ABSTRACT
Few events were more important to the Spaniards than the promotion of Juan de Diego to the Lagerschreibstube. De Diego, as we have seen, had arrived in Mauthausen on 6 August 1940 with the very first contingent of Spaniards; he received the number 3156. 1 A Catalan from Barcelona and member of the moderate leftist Ezquerra, he had served in the Civil War, on the Aragon front and later in Madrid, as secretary to Colonel Joaquín Blanco Valdés; he had then been transferred to the 26th ('Durruti') Division, where his responsibility had been to teach administrative skills to the anarchists. From his arrival in Mauthausen until March 1941, he worked, like everyone else, in the quarry. His transfer to the Lagerschreibstube resulted from several chance factors. In 1940 Bachmayer had chosen as his Lagerschreiber I the Austrian Green Josef Leitzinger. Leitzinger thus began work in Block I under the Rapportführer Dostoevski, and at once took advantage of his privileges. His barber was forced to approach him from the main gate to the Schreibstube on all fours, and even on his belly. 2 Since he was also free to bestow favours, he chose to employ Mario Arnijas, a Spanish amateur tenor whose voice Leitzinger liked to hear around the office. Arnijas was thus hired to amuse. He was saved from the work that killed, but he was fed no better than before, and he subsequendy arranged his transfer to a service Kommando, where he ate more and ultimately survived the war. 3
