00:00:03.262 --> 00:00:06.080
That was horrible; there was
nothing else but death.

00:00:06.080 --> 00:00:08.640
Trucks full of people were
arriving every day

00:00:08.640 --> 00:00:12.880
Those, who didn’t arrive dead, were
dying when they were leaving.

00:00:12.880 --> 00:00:16.120
In Mauthausen they were received
by the major Ziereis who said:

00:00:16.120 --> 00:00:20.600
through this door you came in and through
that chimney you are going to leave.

00:00:20.600 --> 00:00:25.240
The prisoners were not expected
to leave this place ever.

00:00:25.240 --> 00:00:28.040
As David Wingeate said,
Mauthausen was a hell

00:00:28.040 --> 00:00:32.960
or at least a refined attempt
to create such a place on earth.

00:00:32.960 --> 00:00:33.040
or at least a refined attempt
to create such a place on earth.

00:00:42.962 --> 00:00:45.962
History of an escape of Mauthausen

00:00:48.759 --> 00:00:55.080
My name is Agustin Santos and I'm from Extremadura,
from el Gordo and I'm 20 years old.

00:00:55.106 --> 00:01:01.845
I have been locked up for one month together
with my colleagues in a prisoner-of-wamp called Stalag.

00:01:04.249 --> 00:01:09.455
Today, nobody knows why, we are
being moved to Mauthausen

00:01:11.357 --> 00:01:13.600
He was 17 years old then

00:01:13.600 --> 00:01:20.880
He was working on El Gordo in the fields,
just like my father and the other brother

00:01:20.880 --> 00:01:29.520
There was a horrible massacre
in a near village, Peraleda de la Mata

00:01:29.520 --> 00:01:38.040
Franco´s troops were fighting with the republicans
and there were only bodies everywhere.

00:01:38.040 --> 00:01:44.240
He thought that they were going
to catch him, so he escaped to Oropesa

00:01:44.240 --> 00:01:47.880
Oropesa was occupied by the
republicans

00:01:48.905 --> 00:01:53.504
I thought, how is it possible that 300 people
from Extremadura got to France,

00:01:53.686 --> 00:02:04.080
that is on the other side of the Peninsula and
then got to Austria where most of them died

00:02:04.465 --> 00:02:11.133
Well, normally these were people
from small villages and their journey started here

00:02:11.422 --> 00:02:17.520
As far as Agustín Santos is concerned,
the theory is, that he was originally from El Gordo

00:02:17.520 --> 00:02:25.040
but he enlisted  in the mix brigades in Toledo,
the 62nd Mix Brigade that got to the East Front.

00:02:25.568 --> 00:02:32.191
This teory could explain that after the fall of
Catalonia they got to the French boarder

00:02:32.240 --> 00:02:35.160
and a part of this brigade
went to France

00:02:36.476 --> 00:02:40.320
We know that there were 296 people from Extremadura
that went to a concentration camp

00:02:40.320 --> 00:02:47.520
and they were moved to
other camps after.

00:02:47.520 --> 00:02:53.166
The most of them went from the Stalags or
other prisoner-of war camps directly to Mauthausen

00:02:53.305 --> 00:03:02.760
Mauthausen was called by the prisoners
extermination camp, but the prisoners were forced

00:03:02.760 --> 00:03:10.880
to work there first till they got old and sick.
When they were in bad condition

00:03:10.880 --> 00:03:15.160
and no more capable to work,
they were eliminated.

00:03:15.931 --> 00:03:20.820
I’ve just arrived at Mauthausen after
two days and two nights of journey.

00:03:21.739 --> 00:03:27.734
Just after going into the camp I could see some men
with prisoners' uniforms and their extremely thin bodies.

00:03:27.950 --> 00:03:32.998
On their jackets they carried
a blue triangle end a letter S.

00:03:33.537 --> 00:03:39.170
Due to what I’ve been told it’s the way they identify
the Spaniards. They look like dead men walking.

00:03:40.082 --> 00:03:44.218
Among them I’ve found my old friends,
like Azuaga.

00:03:44.572 --> 00:03:49.320
He is really bad, I wanted to give him a
part of my portion, but he didn’t want it.

