He was a peculiar character who participated in one of the most macabre events in the history of mankind. A movie about him was recently released, although not everything that is told is so true. we tell you all about The Mauthausen Photographer – Royal History and non-fictional, so you can compare the real character with the one you’re shown in the movies.
What is the real story of the Mauthausen photographer
Not long ago (October 2018) a Spanish film was released that, without a doubt, is one of the most interesting projects that the country’s film production has offered us: The Photographer of Mauthausen.
One of the elements that most impacts or stands out from the film is that it is based on real events, however, as with 99% if not 100% of film adaptations, not everything happened the way it was supposed to. tells us in the feature film directed by Mar Targarona.
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You should know that the name of the film is due to the fact that the subject in question, that is, the photographer (Francisco Boix, who we will talk about more extensively later), was interned in the Mauthausen concentration camp (in Upper Austria) during the Second World War.
The film was shot for just over a month (38 days) on sets scattered throughout Catalonia. As Casas himself would say, they are stories that we must honor, because we are not always aware of our history.
The Mauthausen photographer is more than a simple film, it is a memory, a message for all the people, not only Spanish, but worldwide, which reminds us of the evil that human beings are capable of, as well as reminding us that they have not happened, even 100 years of the events we are narrating.
With that said, let’s see what is the story behind the real mauthausen photographer, Francisco Boix:
Francisco or Francesc Boix Campo is considered a war hero born in Barcelona in 1920, his passion for photography was passed on to him by his father, a tailor by profession.
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Soon, Boix decided to join the Unified Socialist Youth in Catalonia, also defending the socialist/communist ideology, the idea of the nascent second Spanish republic. He participated, in fact, in the 30th division of the army, having to go into exile in 1939 in France.
A short time later, with the outbreak of instabilities in the European panorama at the end of the 30’s and beginning of the 40’s, among them, the beginning of the second great war that confronted humanity was captured in France in 1940 by the Nazis (naturally, this was due to the political ideology he professed).
This is how, at the beginning of 1941, he arrived at the Mauthausen concentration camp in Austria, where previously Antonio García -whom we will talk about in more detail in the next section- had also documented information about torture by the German authorities.
This documentation could not have been achieved, in fact, without García, who interceded for Boix, achieving, in fact, that in October 1942 it arrived at the Nazi photographic laboratory, who used it, fundamentally, as a laboratory destined for activity of police court.
Around 20,000 images (negatives) were collected by García-Boix (Boix would take over those of García when he was admitted to a hospital in 1945), a figure that, although it is a large quantity, does not stand out for that alone, as many of the images also included the faces of the SS members who had committed the crime.
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Indeed, one of the aspects that is retained as one of the most important, as well as interesting, is that Boix contributed so that, in Nuremberg, in 1946, once the storm of war had ended, not only the memory remained that “ Nazi ideology or the idea that the Nazis”, understood as a fanatical group, were responsible for all that cruelty.
On the contrary, he managed to remember that, beyond an idea of racial supremacy or political fanaticism, those who carried out the actions that were done, as well as those who ordered them to do them (or Is it that perhaps Hitler ran each concentration camp or ordered each action to be carried out personally?)
At the age of 30, the photographer from Mauthausen will die in Paris, France, where he had returned (the city to which he had gone into exile) due to a kidney disease that did have to do with his time spent in the concentration camp.
In 2017, his remains will be taken to Père Lachaise with due honors, after spending all that time in a humble tomb in Thiais.
Changes in the true story and the film The Photographer of Mauthausen
As the director of the film herself has explained in some of the interviews with her, the photographer from Mauthausen, although he is based on Francisco Boix, does not ignore the fact that he was not the only one.
Therefore, Francisco Boix or, rather, Mario Casas, who plays him, not only represents the figure of a single person (Boix) who, although it is true that he was key, was not the only one who carried out or dedicated himself to such work.
How do we know this? Through studies carried out by historians in the past, specifically the work of the Englishman David Wingeate, with a title similar to that of the film, he points out that before Boix there was another figure who, unfortunately, did not have much luck either, Antonio García , who had hidden images from the Nazis for 17 months (the time between García’s arrival and Boix’s).
It is said that the mauthausen photographerBoix, stole the images from his compatriot shortly before he died and he was even a kapo or head of prisoners during the time.
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