc
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Republican Spaniard who was imprisoned in Mauthausen concentration camp
DATE OF BIRTH August 31, 1920
PLACE OF BIRTH Barcelona
DATE OF DEATH 4th July 1951
Place of death Paris