00:03:49.320 --> 00:03:53.252
For me, it’s already late, he tells me.

00:03:53.440 --> 00:04:03.720
When they arrive, they are usually
received by a camp major that makes

00:04:03.720 --> 00:04:13.160
a kind of strict speech to the prisoners.
Many of them can remember these words

00:04:13.160 --> 00:04:24.080
saying that they were never going to leavet his place
and the only way to escape from there

00:04:24.080 --> 00:04:27.080
was the chimney of the
crematorium.

00:04:28.360 --> 00:04:36.560
The conditions of subsistence in these camps
were to give the prisoners

00:04:36.560 --> 00:04:41.120
as little as they needed to
stay alive and work till they die.

00:04:42.369 --> 00:04:46.786
There are deportees who said that there were
35 different ways of dying in Mauthausen.

00:04:48.880 --> 00:04:56.960
The most painful for those who survived
was seeing their colleagues dying in the quarries

00:04:56.960 --> 00:05:01.120
carrying heavy stones on their
shoulders till they got exhausted.

00:05:01.119 --> 00:05:07.079
But as they said there were
other ways of dying: there was a suicide

00:05:07.080 --> 00:05:13.080
those who couldn’t stand the pain were
running towards the electrified fences.

00:05:13.080 --> 00:05:18.480
There were also ways of dying that delighted the S.S soldiers.
For example, throwing the prisoner

00:05:18.480 --> 00:05:24.280
towards a pack of dogs that tore him apart;
or the one in the sickroom where the prisoner

00:05:24.280 --> 00:05:28.640
was given a petrol injection into the heart.
This is howthey were eliminating people.

00:05:28.640 --> 00:05:35.840
There were also Spaniards who while arriving
at Mauthausen recognised some of the people

00:05:35.840 --> 00:05:43.000
they knew form previous camps where they
met somemonths or weeks ago.

00:05:43.000 --> 00:05:47.000
They couldn’t believe how
these people looked like.

00:05:48.000 --> 00:05:54.160
When he arrived at Mauthausen
he saw people who looked like dead men walking,

00:05:54.160 --> 00:05:56.440
they were not people.

00:05:56.440 --> 00:06:05.920
Once he heard a voice from a group of them saying:
“Santos, Santos. Santos, don’t you recognise me?”

00:06:05.920 --> 00:06:12.440
” And he said: “No”. “I’m Azuaga”.
And my uncle told me:

00:06:12.440 --> 00:06:22.360
"My heart missed a beat when I saw
that man. The first thing I did was giving him

00:06:22.360 --> 00:06:31.360
my portion of bread so he could eat it. But he said:
"No, Santos, no, you are young and you’ve been

00:06:31.360 --> 00:06:39.440
more time out of here, you have possibilities to leave this place
and tell the world what is happening to us.

00:06:42.454 --> 00:06:44.846
Azuaga has just died.

00:06:44.846 --> 00:06:54.358
Today is a sad day, but when isn’t a sad day here?
His dead has made me think that we have to survive

00:06:54.358 --> 00:06:58.714
to tell the world what is
happening in this hell.

00:06:58.715 --> 00:07:03.392
And the only possibility to
achieve it is the escape.

00:07:03.400 --> 00:07:10.080
If you have a project of life, a project of an escape,
a project of doing something, of surviving,

00:07:10.080 --> 00:07:20.600
helping somebody, then you have a possibility of escape, let’s say
this extra issue, the wis to survive.

00:07:21.964 --> 00:07:25.018
He thought about escaping from
the first moment he arrived

00:07:26.249 --> 00:07:29.249
He was thinking
about getting out of there

00:07:29.467 --> 00:07:33.785
He wanted to live and
didn't want to be there

00:07:34.373 --> 00:07:39.320
There is an issue which is very important for them
and it’s the issue of surviving,

00:07:39.320 --> 00:07:44.000
trying to survive. They are
conscious, from the first day

00:07:44.000 --> 00:07:46.520
they arrive at Mauthausen that
they are in an extermination camp.

00:07:46.520 --> 00:07:50.560
Day by day they see how their colleagues,
their friends, their fellows die.

