Francisco Boix, Mauthausen photographer (on-line movie)

[offline ASMarques]

FRANCISCO BOIX - UN FOTOGRÁFO EN EL INFIERNO

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid ... &plindex=0

This is a very interesting Spanish film made for TV that was seen on the Iberian regional version of the History Channel and is now on-line at the Google video pages (you may easily download the 56:07 min. movie). My comments are intended for those of you who don't understand Spanish. They apply to the version dubbed in Portuguese that I had on tape, but you should be able to follow what I'm saying on the original version.

The film is a biographical documentary on Francisco (also François or Francesc) Boix, a communist photographer that left Spain after the republican defeat in the Civil War, was interned first by the French and then by the Germans at Mauthausen for the duration of the War. He later worked for the French communist paper "l'Humanité", and died in France at 30, in 1951.

Boix is a little known character. I found only two mentions of him (as a Nuremberg witness) in Faurisson's "Ecrits revisionnistes". The photos he took at Mauthausen are shown in a large number of "Holocaust" books & articles with no identification of location or any credits. I believe the work of this man may have had an unrecognised importance in "Holocaust" photographic propaganda.

The interest of the film itself is three-fold:

1) IMAGES OF THE MAUTHAUSEN COMMUNIST ORGANISATION: In spite of many contradictions, the film makes it quite visible that the people of the communist organisation inside Mauthausen got along famously with the German overseers. Revisionists will be reminded of Rassinier's Buchenwald memories, even though the internal "Organisation" is presented simply as a sort of clandestine survival scheme. Young Boix himself, we are told, worked for the Identification Service of the camp and was considered "very influential with the Germans" in the words of one of the participants. Several Spanish communist ex-prisoners are interviewed and it becomes obvious, though never actually stated, that they enjoyed unusual conditions. Unlike the other interviewed people, they maintain their anonymity since their names are not indicated (maybe they are included among the thanking notes in the final credits, but the names aren't there when they start talking). Boix took many photos not only for the Germans for whom he worked, but also during and after the liberation of the camp. They invariably feature good-looking, healthy, even plump, communists, including the chubby Boix himself, alongside the less-fortunate prisoners. On liberation, they are shown with armbands and weapons directing skinny folks that run like mad after the trucks coming in with loads of potatoes. Also images of their political meetings in the "showers zone" immediately after liberation, beaming happiness under portraits of Stalin and slogans of "La Pasionaria" (at 36:55). Photos of the Spanish inmates show them in good shape, both under the Germans and after liberation. Boix himself always smiling and looking boyish when he had himself photographed. The film has images of value that might be used on revisionist sites.

2) IDENTIFICATION OF PROPAGANDA IMAGES: Boix is the author of photos that have been frequently used -- with no credits or with wildy varied identification as to location and time -- for the purpose of "Holocaust" propaganda. Some of the photos are visibly posed. Among these I would include those of people in prisoner's clothes hanging (actually suspending by their own closed hands) on barbed wire, in very unlikely acrobatic positions, probably taken after liberation as a sort of artsy atrocity image by a young aesthetically naif photographer (with a willing cast of models that never clearly show any faces). Other photos show hanged people in the collective WCs, probably real suicide cases. At one point, when mention is made of the careful way Boix documented his work, if one freezes the image, "Dutch Jew, hung from his own belt (suicide)" can be read on the reverse side of one of the photos. We are told the SS always had Boix at their side for the purpose of documenting their "barbaric practices", but we are also told the sons of the Spanish inmates apparently found it easy to contact German folks on the small outside canteen where they ate when they were working at the stone quarries. According to the film, they passed the negatives to a nice German lady who worked there and she kept them in hiding for them.

3) THE INTERROGATION OF ZIEREIS: Several photos (Faurisson has mentioned the existence of at least two, but more can be seen in the film) of the interrogation of Ziereis, the commandant of Mauthausen, who was wounded with three shots in the stomach by the inmates, are shown, with Boix himself present, together with several other people and two men in uniform (ranks and badges not clearly visible). Also several photos of Ziereis's body strung up from a barbed wire post (at 40:00), something I had never before heard any mention of, much less seen any documentary photos.

Let me give you some examples of what I mean.

A whole series of photos, including close-ups that frequently get falsified or photographically remounted, appear to concern the same day and context. The best-known identified one shows a large park with thousands of naked men under the vigilance of sentries (at 14:08 ), but several others shown in the film are not usually connected with the same occasion. Here are some comments by the Spanish ex-prisoners:

"This is the SS motor park. And it's June 22, 1941. On this date, in order to be disinfected, we were there from 6 in the morning to 11 in the night. The camp was disinfected, that is, all the barracks were disinfected with gas to eliminate the vermin, the lice. We spent the whole day here, with nothing to eat or drink."

"Then right there where we were -- I think it must have been the only time a political meeting was ever held among completely naked men! -- since we were there, in the park, with no place to go, we held a small congress, a reunion with all those we knew and others that told us they were communists too. We said: «we must organise the Communist Party, here, inside this horror»."

