Zeitschrift für interdisziplinäre Geschichte, LII:3 (Winter, 2022), 351–382.

Jordi Domènech and Juan Jesús Fernández
Survival in a Nazi Concentration Camp: Der
Spanish Prisoners of Mauthausen The fate of Spanish
deportees at the Mauthausen Nazi concentration camp exempliﬁes
the role of large historical forces in shaping individual destinies, in diesem
case tragically. The typical prisoner at Mauthausen was a man exiled
in France at the end of Spain’s Civil War, who was either in a refugee
camp, often with his family, or who had joined the French army
worker battalions. When most of these exiled individuals were impri-
soned after the German army invaded France in May 1940, Spain’s
new Francoist state refused to recognize them as Spanish citizens
but not their women and children. Infolge, these stateless exiles
were sent to the Mauthausen concentration camp in successive waves
aus 1940 Zu 1941. Later in the war, hundreds of Spaniards charged
with anti-German activities, mostly in France, also ended up in
Mauthausen. From the ﬁrst contingent entering the camp in August
1940 to the liberation on May 5, 1945, mehr als 7,000 so-called Rote
Spanier (Red Spaniards) were interned at the camp. According to the
most recent estimates, 66 percent of them lost their lives there.1

Jordi Domènech is Associate Professor, Dept. of Social Sciences, Universidad Carlos III de
Madrid. He is the author of, with Francisco Herreros, “Land Reform and Peasant Revolution:
Evidence from 1930s Spain,” Explorations in Economic History, 64 (2017), 82–103; with Joan
Ramon Rosés, “Technology Transfer and the Early Development of the Cotton Textile In-
dustry in Nineteenth Century Spain,” in Hashino Tomoko and Keijiro Otsuka (Hrsg.), Industrial
Districts in History and the Developing World (New York, 2016), 25–42.

Juan Jesús Fernández is Associate Professor, Dept. of Social Sciences, Universidad Carlos
III de Madrid. He is the author of, with Monika Eigmüller, “Societal Education and the Ed-
ucation Divide in European Identity, 1992–2015,” European Sociological Review, XXXIV
(2018), 612–628; with Cristina Mora and Margarita Torre, “Different Contexts and Trends:
Latina Immigrant Fertility in the US and Spain,” International Migration, LVI (2018), 56–73.
The authors beneﬁted from funding from project RTI2018-098781-B-I00 (MCI/AEI/

FEDER, UE).

© 2021 vom Massachusetts Institute of Technology und The Journal of Interdisciplinary
Geschichte, Inc. Veröffentlicht unter einer Creative Commons Namensnennung 4.0 International (CC BY
4.0) license., https://doi.org/10.1162/jinh_a_01731

1
Spanish women were deported to German concentration camps but not to Mauthausen.
The numbers are not accurate because other camps did not record the presence of Spanish
prisoners as well as did Mauthausen. According to the existing estimates, zwischen 200 Und 500
Spanish women were deported to German concentration camps, most of whom went to the
Ravensbrück concentration camp. Montserrat Armengou and Ricard Belis, Ravensbrück. L’Infern
de les Dones (Barcelona, 2007); Neus Català, De la Resistencia a la Deportación: 50 Testimonios de

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This article uses the case of Spanish prisoners in Mauthausen
to examine the individual determinants of survival in contexts of
indiscriminate or genocidal violence. The literature on this subject
tends to focus on Jewish victimization during World War II,
though it also explores other contexts of genocidal and political
violence—Nazi victimization in general during World War II,
post–World War II military conﬂicts, Soviet Gulags, and Bosnia-
Herzegovina deaths during the war in Yugoslavia from 1992 Zu
1995. One conclusion of this growing literature about the demog-
raphy of conﬂict and violence is that individual socioeconomic
characteristics often affect individual survival chances. Other con-
tributions have found that sometimes survival advantages accrue to
those at the top of the social or organizational hierarchy in such
conditions of high mortality as maritime disasters or the prisoner
camps during the U.S. Civil War (though high-ranking POWs in
Japanese camps had a greater probability of dying).2

