The Photographer of Mauthausen WRITTEN BY SALVA RUBIO; DRAWN BY PEDRO J. COLOMBO; COLORED BY AINTZANE LANDA This is a dramatic retelling of true events in the life of Francisco Boix, a Spanish press photographer and communist who fled to France at the beginning of World War II. But there, he found himself handed over by the French to the Nazis, who sent him to the notorious Mauthausen concentration camp, where he spent the war among thousands of other Spaniards and other prisoners. More than half of them would lose their lives there. Through an odd turn of events, Boix finds himself the confidant of an SS officer who is documenting prisoner deaths at the camp. Boix realizes that he has a chance to prove Nazi war crimes by stealing the negatives of these perverse photos—but only at the risk of his own life, that of a young Spanish boy he has sworn to protect, and, indeed, that of every prisoner in the camp. The Photographer of Mauthausen has been adapted as a major motion picture by Netflix. SALVA RUBIO is a Spanish author and historian who has been recognized multiple times for his scriptwriting, ranging from short films to feature-length films and graphic novels. Having earned a master’s degree in scriptwriting for film and television, Rubio has worked for several Spanish production companies, including a short film nominated for the Goya awards in 2010, and the feature-length animated film “Deep” in 2016. Rubio made his debut in the comics field in 2017 with two striking and very different projects: Monet: Itinerant of Light and The Photographer of Mauthausen, both of which have met with critical acclaim. Spanish artist PEDRO COLOMBO was born just outside of Barcelona in 1978. With a passion for drawing dating back to his childhood, he went on to attend Escuela Joso, Spain’s most renowned comics institute. Colombo is the creator of Sangre Noctambula and co-creator of Trois . . . et l’ange. November 2020 X X 112 pp. | 75�8 x 10 X Paperback | ISBN: 978-1-68247-627-7 $19.95 | Holiday Price: $9.98 X GRAPHIC NOVEL X that’s where the “fun” began. we were left standing for hours on end in the cold. |f anyone even thought about moving, they were taken to the wailing wall.* we got to know the kapos. the lead kapo had the nickname “king kong.” guess why… my job was to translate the insults the germans hurled at the spaniards. | didn’t like the job but | had my own way of handling it… there were 800 of us in barracks designed for 300. there was no heating or bedding. and the windows stayed open all night long. | told you not to move, you bucket of shit! tell him he’s a piece of shit communist! tell him to get back to work or |'LL beat him to death! ruhe! silence! | said: “silence”! sometimes my compatriots were too exhausted to continue. translate! you goodfor-no— that very night, | promised myself that mateu and | would leave that camp alive. | would live to see you again, núria… at any cost! |n formation! what the—? the ss assigned us different duties. having learned german in the stalag, | tried my luck as a translator. |ch bin franz. je suis françois. | am frank. sóc francesc. soy francisco boix. 5185. ½X at auschwitz, they used gas; at mauthausen, it was “extermination through labor.” you entered here through the gate… and you will leave through the chimney! ziereis and bachmayer, the camp commandants, greeted us with a heartwarming speech. |t was not going to be easy to keep my promise: | had already been separated from mateu. | wanted to help my fellow prisoners, but | also knew | needed to get out of that quarry as quick as possible if | didn’t want to die there. my job didn’t start well, either: | was assigned to the wiener graben, the granite quarry. we were then shorn and disinfected. and believe me, it hurt, it burned, and it bled! we were even granted the infamous himmlerstraße down the middle of our skulls. we were no longer human, we were reduced to numbers. | was no longer francisco, now | was number 5185. 186 uneven steps built by the first spaniards to arrive at the camp. the base of the strafkompanie, prisoners condemned to die by exhaustion from carrying blocks of stone. i said: “in formation,” piece of shit spaniards! this was spatzenegger’s domain. we called him “the vampire” because of his face and his thirst for human blood. one day, an opportunity arose. |'VE had it up to here with you, you dirty bastard! spaniaker! X | don’t know why | intervened. but | did. ½X what is—? ½X red, green, purple and orange : these were the colors of human flesh as it burned. we would have been better off not thinking about it, but the stench made it unavoidable. pfft, these stupid spaniards… we were given our own special winkels: a blue triangle emblazoned with a white “s”. we had become stateless spaniards… how ironic! you two! get to work, or else! |t’s also where the “parachutists’ wall” was, a 120-foot-high cliff. every day, men were thrown off of it to their deaths. ½X others jumped themselves, driven by despair. 17 06_INT_PHOTOGRAPHEDEMAUTHAUSEN_00_AN.indd 16 20/03/2018 17:26 06_INT_PHOTOGRAPHEDEMAUTHAUSEN_00_AN.indd 17 To order call 1-800-233-8764 or go online at www.usni.org 19 18 20/03/2018 17:26 06_INT_PHOTOGRAPHEDEMAUTHAUSEN_00_AN.indd 19 06_INT_PHOTOGRAPHEDEMAUTHAUSEN_00_AN.indd 18 20/03/2018 17:26 20/03/2018 17:26 NEW PUBLICATIONS 3