"I was responsible, responsible for the Organisation. I don't want to talk about the Party, but I was responsible for the Party. But to me, the Party was the Organisation, a resistance organisation. We had to save the greatest possible number of comrades, and that was terrible. Who would we save? Someone who was our comrade or someone else who was dying? We had to make decisions of this kind, and it was very difficult, very hard. But we had to decide, because it was better to save one person who had a chance and let die another one who had no longer any chance of survival. The only way to get out of there alive was by stealing food, stealing everything that could be stolen. To organise, that's how we called it, to organise."

In spite of the often nonsensical comment, we are sometimes allowed to glimpse hidden facts, as, for instance, in the following passage:

"This group of youths was composed of the sons of the Spanish republicans who had been made prisoners together with their parents during the occupation of France. The Nazis saw in them the potential of the young blood they needed for their machiavelian projects. Since they didn't consider them politically dangerous, they set them free half an year before the liberation of the camp."

On another occasion we learn that "1500 Spaniards survived Mauthausen" even though we were told at the beginning that they were sent there to be exterminated by an agreement between Hitler & Franco at Hendaya.

Marsalek makes a brief appearance and tells us the following:

"I got there [to the Ziereis interrogation] in the afternoon and I interrogated him till very late in the night. Ziereis was constantly fainting because he had lost a lot of blood. While I was there, they gave him some blood transfusions. Also we should not forget that we were not professional policemen. We were not criminalists, but people who knew the Gestapo methods. To be truthful, I didn't feel anything at all when he fainted, because I saw him as an animal and not a human being. But I think a person in that state should not be interrogated."

Then the film commentary informs us that "When Ziereis died, two days after having been captured, his body was exposed in the very same place of his crimes." A succession of three photos, taken from different angles follows. Ziereis's naked body is hanging by his elongated neck from a barbed wire post, with his right leg astride the barbed wire itself. The body is covered with inscriptions: "Heil Hitler" on the back, "SS" on the lower back, a swastika on each buttock. These are strong images that remind us of his ordeal a few hours before. Certainly a powerful image for the "death-bed confession" school of thought to ponder...

Then we see Kaltenbrunner being addressed by a Nuremberg prosecutor about the "order to kill everyone in the camp" that Ziereis "confessed" he had received in the last days! Kaltenbruner claims he knows nothing about such an order, but the film's commentary makes the point that since Boix had shot photos that no one could deny (here we are shown Kaltenbrunner visiting the camp, as well as Himmler, Speer etc) he was nailed by the photos! One of the Spanish ex-prisoners comments that the Germans had brought in some photographic experts that had tried to deny the authenticity of the photos involving Kaltenbrunner, as if any photos proving that he had visited the camp were very embarassing to the defense... Boix is actually presented as the decisive factor behind the condemnation. We hear Kaltenbrunner's affirmative reply to the prosecutor who asks him in a sinister way if he was acquainted with Ziereis, and that apparently does it: guilty as charged! The Nuremberg photo of the dead Kaltenbrunner follows.

The degree of surrealistic contradictory nonsense is breathtaking, but, of course, the average viewer will take notice of the emotional tone only, not of the absence of logic.

The information contained in this film concerning Boix's photographs may be helpful, not only to locate and debunk recycled images, but to document the exceptionally healthy athletic looks of the communist "Organisation" people on and before liberation day at Mauthausen, the fate of Ziereis etc..

The film also mentions that Boix had fought as a young Catalonian communist from Barcelona in the republican ranks during the Spanish Civil War. When war between France and Germany broke out, he and many others were pressed into work detachments to help the French effort. After the 1940 defeat, they were delivered to the Germans who sent them to their own labour camps as interned "politicals". According to the film they were delivered by the "right-wing, not to say outright fascist" French officers who were in charge of the work detachments. The whole tone is very much philo-communist, rather than "holocaustic", if you see what I mean. Nevertheless, one of the fellows even says that back in 1941 the Spaniards were the Jews, and some photos of crematory ovens are shown. One of the Spaniards tells us he worked there and couldn't stand the smell when the ovens "sometimes" were functioning continously for whole days. All of this in spite of the apparently great shape of every Spaniard shown in Boix's photos, the mass of naked folks waiting for the disinfection of their cloths & lodgements and so on. It's not difficult to understand that the common ennemy of both Germans and internees were rampant lice and disease and mass disinfection is clearly mentioned.

The existence of large numbers of Spanish communists in transit from French to German camps was a sort of open secret in 1945. Everybody knew it, but hardly anybody would mention it in public. In the film, the Spanish communist "survivors" tell us that it was very difficult to present Boix as a Spanish witness at the Nuremberg IMT, presumably to avoid the German defence going into topics such as the French camps in 1939-40, so he had to be presented as a French witness with an odd Spanish accent...

Later on when he worked for "l'Humanité" he adopted the French name François Boix. In the film we are shown images of a French illustrated magazine from the 1950s called "Regards", where some of his camp photos were published. If you freeze the frame you'll be able to recognize some of them you may have seen being passed in different contexts.

