Senior Austrian officials were joined by Spanish royalty on Sunday in commemorating the liberation of the Nazi concentration camp of Mauthausen, where 90,000 people were killed, among them many fighters fleeing Spain’s civil war.
The Mauthausen concentration camp near the Austrian industrial city of Linz was liberated 80 years ago at the end of World War II, after tens of thousands imprisoned there were killed or died from disease or malnourishment between 1938 and 1945.
King Felipe and Queen Letizia attended on the invitation of Austria’s head of state, Alexander Van der Bellen, to mark the International Liberation Ceremony.
Many of the camp’s victims were people who had fought in the Spanish Civil War against the future dictator Franco and then fled to France, only to fall into the hands of the Nazis.
Among those in attendance was Eva Clarke, who was born in the camp just days before its liberation and who survived despite the deadly circumstances.
Various speakers renewed calls that Austria pull “together for a ‘Never Again!'” and said that society often harbours hatred towards others instead of adopting a conciliatory attitude.
The Mauthausen concentration camp was opened in 1938, initially for German and Austrian opponents of the regime, as well as people seen as criminals or socially undesirable. After the start of the Second World War, people from more than 40 nations were deported there.