Bilbao en Mauthausen

Thousands of Spanish republicans were imprisoned and lost their lives in Mauthausen and the total number of victims of various nationalities who died in that camp alone is estimated at hundreds of thousands. In the case of the Spanish, the attitude of the Franco government played an ominous role in the fate of all of them. This book recounts the memories of Marcelino Bilbao, a young man with an eventful life who was imprisoned in Mauthausen, in 4628, and later in the annexed Ebensee camp, in Austria. This is the story of Marcelino but, in a way, it is also the story of those many other people who could not tell it. Abandoned shortly after being born in the estuary -hence his surname- Marcelino Bilbao lived a tough childhood and adolescence; He had to work in very precarious conditions and, when the civil war broke out, he enlisted on the Republican side and became a battalion lieutenant. At the beginning of 1939 he crossed the French border and, after previously being in other camps in France, ended up in Austria. Life in the camps took place in subhuman conditions. If Marcelino Bilbao survived it was thanks to chance and his great spirit of survival, but football, the smuggling network in which he was involved with the kapos and the organized resistance among the Spanish people. This book collects the extraordinary testimony of Bilbao through his great-nephew, the historian Etxahun Galparsoro, to whom he narrated in detail his amazing story.