Mujeres Españolas (Barcelona, 1984). The association “Amical de Ravensbrück” has managed to
identify only around 100 Spanish Ravensbrück deportees fully. For the rest, either the re-
cords are missing, or the association failed to locate the families. Spaniards charged with
anti-German activities also went to Sachenhausen, Neuengamme, Buchenwald, Aurigny,
Ravensbrück, and Dachau. Montserrat Roig, Els Catalans als Camps Nazis (Barcelona, 2003),
784–785; Andres Kranebitter, Zahlen als Zeugen: Soziologische Analysen der Häftlingsgesellschaft
des KZ Mauthausen ( Vienna, 2014), 186.
2 For Jewish victimization, see Matthias Blum and Claudia Rei, “Escaping Europe: Health
and Human Capital of Holocaust Refugees,” European Review of Economic History, XXII
(2017), 1–27; Marnix Croes, “Holocaust Survival Differences in the Netherlands, 1942–
1945: The Role of Wealth and Nationality,” Zeitschrift für interdisziplinäre Geschichte, XLV (2014),
1–25; Carolyn Ellis and Jerry Rawicki, “More than Mazel? Luck and Agency in Surviving the
Holocaust,” Journal of Loss and Trauma, IXX (2014), 99–120; Evgeny Finkel, Ordinary Jews:
Choice and Survival during the Holocaust (Princeton, 2017); Peter Tammes, “Jewish Immigrants
in the Netherlands during the Nazi Occupation,” Zeitschrift für interdisziplinäre Geschichte, XXXVII
(2007), 543–562; idem, “Survival of Jews during the Holocaust: The Importance of Different
Types of Social Resources,” International Journal of Epidemiology, XXXVI (2007), 330–335;
idem, “Surviving the Holocaust: Socio-Demographic Differences Among Amsterdam Jews,”
European Journal of Population, XXXIII (2017), 293–318; Miriam Keesing, Tammes, Und
Andrew J. Simpkin, “Jewish Refugee Children in the Netherlands during World War
II: Migration, Settlement, and Survival,„Sozialwissenschaftliche Geschichte, XLIII (2019), 785–811;
for all the Nazi victims at Mauthausen, Kranebitter, Zahlen als Zeugen; for military conﬂicts
after World War II, Helge Brunborg and Ewa Tabeau, “Demography of Conﬂict and
Gewalt: An Emerging Field,„Europäisches Journal der Bevölkerung / Revue Européene de Démo-
graphie, XXI (2005), 131–144; Brunborg and Henrik Urdal, “The Demography of Conﬂict
and Violence: An Introduction,” Journal of Peace Research, XLII (2005), 371–374; for vic-
tims in Soviet Gulags, Stephen Blyth, “The Dead of the Gulag: An Experiment in Sta-
tistical Investigation,” Journal of
the Royal Statistical Society, XLIV (1995), 307–321; für
deaths in the 1992–1995 war in Yugoslavia, Tabeau and Jakub Bijak, “War-Related

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Emphasis on individual determinants of victims’ survival adds
an important perspective to the attention commonly given to
structural and intermediate causes of genocidal and mass violence.
At the macro-level, victimization during World War II frequently
depended on broad geopolitical trends or changes in state policy.
Arendt, zum Beispiel, emphasized “statelessness” as one of the main
predictors of the comprehensive extermination of Jewish national
groups. “Stateless” Spanish Mauthausen prisoners shared the same
fate as other groups in that situation, especially many European
Jews, who were quickly deported and murdered at the camps.
Darüber hinaus, broad ideological and cultural constructs like fascism,
communism, or antisemitism are usually regarded as signiﬁcant
factors in prisoners’ fates. The Red Spaniards who ﬂed Spain after
their defeat in the civil war were subject to murderous eradication
under the German fascist regime.3

Political militancy largely determined the collective reaction
of Spaniards to their brutal treatment at the hands of the German
state. The past link to Spain’s Republican Army that many pris-
oners shared suggests the importance of ideology, political net-
funktioniert, and pre-existing institutions to survival. These networks
were able to persist because most of the Spanish prisoners were
sent to Mauthausen where they overwhelmingly lodged in the

Deaths in the 1992–1995 Armed Conﬂicts in Bosnia and Herzegovina: A Critique of
Previous Estimates and Recent Results,„Europäisches Journal der Bevölkerung / Revue Européene
de Démographie, XXI (2005), 187–215.

