ABSTRACT
It was the proud boast of the Spanish organization that from the beginning of 1943 every single Spaniard entering Mauthausen could count upon its help. 1 Mid-1945 saw the arrival of the first Spaniards arrested in France for resistance activities; the very first was a miner turned guerrillero by the name of Felipe Amable Martínez, who was sent to Ebensee, where he set to work organizing the resistance there. 2 Such men brought a new language to Mauthausen: that of sabotage, ambush, derailment, but more than anything, of hope, survival, and liberation. Among the new arrivals arrested in the French Resistance were some very active members of the anarchist CNT. José Ester Borrás, for example, arrived at Mauthausen in the same contingent as the communists Josep Miret Musté and Luis Montero. 3 While Miret was dispatched to Floridsdorf, 4 Ester and Montero were both assigned in September 1943 to the internal Kommando attached to the SS armoury; this two-man Kornmando was responsible for the hard cleaning work. Ester began to organize those Spaniards who, for ideological reasons, had refused to join the communist-led organization, while Montero, a captain in the Republican Army during the Civil War who had been described as 'an indefatigable organizer and exemplary man of action', 5 became the soul of the Spanish military formation.