00:07:50.560 --> 00:07:59.200
The physical punishments hurt the body, but they were
like the threat of what was coming next

00:07:59.554 --> 00:08:08.000
The important pain was actually the psychological harm
that consisted in taking away the hope of anything

00:08:08.000 --> 00:08:12.240
They were saying, that  possibly
a piece of soap was often more

00:08:12.240 --> 00:08:18.440
than something to eat just toa
avoid scabies or other diseases.

00:08:18.440 --> 00:08:24.280
Some of them were saying that it was so difficult
to find anything to tie the trousers.

00:08:24.280 --> 00:08:28.640
When you were losing weight
very fast and the trousers were loose

00:08:28.640 --> 00:08:34.240
you could even die because of that.
You had to carry stonesand hold the trousers.

00:08:34.240 --> 00:08:37.760
These insignificant problems
could cause you death.

00:08:37.760 --> 00:08:42.640
When people were getting to aconcentration camp,
their hair was shaved

00:08:42.640 --> 00:08:50.960
and all their personal things were taken away.
Nobody could recognize these people anymore,

00:08:50.960 --> 00:08:55.920
they weren’t called by names but
by number and so their rootswere cut forever.

00:08:56.119 --> 00:09:03.633
They carried a triangle that meant 'whithout homeland':
without family, without memories

00:09:06.051 --> 00:09:06.905
October 12, 1941

00:09:08.000 --> 00:09:14.240
The impossibility of an escape and the horror that we are living
everyday undermines me little by little.

00:09:14.240 --> 00:09:21.242
I’m desperate. Besides, I was chosen, together with other
Spaniards to work with the César Kommando out of the camp.

00:09:21.242 --> 00:09:26.787
I don’t know if I can
stand this more.

00:09:27.705 --> 00:09:37.760
The César Kommando was a group formed only
by Spaniars who were sent since the spring 1941

00:09:37.760 --> 00:09:46.480
to Vöchlabruch, some tens of kilometres away
from Mauthausen. The other difference was

00:09:46.480 --> 00:09:52.200
that they were not surrounded by the electrified
fences which werein Mauthausen.

00:09:52.200 --> 00:09:58.000
Escaping form a concentration camp
was extremely difficult because of the strict security

00:09:58.000 --> 00:10:03.720
and vigilance in the barrack areas.
If somebody was able to escape form a kapo,

00:10:03.720 --> 00:10:08.240
then he had to escape form the barrack supervisor
who was in charge of organizing

00:10:08.240 --> 00:10:14.360
the barrack area and avoiding fights.
Besides he had to escape

00:10:14.360 --> 00:10:22.280
form all the officers and non-commissioned
officers who were on guard withthe dogs.

00:10:22.919 --> 00:10:28.587
I’ve discovered that a part ofthe fence isn’t electrified
and I told another prisoner

00:10:28.587 --> 00:10:34.851
about it, Juan Adelantado, a Catalonian,
with whom I became friends.

00:10:34.851 --> 00:10:39.465
Together we’ve made an
escape plan.

00:10:39.465 --> 00:10:44.483
But everything went wrong.
They almost discovered us.

00:10:44.483 --> 00:10:50.959
It will be better to wait till the end of
winter to try it again.

00:10:50.960 --> 00:10:59.040
The attempts of an escape hadto be planned before.
The plans were made a lot of months before,

00:10:59.040 --> 00:11:03.000
especially in winter which was
very tough and cold.

00:11:03.000 --> 00:11:07.920
Escaping in winter would
be condemned to failure.

00:11:08.480 --> 00:11:17.080
The other issue is that in case of an escape other prisoners
form the block were often punished.

00:11:17.080 --> 00:11:21.920
The escape was then considered as an act
of egoism, which means that if I escape

00:11:21.920 --> 00:11:27.680
my colleagues are going to be punished. It was also a way
of auto repression to avoid the escapes.

00:11:29.094 --> 00:11:34.325
There were always leaks and
most of them were punished with death

00:11:34.759 --> 00:11:40.484
It was a public death and the prisoner was hanged
in a ceremony with the deportees and the SS

00:11:42.721 --> 00:11:45.721
It was an exemplary corrective.

00:11:47.218 --> 00:11:50.375
The spring has already melted
the snow.