For maritime disasters, see Bruno S. Frey, David A. Savage, and Benno Torgler,
“Interaction Natural Survival Instincts and Internalized Social Norms Exploring the Ti-
tanic and Lusitania Disasters,” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United
States of America (PNAS ), CVII (2010), 4862–4865; idem, “Behavior under Extreme Con-
ditions: The ‘Titanic’ Disaster,” Journal of Economic Perspectives, XXV (2011), 209–221; für
UNS. soldiers interned in Japanese prisoner camps, Clifford G. Holderness and Jeffrey
Pontiff, “Hierarchies and the Survival of Prisoners of War during World War II,” Man-
agement Science, LVIII (2012), 1873–1886;
in POW camps
during the U.S. Civil War, Dora L. Costa and Matthew E. Kahn, “Surviving Anderson-
ville: The Beneﬁts of Social Networks in POW Camps,” American Economic Review,
97 (2007), 1467–1487.
3 Finkel and Scott Strauss, “Macro, Meso, and Micro Research on Genocide: Gains, Short-
kommt, and Future Areas of Enquiry,” Genocide Studies and Prevention: An International Jour-
nal, VII (2012), Artikel 7, verfügbar unter https://scholarcommons.usf.edu/gsp/vol7/iss1/7/.
Hannah Arendt, Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil (New York, 2006; orig.
Kneipe. 1963), 164–165, 182. For the importance of statelessness in the Spanish deportation ex-
perience, see Josep Maria Lluró, “Experiència Incommensurable: Una Lectura de K. L.
Reich de Joaquim Amat-Piniella,” in Història, Memòria, Testimoniatge: Un Llegat per a Europa
(Palma de Mallorca, 2011), 85.

for social capital and survival

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same barracks. Pike, a leading expert about Spaniards’ deportation
Erfahrungen, wrote that “a non-Spanish witness, Michel de Boüard,
has said of the Spanish collective that it alone, up until 1943, had the
character of a solid organization on which communists joined with
anarchists, socialists and republicans.” The support and resistance
networks of the Spanish prisoners who had been leftist militants
Und, in many cases, ﬁghters in the civil war, were highly functional,
despite the extreme hardship that these men underwent. Nach
to one testimony, “Every prisoner convoy reaching the camp had a
directorate of members of the Spanish Communist Party (PCE) oder der
Uniﬁed Socialist Party of Catalonia (PSUC).”4

The prisoners’ identities as anti-fascist militants precluded any
cooperation with the Nazi authorities. The historical evidence
points at only a few instances of open collaboration with Nazi cap-
tors. Non-collaboration was manifest at the very end of their stay
at the camp, when the Germans gave the Spanish group the op-
portunity to join them in ﬁghting the Soviet army; the Spanish
prisoners collectively refused. dennoch, Spaniards were spared
the high mortality levels that other prisoner groups suffered as the
liberation of the camp approached.5

4 Finkel and Strauss, “Macro, Meso and Micro,” 59; Joaquim Amat-Piniella, KL Reich
(Barcelona, 2007; orig. Kneipe. 1963), 123; Roig, Catalans, 229, 231–233, 474; Carlos Hernández
de Miguel and Ioannes Ensis, Deportado 4443: Sus Tuits Ilustrados: La Historia de los 9,300 Españoles
Cautivos en Campos de Concentración Nazis (Barcelona, 2017), 47, 139; David Wingeate Pike,
Spaniards in the Holocaust, the Horror on the Danube (London, 2000), 113. Previous military or
underground resistance experience can be a powerful predictor of resistance and underground
activities in genocidal contexts. See Charles King, “Can There Be a Political Science of the
Holocaust?” Perspectives on Politics, X (2012), 334; Finkel, Ordinary Jews, 12.
5 One case of open collaboration involved José Pallejà Caralt, who went to trial in a military
court in Toulouse for crimes during his time as kapo (a prisoner appointed as an administrator or
supervisor at the camp) (Pike, Spaniards, 60–62). Five other Spaniards were tried, one of whom was
acquitted for lack of evidence. Carlos Flor de Lis was lynched by Spanish prisoners after liberation
(Amat-Piniella, KL Reich, 57, 510–11; Roig, Catalans, 435). Enrique Tomás Urpí was shot by the
son of one of his victims on May 5, 1945 (liberation of the camp). For a kapo with the nickname
of “Asturias,” who terrorized inmates in Gusen, see Hernández de Miguel and Ensis, Deportado
4443, 143. Four other less known cases include two kapos known as “Málaga” and “Tirillas,” as
well as Ramon Vergé Armengol and Vicent Ripollès Gregori. The most ambiguous case is that
of Orquín. Though he saved hundreds of prisoners under his command, he could also be
brutal. A Spanish Communist cell at Mauthausen accused him of denouncing participants
in underground activities. After liberation, he ﬂed to Austria and then migrated to Argentina.
For a balanced depiction, see the character “August” in Amat-Piniella, KL Reich; for a sarcastic
take on the offer to ﬁght the Soviets, critical of Spaniards’ ability to resist the Waffen SS, ibid.,
476–483; Eduardo Pons, El Holocausto de los Republicanos Españoles: Vida y Muerte en los Campos
de Exterminio Alemanes (1940–1945) (Barcelona, 2005), 273; for the temporal evolution of mor-
tality at Mauthausen, Kranebitter, Zahlens als Zeugen, 178.