[offlineLaurentz Dahl]

I took a bunch of stills which will be up later.

[offline Haldan]

Am I the only one who found the treatment of Ziereis body a ing act of cowardice? However, such treatment was hardly uncommon amongst the people who perpetrated such things...

I think it was wrong also too extract a "testimony" of Ziereis in the condition which he was.

-haldan

[offline Hektor]

Am I the only one who found the treatment of Ziereis body a ing act of cowardice? However, such treatment was hardly uncommon amongst the people who perpetrated such things...

I think it was wrong also too extract a "testimony" of Ziereis in the condition which he was....

That's if there ever was a "testimony" from him anyway.

[offlinekk]

IMAGES OF THE MAUTHAUSEN COMMUNIST ORGANISATION: In spite of many contradictions, the film makes it quite visible that the people of the communist organisation inside Mauthausen got along famously with the German overseers.

The communist leader of my country came back after almost 5 years of
incarceration in Dachau, (1941-45) healthy and well-fed as a prize bull.
He was able to immediatly take reign of the 'party' and instigate a civil
war that lasted until the August of '49.


The first to explain this was none other than Paul Rassinier. Read his first work on revisionism and pay attention to the
part in which he explains the taking over of the camps administration
by the 'red triangel' inmates (political prisoners) from the 'green triangle'
criminals.

In one paragraph he describes being chastized by no other thug than...
Thaelmann*, a Buchenwald trustee (Kapo) at that time, while Leon Blum
had a villa with a garden adjoining Buchenwald, all for him and his
family.
http://www.aaargh.com.mx/fran/livres/debunk.pdf
MUST READ!

Another day, instead of taking us to the Steinbruch, we were taken to the criminal
anthropometry department where our photographs, face and profile, and our finger
prints were taken. Coarse, fat, well-fed individuals, but prisoners just like ourselves,
each with a brassard on the arm of some authority or other, and each with a rubber
truncheon in the hand to back it up, yelled at our heels. In front of me were Dr. "X"
and the little Communist cripple who was in the good graces of the Block Chief and
who was considered by the French to be his confidential agent. I listened to their
conversation. Doctor "X," whom everyone knew had been several times a candidate
for the U.M.R. in various elections, was explaining to the cripple that he was not a
communist, but not an anti-Communist either, far from it. The war had opened his
eyes, and, perhaps, when he had time to assimilate the doctrine . . . For two days a
possible move to Dora had been talked about, and Doctor "X" was beginning to lay
the ground work so that he could stay at Buchenwald. Misery!
Suddenly I felt a terrible blow. Absorbed in reflections that had been stimulated by
this conversation, I must have strayed a little from the ranks. I turned around and got
an avalanche of insults in German of which I made out "Hier ist Buchenwald, lumpe
schau mal, dort ist Krematorium!" (This is Buchenwald, take a look you, there is the
Crematorium.) That was all I was to know about the reason for the assault. By the
way of explanation, and to justify it, the little cripple turned to me and said, "You
could have been more careful; that's Thaelmann!"

*Thaelmann, a jew, was an a iconic communist figure of the pre-war years.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ernst_Th%C3%A4lmann

[offlineBradleySmith]

KK: It's probbly obvious from the text, but which is "your" country?
Thanks.

[offline ASMarques]

KK: It's probbly obvious from the text, but which is "your" country?
Thanks.

I don't know whether KK is reading the thread, so I might as well suggest that he probably comes from Greece and is referring to Nikolaos Zachariadis, the head of the Communist Party of Greece (1931 to 1956) that was interned in Dachau (1941 to 1945).

[offlineBradleySmith]

Got it. Thanks.

[offline PotPie]

I hope a translation of this comes out... Subtitles or something.

[offlineStuDewan]

this is an interesting movie that I hadn´t seen before...

one testimony caught my attention... at 18:50...

"And when the weather was overcast and the clouds low, the smell... the smell of the burnt flesh flooded all the camp... but more to us who we were in the crematorium... and there was days when it was insupportable but we withstood it all...but it was burnt flesh... and there were times that the crematorium didn´t stop, didn´t stop, didn´t stop..."

seems that this survivor worked at the crematorium and he says that there were times when the crematorium worked non-stop...

if they had gas chambers, as some say, shouldn´t the crematorium be working full-time to get rid of the hundreds or thousands of bodies?

[offline Hannover]

Stu said:

seems that this survivor worked at the crematorium and he says that there were times when the crematorium worked non-stop...

if they had gas chambers, as some say, shouldn´t the crematorium be working full-time to get rid of the hundreds or thousands of bodies?

This is another painted-themselves-into-a-corner situation.

The cremation tales are scientifically impossible given the numbers alleged and the time frame claimed. The numbers cannot be achieved with today's modern crematories (not even close), let alone with 1940s cremation ovens.

Yes, the claim is that the crematorium ran non-stop; but that's impossible since they required cleaning, regular maintenance, and even broke down during the many typhus epidemics. Non-stop or not, the claims are impossible.

They have lied endlessly, and must continue lie endlessly.

- Hannover