554 Valencian “details” in Mauthausen

554 Valencians, exiles from the defeated Spanish Republic, entered the gates of Mauthausen concentration camp in Austria. Only 217 took the return journey; and you don’t have to be an expert, or Jean Marie Le Pen to understand that 337 died there, victims of Nazism.

In August 1940 the first batch of 398 Spaniards arrived, among them 37 Valencians. In May 1945 the Americans reached the camp and freed the 2,000 Republicans, survivors of the original 7,200 who arrived at the camp and its sub-camps; although a recent study increased the number to 9,000, 678 of whom were Valencians, including three women.

The Valencian details were mostly from Baix Maestrat, La Vega Baja, L’Alcoià and Vinalopó Mitjà.

Like Le Pen, the Spanish dictatorship didn’t consider the Republicans, captured during the German invasion of France in 1940, to be human, and withdrew their Spanish nationality, allowing Hitler to dispose of them as he pleased.

Today only one Valencian survivor of Mauthausen is still alive, Francisco Aura Boronat, and inevitably, when there are no longer any more, untermensch like Le Pen will feel freer to convince us that the holocaust never happened, or has been exaggerated, or is a mere detail.