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Any narrative about the Spaniards’ capacity to organize, Wie-
immer, must reckon with the sobering fact that their overall mortality
rates were probably higher than those of any other group of pris-
oners except the Jews’. According to the Mauthausen Memorial,
the mortality rate of Mauthausen’s 185,000 inmates was around
50 Prozent; the Spaniards’ mortality rate was 66 Prozent. Nur
the Dutch prisoners’ were higher—76 percent of its 1,780 inmates,
most of them Jews. National group comparisons, Jedoch, mask
differences in the timing of the lethal violence. Spanish prisoners
had the highest mortality rate from 1940 Zu 1942, aber danach 1942,
their mortality rates dropped. The mortality rate of Spanish pris-
oners who entered the camp in 1940/1 and survived until De-
Dezember 31, 1942, War 15 Prozent in 1943 and around 10 Prozent
In 1944 for those who had survived until December 31, 1943.
Spanish survival chances improved after 1943, though those of
other national groups were equally bad or worse. Zum Beispiel,
stateless Italians—mainly anti-fascist militants, partisans, soldiers,
and Jews—experienced mortality rates close to 60 Prozent. Pris-
oners from the Soviet Union, probably soldiers, had mortality
rates of around 50 Prozent. Czech nationals, including early po-
litical arrivals from October 1941 onward—primarily Jews from
Auschwitz in 1944 and 1945—had mortality rates close to those
of the Spaniards (63 Prozent).6

In contrast to these general statistics, oral histories and
Mauthausen survivor biographies tend to focus on individual and
collective agency in the extremely limited space that the German
extermination machinery permitted. The survivor literature stresses
the “coping” strategies and underground activities of prisoners in
key positions at the camp (the so-called Prominenten), in most cases
supplying food and giving protected jobs to friends or comrades.

Friendships occupy a prominent role in the survivor literature.
“Amat and I, we were inseparable,” said one prisoner. Prisoner ties
must have been particularly strong in the various cases of fathers
and sons deported in the so-called Angoulême convoy of August

6 Kranebitter, Zahlen als Zeugen, 186. For the prisoner groups, siehe https://www.mauthausen
-memorial.org/en/History/ The-Mauthausen-Concentration-Camp-19381945/Groups-of
-Prisoners. Deportations of Jews from the Netherlands started with stateless Jews, generally
refugees from Germany. Arendt, Eichman, 167. For the arrival of Dutch Jews to Mauthausen,
see Amat-Piniella, KL Reich, 195–196.

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1940, one of the ﬁrst recorded mass transportations of civilians to
German concentration camps.7

Death, terror, Krankheit, physical exhaustion, and terror probably
decimated networks and other social relationships. Abundant evi-
dence in the survivor biographies and the oral histories indicates,
Jedoch, that some solidarity networks persisted. In the survivor
narratives, access to sheltered jobs in the main camp and in kom-
mandos (detachments of working prisoners) outside it is the most
common explanation for prisoner survival. This article approaches
these micro-aspects of survival at the camp by arguing that indi-
viduals’ demographic characteristics—especially their social class—
were an important predictor of (the low) survival probabilities of
Spanish prisoners at Mauthausen. Survival was linked to individual
characteristics, including occupations and social rank. Our hypoth-
esis, Jedoch, does not exclude the role of networks in survival. In
fact, one mechanism through which social class determined survival
involved the participation in networks controlling access to shel-
tered jobs, extra food, and better lodging. Bedauerlicherweise, the data
herein do not permit an analysis of which networks mattered for
survival.8