00:11:50.375 --> 00:11:57.660
In these months Francisco López,
from Andalusia, has  asked to join us.

00:11:57.660 --> 00:12:04.945
We know we run the risk because of his physical condition
but we think it would be inhuman not doing it.

00:12:04.945 --> 00:12:12.959
There’s no turning back now.
We have planned everything for the 5th of April.

00:12:12.960 --> 00:12:18.080
We know that other prisoners
were aware of the preparations.

00:12:18.080 --> 00:12:24.760
Although they were very cautious,
the others realised whatthey wanted to do.

00:12:24.760 --> 00:12:32.680
All of them had something in common;
they knew each other from the Stalag,

00:12:32.680 --> 00:12:39.320
since the spring 1940 when they
were prisoners in the same Stalag.

00:12:39.320 --> 00:12:44.000
Well, the colleagues of Agustin Santos; Francisco López
and Juan Adelantado

00:12:44.000 --> 00:12:51.240
had curiously something in common.
They were political activists before they were deported.

00:12:51.240 --> 00:12:56.880
We know that Juan Adelantado was
an anarcho-syndicalist from CNT

00:12:56.880 --> 00:13:01.920
He was twice in prison during the Second Republic
for being out on strike.

00:13:01.920 --> 00:13:05.520
He was very involved in the
labour unions in Barcelona.

00:13:05.520 --> 00:13:11.280
We know that Francisco López moved
out with his family to Nerva, to a mining area in Huelva

00:13:17.593 --> 00:13:21.845
The awaited day arrived. While we were hearing the
sound of the whistle calling to come back to the barracks

00:13:21.845 --> 00:13:28.483
we hid in the toilets. We only had 10 minutes
before the inspection.

00:13:28.483 --> 00:13:36.335
I have crawled till the fence in order to cut the wires and
I have sent a sign to the others to follow me.

00:13:36.335 --> 00:13:44.915
A few metres away form the camp we’ve heard the
shouts and the whistles. Suddenly, the lights have turned on.

00:13:44.915 --> 00:13:49.367
We have been discovered.

00:13:53.140 --> 00:14:03.720
I think they managed to escape
some hundreds of metres from the camp,

00:14:03.720 --> 00:14:08.600
but they were discovered immediately.
Although there was no electrified fence

00:14:08.600 --> 00:14:12.600
there were watchtowers
and permanent security.

00:14:12.599 --> 00:14:16.679
One of the guards realised what
was going on and raised the alarm.

00:14:16.680 --> 00:14:22.120
The bells were ringing, the whistles sounding,
the dogs were out and everybody was called out.

00:14:22.120 --> 00:14:28.360
The prisoners were taken out to form
lines and they could stay like this days and nights

00:14:28.359 --> 00:14:32.115
till the fugitives were found.
In the most of cases they were captured.

00:14:32.659 --> 00:14:39.400
Once all the security measures
are overcome the fugitives find themselves

00:14:39.939 --> 00:14:43.631
in an unknown area,
in the mountains.

00:14:44.006 --> 00:14:51.059
They don’t know either the geographical location
nor the language. Besides they often have to escape

00:14:51.684 --> 00:14:55.219
from the people who live in the close villages
because they could be denounced and captured.

00:14:59.727 --> 00:15:02.727
It's been 20 days since
our escape.

00:15:02.977 --> 00:15:05.977
We found old clothes that we could
wear instead of stripes uniforms.

00:15:10.462 --> 00:15:13.462
We are exhausted and
we still expect the worst.

00:15:16.957 --> 00:15:19.957
A man in a uniform and
a swastika on his arm stopped us

00:15:22.397 --> 00:15:25.397
Really scared , I gave him
a punch and we ran away

00:15:27.865 --> 00:15:30.865
In this unstoppable
race Juan git away form us

00:15:33.355 --> 00:15:36.355
We will never know
anithing about him again

00:15:37.457 --> 00:15:45.043
From the first moment they probably
wanted to get to the Swiss boarder.

00:15:45.358 --> 00:15:50.593
It’s hard to believe how they
could survive in those conditions.

00:15:50.831 --> 00:15:56.467
They lived form what they
had stolen or found on their way.

00:15:56.602 --> 00:16:02.602
We are talking about people
who don’t know the French language.

