Review: The Photographer of Mauthausen

The Photographer of Mauthausen by Salva Rubio
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

5 out of 5 - I'll tell you to read this without you asking.

The Photographer of Mauthausen was a story I had yet to learn about WWII history. I didn't know about the Spanish who had gone to fight with the French and were sent to concentration camps. Mauthausen was a work camp that no one was supposed to survive. Francisco Boix was one of the Spaniards who was sent to Mauthausen. In his previous life, he'd been a photographer. This allowed him to get a "job" at the camp working with one of the Nazi leaders who was attempting to turn death into an art form, taking photos of men who were killed during the time at Mauthausen.

Francisco uses his place within the camp to steal the photo negatives and works with others to find a way to smuggle them out to a woman in the village nearby. After he is liberated from the camp by the Americans, he is able to recover the negatives that were smuggled out. He attempts to publish them, but other photos have already been published from Auschwitz and Berkenau, so his photos weren't wanted or needed for publication.

He was able to utilize the photos to testify against some of the Nazis in the Nuremberg Trials, but he wasn't able to tell the full stories of what he had witnessed and endured.

You could see the research that had gone into the telling of this story. I also was impressed by the illustrations and coloring of this graphic novel.

Thank you to NetGalley and Dead Reckoning from the U.S. Naval Institute for this advanced copy.

View all my reviews