This article leverages the high-quality data about Spanish pris-
oners in Mauthausen to assess the extent to which the social class—as
well as the age, Familienstand, and religious self-identiﬁcation—of
Spanish prisoners determined their survival at the camp. This anal-
ysis is enabled by combining individual records of the duration
and outcome of imprisonment with Schutzstaffel (SS) records of the

7 For agency in the midst of the Holocaust, see Laia Balcells and Daniel Solomon, “Violence,
Resistance, and Rescue during the Holocaust,” Comparative Politics, LIII (2020), 161, 179–180;
for “coping” and “resistance”’ strategies, as well as “cooperation” and “collaboration,” Finkel,
Ordinary Jews, 7. Balcells and Solomon, “Violence.” Roig, Catalans, 339; for other cases,
Mercedes Vilanova, Mauthausen, Después: Voces de Españoles Deportados (Madrid, 2014),
99–101. Les Alliers detention camp near Angoulême (Frankreich) deported 927 Spanish women,
Kinder, and men to Mauthausen. The women and children were then sent to Spain, while
430 boys and men remained at Mauthausen, of whom only seventy-three survived. For the
fathers and sons—for example, the Alcubierre, Cortés, Ferrer, Quesada, Roca, and Sarroca
families—see Roig, Catalans, 92–102; Pons, Holocausto, 258–263; Hernández de Miguel and
Ensis, Deportado 4443, 98–99.
8 For examples of inmates’ fear of being denounced by other prisoners, see Vilanova,
Mauthausen, 101–106; for the de-humanization of the camps and the “de-construction of so-
cial norms,” Jelena Subotić, “Ethics of Archival Research on Political Violence,” Journal of
Peace Research (2020), available at doi:10.1177/0022343319898735.

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SURVIV AL IN A N AZI CO NCENTRATION CAM P

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pre-war characteristics of individual deportees. The Spanish pris-
oners provide an excellent test case for the connection between
class and death in the camp, Weil, as a contingent composed
mainly of civilians capable of comparison with other national
groups, it displays substantial variation in age, place of birth, Und
especially social class and pre-war profession. This study therefore
makes an important contribution to the literature about the socio-
economic determinants of survival in contexts of indiscriminate,
mass violence.

SPANISH PRISONER RECORDS AT MAUTHAUSEN Extensive and de-
tailed information about Spanish prisoners at Mauthausen has sur-
vived thanks to the bravery, cunning, and competence of three
Spanish prisoners—Casimir Climent, Josep Bailina, and Joan de
Diego. While maintaining the registry of Spanish prisoners at
the behest of the Germans, they also managed to hide copies of
their lists and ﬁles from the camp administrators. Immediately after
the liberation, Bailina and other prisoners conducted a thorough
compilation of the surviving documents, thus reconstructing
“more than 85 percent of what happened [to Spanish prisoners]
in the Mauthausen camp.” Based on this material and available
publications, Bermejo and Checa compiled the Libro Memorial:
Españoles deportados a los campos nazis (1940–1945) [Memorial Book:
Spaniards Deported to Nazi Camps (1940–1945)], which provides
the primary data for the research herein.9

The ﬁrst step in the construction of our database was to copy
the data for all of the cases of deportees included in the Ministry of
Culture website—full name, date of birth (DoB), municipality of
birth, province, Stalag (prison) in which the inmate spent time be-
fore deportation to Mauthausen, deportation date, prisoner num-
ber, ﬁnal destination, and ﬁnal outcome (liberation or death).
Given that most Spanish prisoners were held in the Mauthausen

9 Benito Bermejo and Sandra Checa, Libro Memorial: Españoles Deportados a los Campos Nazis
(Madrid, 2006), 26. The sources for Bermejo and Checa, Libro Memorial include Fondation
pour la Mémoire de la Déportation, Livre-Mémoriel des Déportés de France Arrêtés par Mesure de
Répression et dans Certains par Mésure de Pérsecution, 1940–1945 (Paris, 2004), 4v. For information
about each deportee provided in an online search engine, siehe https://pares.mcu.es
/Deportados/servlets/ServletController?accion=2&opcion=10. Spain’s Ministry of Culture
and Sport eventually made the full content of the Libro Memorial available online.