00:16:03.061 --> 00:16:08.608
They have to cross the country and
get to a place where you can feel safe.

00:16:08.921 --> 00:16:16.434
The only possible place is Switzerland but they wouldn’t know
the reaction of Swiss authorities either.

00:16:16.778 --> 00:16:21.453
The other possibility was to get toformer Yugoslavia
and join the resistance against Nazis there.

00:16:21.736 --> 00:16:28.722
We know they have to walk 300 or 400km through
the mountains and they will probably need

00:16:29.053 --> 00:16:33.573
one month to do that. They have to feed themselves
and they will meet people on their way.

00:16:36.048 --> 00:16:39.048
Nice spring weather let us walk during
the nights.

00:16:39.157 --> 00:16:45.125
But today, while we were taking some rest,
a forest ranger tried to shoot us and Francisco got injured

00:16:48.416 --> 00:16:51.416
We managed to escape but everything has become
more complicated now

00:16:54.083 --> 00:16:57.365
My colleague is really bad, he asked
me to continue without him

00:16:58.499 --> 00:17:01.931
but I reminded him the promise we made
to help each other until the end.

00:17:02.529 --> 00:17:07.636
So we've decided to leave the mountains
and start walking close to the roads

00:17:10.543 --> 00:17:18.311
This was oor perdition; we were caught 30 km from
the Swiss boarder after we had walked 350 km

00:17:25.698 --> 00:17:31.398
The mutual support is a very important
issue when we talk about surviving.

00:17:31.680 --> 00:17:37.440
During the escape you
need support form others.

00:17:37.440 --> 00:17:41.209
The individual success
means freedom for all.

00:17:41.381 --> 00:17:50.840
But the Andalucian had fever, he was
in bad condition. They were walking across the fields,

00:17:50.840 --> 00:17:59.040
never on the roads. Suddenlyhe told him: “I can’t bear it
anymore. Why don’t we continue on the road?”

00:17:59.040 --> 00:18:06.360
And he answered: “We can becaptured easily”.
The Andaucian said that he couldn’t go on

00:18:06.360 --> 00:18:11.240
and they agreed to continue
on the road. They werecaptured soon.

00:18:11.240 --> 00:18:23.280
Due to the reports the majority
of the fugitives were killed after being captured.

00:18:23.280 --> 00:18:30.880
But there are different cases like the one of Agustín Santos
who survived and that’s quite curious.

00:18:34.592 --> 00:18:37.823
As it was expected after the arrest,
I lost contact with Francisco

00:18:40.434 --> 00:18:44.217
I was taken to penal
labour camps in Ukraine

00:18:44.569 --> 00:18:50.117
There, I had to stand many interrogations
and vexations before being taken back to Mauthausen

00:18:52.888 --> 00:18:55.013
I thought I would be hung

00:18:55.106 --> 00:18:58.106
but my final destiny was Gusen.

00:19:00.449 --> 00:19:08.915
Some researchers say that Gusen
was the slaughterhouse of Mauthausen.

00:19:09.150 --> 00:19:17.480
Due to the constant arrival of Hitler’s prisoners the
capacity of Mauthausen was excess

00:19:17.480 --> 00:19:27.349
and it was impossible to admit more people. That’s why
many prisoners were moved toother places.

00:19:27.410 --> 00:19:31.516
Gusen was denominated like the
cemetery of the Spaniards

00:19:32.341 --> 00:19:35.810
It was very hard field and
was next to Mauthausen

00:19:36.821 --> 00:19:39.821
Mauthausen was the central field

00:19:40.352 --> 00:19:44.533
However in Gusen there were
more prisoners than in Mauthausen

00:19:46.603 --> 00:19:51.355
Two-thirds of the Spaniards were
in Gusen and only survived a ten per cent

00:19:54.450 --> 00:20:03.738
Gusen was a starting point for almost all
the Spaniards who were killed in gas chambers.

00:20:03.943 --> 00:20:09.640
There were doctors who were arriving at Gusen and
Mauthausen, but mostly at Gusen

00:20:09.640 --> 00:20:15.990
and who were selecting prisoners
to send them about 40km further, to Hartheim.

