- Francisco Boix
Francisco (or Francesc) Boix Campo (1920
Barcelona -1951Paris ) was an Spanish republican exiled in France in 1939. He was recruited by the French army and captured in 1940 by the Germans. Boix, like over 7000 Spaniards, was an inmate in theMauthausen concentration camp between January 1941 and May 1945, who became known for having testified as a witness in two trials againstNazi war criminal s.In the
Nuremberg trial (International Military Tribunal), Boix was called by the French prosecution to show photographs taken by the SS in Mauthausen. Those photos depicted the conditions in which the prisoners lived and were murdered in that camp. They were also a proof that the camp was known and visited by high leaders of theThird Reich , likeErnst Kaltenbrunner , who appeared visiting both the Mauthausen camp proper, and the Wienergraben quarry in and the camp in Mauthausen.Boix was also a witness in the military American trial which took place in
Dachau against 61 criminals from the Nazi camp Mauthausen.Boix had hidden these photographs in the time he was in Mauthausen and worked as a prisoner in the SS photographic service.
Between 1945 and 1951 Boix worked as a photo reporter in the French press.
References
* [http://www.yale.edu/lawweb/avalon/imt/proc/01-28-46.htm Boix' statement in Nuremberg]
* [http://www.findagrave.com/cgi-bin/fg.cgi?page=gr&GRid=10488320 Boix' grave is located in Thiais, near Paris]Books
*Benito Bermejo, "Francisco Boix, el fotógrafo de Mauthausen. Fotografías de Francisco Boix y de los archivos capturados a los SS de Mauthausen", Barcelona, RBA Libros, 2002, ISBN 978-84-7901-847-4 (Biography in Spanish)
Films
*"Francisco Boix, un fotógrafo en el infierno" ("Francisco Boix, a photographer in hell"), a documentary directed by Llorenç Soler, Spain, 2000
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