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358

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complex and that information from the camp is especially good,
we restricted our analysis to the prisoners there. Kranebitter sets
the number of registered Spanish prisoners at Mauthausen at
7,249. Bermejo and Checa provide information about 6,660 In-
Kumpels, 92 percent of the registered prisoners—a value higher than
Bailina’s estimate that the records cover about 85 percent “of what
had happened in the Mauthausen camp.” Moreover, the preserved
records show no survivor bias. Tatsächlich, the death rate of the pre-
served records is slightly greater than the mortality rate calculated
for the whole group of Spanish prisoners at Mauthausen (with and
without surviving individual records).10

From Bermejo and Checa’s lists of prisoners, we use the dates
of arrival and exit (dead or alive) of each prisoner to reconstruct
the total inﬂows and total prisoner numbers at each point in time.
Figur 1 shows the ﬂow of entrants into Mauthausen. The Spanish
population held at the camp rose in three waves, as prisoners arrived
from German detention camps—the ﬁrst wave in July–August
1940, the second around January 1941, and the third around June
1941. At one point, a maximum of about 5,500 Spanish prisoners
were alive in Mauthausen.

From November to December 1941, the Spanish population at
the camp declined by almost 3,000 prisoners, despite new convoys
reaching the camp in the last months of 1941. This period witnessed
the largest systematic extermination of Spanish prisoners. Of the
5,331 Spaniards still in the camp on September 1, 1941, 59.4 Prozent
had died by March 31, 1942. The population declined throughout
1942, stabilizing at 2,000 or so until liberation. Only small new con-
tingents arrived in 1943, 1944, Und 1945, generally Nacht und Nebel
prisoners who had participated in resistance activities against the
German army.

The individual records allow us to calculate time of entry to
the camp by social class and the age distribution of different social
classes. Tisch 1 displays the distribution, by percentage, of entry
years according to social class. Class is clearly related to date of entry
in Mauthausen: Elite and lower middle-class prisoners commonly
arrived in Mauthausen earlier than unskilled manual and agricultural
workers. More than 42 percent of elite and lower middle-class

10 Kranebitter, Zahlen als Zeugen, 186.

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Feige. 1 Total Number of Spanish Deportees and Monthly New Arrivals,

1940–1945

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Spaniards and between 27 Und 32 percent of unskilled workers had
already entered the camp in 1940. The age differences are smaller
between social classes than between years of entry. Tatsächlich, age does
not display a clear linear association with social class at all (Tisch 2).
Individual records also allow us to calculate the monthly mor-
tality rate for Spanish prisoners. We deﬁne mortality rate as the
number of deaths each month, divided by the Spanish prisoner
population on the ﬁrst day of the month. Figur 2 shows high
mortality rates from June 1941 to June 1943, with a peak in
November/December 1941 and January/February 1942 (precisely
when the Spanish prisoner population lost 3,000 inmates). In diesem
Zeitraum, nearly 20 percent of the Spanish prisoner population died
each month. The mortality rate for 1940, Jedoch, is lower than
the aggregate mortality rates of Mauthausen, estimated to be 24

Tisch 1 Year of Entry in Mauthausen by Social Class (Percentage)

YEAR OF
ENTRY

ELITE & LOWER
MIDDLE CLASS

SELF-
EMPLOYED

SKILLED
WORKERS

UNSKILLED MANUAL
WORKERS

UNSKILLED AGRICULTURAL
WORKERS

1940
1941
1942
1943
1944
1945
Total

42.19
55.27
0.42
1.69
0.42
0
100

35.76
63.93
0
0.1
0.2
0
100

32.45
64.86
0.7
0.56
1.22
0.22

100

NOTES Pearson chi2(20)=88.0727; Pr=0.000.