00:20:16.162 --> 00:20:27.040
Here they were killed in gaschambers.
This procedure was possibly the rehearsal

00:20:27.040 --> 00:20:45.960
of what was going to happen one
year later in similar places in Eastern Europe.

00:20:48.693 --> 00:20:51.693
I was sent to disciplinary
company in Gusen

00:20:52.453 --> 00:20:55.839
There I found my colleague Francisco López

00:20:58.433 --> 00:21:01.988
Unfortunately he is in very bad condition and
I don't know if he is going to survive

00:21:04.191 --> 00:21:07.675
I'm trying to bear this
with all my might

00:21:10.209 --> 00:21:16.489
It’s strange what happened after
the escape of Agustín Santos and his colleagues.

00:21:16.630 --> 00:21:29.454
They weren’t killed in public ceremony
but sent to a disciplinary company.

00:21:29.689 --> 00:21:35.467
That was rare; the normal
procedure was an exemplary punishment.

00:21:35.748 --> 00:21:39.550
The reprisals were tough.

00:21:39.753 --> 00:21:51.206
He was taken everyday to a special place
where he was flogged until he was exhausted.

00:21:51.503 --> 00:21:59.600
Even if his wounds got infected they continued
flogging him more and more.

00:21:59.600 --> 00:22:04.358
Once he said that he couldn’t
bear it anymore and he told a colleague:

00:22:04.483 --> 00:22:08.360
“Tomorrow I’m going to
kill myself on the fence.”

00:22:08.360 --> 00:22:13.960
The fence was electrified and it was a way of suicide
for those who couldn’t bear to continue.

00:22:13.960 --> 00:22:19.681
But he didn’t have to die that
day. He was not taken to be flogged again.

00:22:40.709 --> 00:22:46.420
In the liberation it seems thatan American
lieutenant found the camp by chance

00:22:46.654 --> 00:22:50.398
because the Americans didn’t
know anything about this place before.

00:22:50.680 --> 00:22:54.440
Due to the biography and testimonies
there was a kind of chaos on the first days of liberation.

00:22:54.440 --> 00:22:59.360
The prisoners themselves
had to control everything

00:22:59.360 --> 00:23:02.080
so it don’t get out of hand
and the guards don’t escape.

00:23:02.080 --> 00:23:13.520
He realized that the guards were quite discouraged
and some of them even went away

00:23:13.520 --> 00:23:25.760
leaving the weapons there. So he took a gun and he climbed
a wooden tower and he thought:

00:23:25.760 --> 00:23:30.760
“If they come to catch me,
I will kill them and escape”

00:23:30.760 --> 00:23:39.800
And suddenly the Americans appeared and they
said that thewar was over and they were free.

00:23:39.800 --> 00:23:42.009
No one could believe it.

00:23:43.268 --> 00:23:50.480
The testimonies that I could get form the survivors
don’t talk about a special day of joy.

00:23:50.480 --> 00:23:55.920
They were so exhausted,
weighing 35 or 40kg. They were saying that

00:23:55.920 --> 00:24:00.760
if the liberation takes more
time they wouldn’t probably survive.

00:24:01.169 --> 00:24:08.233
The people were dying during the next days and
weeks butthere is no specific information about that.

00:24:08.481 --> 00:24:14.371
They were dying after ingesting
some food because their bodies

00:24:14.558 --> 00:24:22.914
were so decrepit and couldn’t
accept big amounts of calories.

00:24:23.302 --> 00:24:27.728
who committed suicides because
they didn’t know how to overcome that situation.

00:24:27.863 --> 00:24:36.080
There is nobody who was unharmedafter
leaving a concentration camp, not even the torturers.

00:24:36.080 --> 00:24:43.360
It’s a very extreme experience
that is against all human tolerance.

00:24:43.360 --> 00:24:48.892
All of them suffered from disorders,
on one side and on the other.

00:24:49.412 --> 00:24:56.215
When they released him he got
the hardest because he was nowhere to go

00:24:57.912 --> 00:25:00.912
Because the borders of Spain were closed

00:25:02.449 --> 00:25:09.520
The truth is that the Americans
were in charge of the liberation

00:25:09.520 --> 00:25:17.440
and the prisoners were leaving
due to their nationality.

