Der Fotograf von Mauthausen

Like 7,000 of his republican comrades, the Catalan photographer Francisco Boix was deported to the Mauthausen camp by the Nazis. At first, he is only interested in surviving this true nightmare in any way possible. However, when he encounters SS Hauptscharführer Paul Ricken, a perverse Nazi aesthete who takes pleasure in photographing horror, the young man realizes that this is a unique testimony. For the so-called identification service, Boix managed to capture images of prisoners, SS guards, and daily life in the camp. During Heinrich Himmler's visit in April 1941 alone, he took 4,000 photographs. Throughout his five years in the camp, Boix was able to smuggle out tens of thousands of photos. He received help from fellow inmates and a brave resident of Mauthausen, Anna Pointner, who hid the images in her garden until the end of the war. After the liberation, Boix was the only Spanish witness to testify at the Nuremberg Trials. His photographs were used to convict the perpetrators in both the Dachau Trials and in Nuremberg.