ABSTRACT
It was the Spaniards - the 'Spantak', as the SS and the other prisoners called them - who, in the opinion of all observers, came out of this supreme ordeal the best. 'Spanier gut, Niemic nix gut' was the pidgin German expression frequendy heard in praise of the Spanish Prominenten and in contempt of the German and Austrian Prominenten. 1 Unlike the Poles, the Russians, and many Germans and Austrians, every one of the Spaniards was there because he was an antifascist. Almost all were veterans of the Spanish Civil War, and they included, curiously enough, the only Negro in Mauthausen: Carlos Gray Key. a native of Spanish Morocco but born in Barcelona. Their youth - the average age of the Spaniards was 27 on their arrival - their military discipline, and their previous experience of concentration-camp life are factors that help to explain how they coped with KZ life better than any other national group. 2 But there is more to it than that. Whether they expressed the libertarian recalcitrance to authority or accepted the iron discipline of the Communist Party, they understood the vital need for solidarity. Christopher Burney, who in Buchenwald formed such adverse impressions of the French, had nothing but admiration for the small group of Spaniards 'who were models of what prisoners should be ... They were always polite, helped each other and ... never allowed a sign of flagging courage to escape them.... He who thinks ill of Spaniards should think again. Whatever their faults, they behave like men of dignity.' 3 David Rousset, also at Buchenwald, adds his praise: 'They comported themselves very, very well.' 4 At Dachau it was the same: a Frenchman writes of their 'exemplary dignity', of their 'great capacity for order and discipline'. 5 Juan de Diego insists that no Spaniard even at Mauthausen committed suicide, 'while virtually every other national group had its suicides'. 6 It seems likely that the Spaniards simply had fewer suicides than the other national groups: Manuel García mentions 'many cases' of Spaniards hanging themselves, or running onto the wire. 7 The Spaniards also understood the vital need for vigilance. The expression 'immer gucken', though German, wis of Spanish coinage, 8 and the remarkable organization they developed was soon recognized by other groups who often owed their very survival to the Spaniards. 9 The Austrian Hans Maršálek was struck by the fact that the Spaniards ranged in ideological opinion from anarchism, communism, and socialism to liberal democracy, bourgeois trade unionism and support of Catalan and Basque autonomy, but they remained united by a limitless love of Spain and hatred of everything that Franco and Hitler represented. Noting the military discipline which enabled them to adapt to the constraints of concentration camp life better than others, Maršálek adds that they made use of another vital attribute: when they were caught out, their tactic of playing upon a certain innocent oafishness more than once earned them impunity. 10 A man of Czech descent thus recognized in the Spaniards a whole brigade of Good Soldier Svejks.