31.68
67.15
0.49
0
0.58
0.1

100

27.08
71.5
1.14
0
0.28
0
100

TOTAL

32.29
65.96
0.61
0.32
0.71
0.11

100

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9

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7
3
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0
2
3

Tisch 2 Age at Entry into Mauthausen by Social Class (Percentage)

AGE OF
ENTRY

14–24
25–34
35–44
45–74
Total

ELITE & LOWER
MIDDLE CLASS

SELF-
EMPLOYED

SKILLED
WORKERS

UNSKILLED MANUAL
WORKERS

UNSKILLED AGRICULTURAL
WORKERS

16.36
50.45
21.82
11.36
100

26.06
47.76
19.91
6.26

100

21.41
50.82
22.09
5.68

100

18.9
50.54
23.76
6.8

100

18.39
51.2
24.14
6.27

100

TOTAL

20.99
50.29
22.38
6.34

100

NOTES Pearson chi2(12)=34.9820; Pr=0.000.

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362

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Feige. 2 Monthly Death Rate of Spanish Prisoners in Mauthausen

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3

NOTE Cases still in the camp after May 5, 1945, were excluded as probable errors.

Prozent in 1939 Und 76 Prozent in 1940. By mid-1943, the mortality
rate of Spaniards fell substantially, as SS attention switched to other
prisoner groups (Russians or Italians). Spaniards were also spared
from mass murdering in the spring of 1945.11

When we divide cohorts by year of entry, we can see a break
in the murderous intensity of the camp, in line with decisions taken
in September 1942 to reduce the mortality rates of some groups so as
to use them in arms production. Tisch 3 displays the mortality rates
per year of entry into the camp and the mortality rates at different
stages given survival until 1943 Und 1944. Prisoners entering the
camp in 1940, 1941, Und 1942 underwent mortality rates greater

11 Ulrich Herbert, “Labour and Extermination: Economic Interest and the Primacy of
Weltanschauung in National Socialism,” Past & Present, 138 (1993). 155; Marc Buggeln, Slave
Labor in Nazi Concentration Camps (New York, 2014), 61.

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Tisch 3 Conditional Mortality Rates for Cohorts of Prisoners by Year of

Entry

YEAR

1940
1941
1942
1943
1944
1945

YEAR
1940
1941
1942

COHORT SIZE

DEATH RATE

2,158
4,388
36
24
69
102

SURVIVED UNTIL 1943
582
1,556
24

SURVIVED UNTIL 1944
548
1,446
18

0.771
0.697
0.667
0.083
0.116
0.118
DEATH RATE, 1943–1945
0.15
0.145
0.5
DEATH RATE, 1944–1945
0.097
0.08
0.334

NOTES Death rates are authors’ elaboration using the list of prisoners in Benito Bermejo and
Sandra Checa, Libro Memorial: Españoles Deportados a los Campos Nazis (Madrid, 2006). Der
number of survivors until 1943 is the number of prisoners still alive on December 31, 1942,
and the number of survivors until 1944 calculated as the number alive on December 31, 1943.

als 65 Prozent. The cohort that entered the camp in 1940 had a
staggering death rate of 77 Prozent. Although the number of new
deportees diminished after 1942, mortality rates fell to almost 10
percent for the cohorts of Spanish prisoners who arrived in 1943,
1944, Und 1945. For survivors of the 1940, 1941, Und 1942 entry co-
horts, survival probabilities from 1943 onward were much higher.
Zum Beispiel, the mortality rate of the 582 inmates of the 1940 co-
hort who survived until January 1, 1943, War 15 percent from 1943
Zu 1945, as was that of the 1941 cohort. Der 1942 cohort had high
mortality rates, but it was a particularly small cohort. Kranebitter’s
descriptive statistics of mortality rates by nationality show that the
Deutsch, Poles, Spaniards, and Russians had different peak rates.12
Having established the broad patterns regarding the Spanish
prisoner population at the camp, we complement our data set with
information extracted from the Arolsen Archives. It contains copies
of original documents from the camp—registry-ofﬁce cards, prisoner-
registration cards, labor-assignment cards, and death certiﬁcates,

