Agenda

Mauthausen. The Graphic Chronicle

An exhibition by the Museu d’Història de Catalunya and The Mauthausen Survivors’ Association

From June, 4th, 2022 to January, 31st, 2023

Museu d'Història dels Jueus

In 1996, The Mauthausen Survivors’ Association and those groups representing survivors of other concentration camps in Spain deposited part of their historical collections in the Museu d’Història de Catalunya. Amongst said funds was a collection of negatives which came from the Nazi concentration camps of Mauthausen and Gusen (Austria).

Part of this photographic collection, made between 1940 and 1945, was taken by the very Nazis of the Erkennungsdienst (Identification Department) of the Mauthausen camp. This department, overseen by the Gestapo, was in charge of, among other tasks, the documentation of the entry and exit records of those deported and of the operation and life in the camp.

The remaining negatives corresponded to a report on the liberation of the Mauthausen camp (1945), taken by the Catalonian photographer Francesc Boix, who was up until then a prisoner in the camp and a forced worker of the Identification Department.

The "Mauthausen, The Graphic Chronicle" exhibition presents a selection of these photographs, some of which were used in testimony against the Nazis in the Nuremberg Trials in 1946. Through them, one reawakens episodes of barbarism and horror of the worst kind, etched forever in contemporary world history, of which millions of people from all over Europe were victim.

The Mauthausen stone. An emotional memory in the exhibition.