00:25:17.440 --> 00:25:21.400
the rest of prisoners made
a big goodbye ceremony for them.

00:25:21.400 --> 00:25:25.040
All of them were leaving sooner
of after, but The Spaniards had to face

00:25:25.040 --> 00:25:29.400
the second part of their nightmare.
They didn’t have anywhere to go

00:25:29.400 --> 00:25:33.729
And they were the last group to leave
when France accepted to admit them in their country

00:25:33.964 --> 00:25:38.947
because they were deported from here and
they fought against Nazis in France.

00:25:39.197 --> 00:25:44.800
Many of them hoped that
after the fall of Franco regime,

00:25:44.800 --> 00:25:53.080
his death and the transition to democracy their
stories would be somehow appreciated.

00:25:53.080 --> 00:26:01.480
They complained bitterly that it was a kind
of second deception or second defeat.

00:26:03.446 --> 00:26:09.040
The collective memory hasn’tbeen appreciated
yet and 80 years later we are still waiting for it.

00:26:09.040 --> 00:26:18.720
The Spanish deportees have been honoured by
some governments,for example the French government.

00:26:18.720 --> 00:26:24.572
The Spanish government hasn’t taken any
measures yet to heal the wounds of the past.

00:26:24.858 --> 00:26:30.400
He had never lost hope for
coming back home, to his country.

00:26:30.400 --> 00:26:35.780
The most painful thing for him was
not seeing his mother any more.

00:26:35.936 --> 00:26:43.880
He remembered her and he
wasn’t sure if she knew he was alive.

00:26:43.880 --> 00:26:47.051
He wanted to come back to Spain.

00:26:50.137 --> 00:26:53.137
I survived. I made it.

00:26:54.030 --> 00:27:00.759
I needed to tell the world about was happening in this
places and the support of my colleagues during the last months

00:27:01.075 --> 00:27:04.075
made me fight till
the day of the liberation

00:27:06.530 --> 00:27:10.227
Maybe it's just another horror story
what happened there but it's

00:27:10.371 --> 00:27:13.590
our story and it's necessary
that people know it.

00:27:15.225 --> 00:27:20.408
The story that happened to three fugitives
from César Kommando on the 5th Of April 1942.

00:27:31.587 --> 00:27:35.774
There’s nothing worse than
a country

00:27:35.955 --> 00:27:42.239
And we are still orphans of
this memory, the justice and the truth.

00:27:42.409 --> 00:27:46.320
There is no cultural memory
of Holocaust in Spain.

00:27:46.319 --> 00:27:50.200
There is not much information about
Spaniards who died in concentration camps.

00:27:50.200 --> 00:27:53.960
They are considered for missing people
from the Spanish Civil War,

00:27:53.960 --> 00:27:56.659
but never thought to
be prisoners in a Nazi camp.

00:27:56.948 --> 00:28:02.640
Not all of them could see
that because the worst things were

00:28:02.640 --> 00:28:05.694
happening in specific places
and only some of them survived.

00:28:05.880 --> 00:28:13.800
Agustín wanted to leave the concentration camp to tell
the world about this horror place.

00:28:13.997 --> 00:28:17.920
Anything what happens is forgotten although
we can’t remember it.

00:28:23.720 --> 00:28:30.520
Francisco López Bermudez
couldn’t bear till winter.

00:28:30.520 --> 00:28:43.280
He died in Gusen on the 30th
December 1942. He had just turned 36.

00:28:48.640 --> 00:28:53.560
Juan Adelantado was
captured during the escape.

00:28:53.560 --> 00:28:58.520
He escaped again and he was
captured for the second time.

00:28:58.520 --> 00:29:03.600
He survived and was
released by Allied troops.

00:29:03.600 --> 00:29:07.458
He died in France in
1966 at the age of 56.

00:29:12.929 --> 00:29:18.480
Agustín Santos was deported
with the number 5105,

00:29:18.480 --> 00:29:24.520
survived to tell the world the horror
lived by the people in concentration camps.

00:29:24.520 --> 00:29:28.480
He got married and
had two children.

00:29:28.480 --> 00:29:33.120
He had never come to Spain
to see his mother alive.