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A review by ljrinaldi
The Photographer of Mauthausen by Salva Rubio
4.0
For the most part, I would say that most of the world is very familiar with the concentration camps that held the Jews. But, there were others that were held as well, and this story tells of one such camp which held Spanish communists, that Franco didn't care about, and let the Nazis have. They were tortured just as much as the Jews, killed, beaten, starved, and experimented on.
François Boix, was a photographer, who fled from Spain, during the Spanish Civil War, to France, just in time to be captured by the Nazis, and put in Mauthausen. There, he manages to survive, and gets a job shooting photos of the deaths of his fellow inmates, because the Nazis, for some reason, want to document it. Perhaps it is art, as they tell him, perhaps it is something else.
And the overwhelming feeling Boix has, through all this, is that these pictures must be preserved at all costs, that the pictures have to get out into the world. That when this is all over, that there will be punishment for those who have done this horrid deeds.
Most of the book is him trying to figure out a) how to survive and b) how to get these photos out into the world.
The sad thing is, he manages to do both. This is not giving away anything, of the story, since the story opens with him being free, but the part where he goes to the Nuremberg trails, and tries to get his story heard is so sad. They only want revenge, they do not want to hear his story.
A little slow in bits, where he is trying to figure things out, but well done, and based on the life of a real person, written from information of those who lived with him, at the camps, and stories passed down.
Thanks to Netgalley for making this book available for an honest review.
François Boix, was a photographer, who fled from Spain, during the Spanish Civil War, to France, just in time to be captured by the Nazis, and put in Mauthausen. There, he manages to survive, and gets a job shooting photos of the deaths of his fellow inmates, because the Nazis, for some reason, want to document it. Perhaps it is art, as they tell him, perhaps it is something else.
And the overwhelming feeling Boix has, through all this, is that these pictures must be preserved at all costs, that the pictures have to get out into the world. That when this is all over, that there will be punishment for those who have done this horrid deeds.
Most of the book is him trying to figure out a) how to survive and b) how to get these photos out into the world.
The sad thing is, he manages to do both. This is not giving away anything, of the story, since the story opens with him being free, but the part where he goes to the Nuremberg trails, and tries to get his story heard is so sad. They only want revenge, they do not want to hear his story.
A little slow in bits, where he is trying to figure things out, but well done, and based on the life of a real person, written from information of those who lived with him, at the camps, and stories passed down.
Thanks to Netgalley for making this book available for an honest review.