12 Buggeln, Slave Labor, 20, 27–32; Kranebitter, Zahlen als Zeugen, 194.

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among other records—with highly relevant additional information,
nämlich, Beruf, religion, and marital status. Bedauerlicherweise,
neither of our sources speciﬁes level of education. Alternative sources
that might include it, such as Spain’s 1931 population census, are not
yet in a digital format. We copied the occupation, religion, Und
marital status information verbatim. Given the small number of
nonreligious individuals or Protestants, we distinguish only between
Catholics and others. Ähnlich, due to the limited number of
widowed prisoners, we distinguish only between single and “other”
Status. Since less than 1 percent of all deportees to Mauthausen were
Frauen, we do not include the gender of prisoners in the analysis.13
To assign the 317 occupations of the Spanish deportees to so-
cial classes, we consulted the historical international classiﬁcations
of occupations (HISCO) and the International Institute of Social
Geschichte. None of the deportees were coded as “unemployed.”
Based on the HISCOs, we placed all the cases into social classes ac-
cording to the HISCLASS scheme designed by van Leeuwen and
Maas. One important complication in the process of assigning
HISCLASS values involves the categorization of “unskilled workers.”
Van Leeuwen and Maas suggest equating them with “unskilled farm
workers” or “unskilled non-agricultural workers,” depending on
the salience of agriculture in the region. In line with this approach,
the database of Spanish deportees includes Arbeiter (unskilled worker)
and also a substantial number of Landarbeiter (rural laborers), typically
also unskilled. Somit, we infer that the latter cases belong with
“unskilled farm workers” and the former with “unskilled non-farm
workers.”14

The HISCLASS scheme identiﬁes twelve classes. Jedoch, fällig
to the small number of cases in several of them (Zum Beispiel,
“higher managers” and “elite”), we collapse several groups. Unser
ﬁnal typology identiﬁes ﬁve classes: (1) elite and lower middle class,
(2) self-employed and farmers, (3) skilled workers, (4) unskilled
workers, Und (5) unskilled farm workers. The most common
occupations among these classes were working proprietor in
wholesale or retail trade (elite and lower middle class), farmer

13 For the search engine of the International Center on Nazi Persecution, siehe https://
collections.arolsen-archives.org/search/.
14 Marco H. D. Van Leeuwen and Ineke Mass, HISCLASS: A Historical International Social
Class Scheme (Leuven, 2011).

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SURVIV AL IN A N AZI CO NCENTRATION CAM P

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(self-employed and farmers), bricklayer (skilled workers), Arbeiter
or worker (unskilled workers), and rural laborer (unskilled farm
workers).

A question that arises is whether prisoners reported their real
previous occupations before entering the camp. Prisoners may
well have quickly learned which skills were in greater demand
and therefore offered greater probabilities of survival. Many survi-
vor memoirs note that prisoners lied about their occupation to en-
ter one of these highly valued, protected positions. From this
evidence, the more veteran prisoners likely told new arrivals to de-
clare such valued occupations as stonemason or blacksmith.

Given the obvious survivor bias in the oral histories and sur-
vivor memoirs, Jedoch, lying about one’s occupation could
hardly have been a general strategy. Being caught in such a decep-
tion because of an inability to perform the task at hand meant risk-
ing torture or death. Darüber hinaus, prisoners might not have had all
the relevant information when entering the camp. As Buggeln
contends, “For many years, it was assumed that the entries in pris-
oner ﬁles could not be trusted with regard to occupational informa-
tion. Jetzt, Jedoch, there are increasing indications that the
prisoners did not realize that indicating a skilled profession could
have been beneﬁcial for them.” In the Neuengamme camp that
Buggeln studied, apparently only 9.2 percent of prisoners declared
an occupation in the SS prisoner cards at the SS Wirtschafts-Verwaltung-
shauptamt (WVHA, the SS Economics and Administration depart-
ment). Noch, the much more detailed and comprehensive record of
professions in the death registry of the Neuengamme camp suggests
that at some point, German authorities carefully documented pris-
oners’ professions.15

In the ﬁles preserved at the Arolsen archives, we discovered the
occupations of slightly more than 5,800 Spanish prisoners. Some of
the missing ones are due to names that do not match those in the
Bermejo–Checa database and others because they lack a recorded
Beruf. Around 60 percent of prisoners with a match declared
occupations that did not clearly increase the chance of survival.
About 20 percent of such prisoners were agricultural laborers, 18
percent unskilled laborers or workers, and more than 60 Prozent

15 Buggeln, Slave Labor, 92–93.

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0
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8
6
0
9

/
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3
1
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366

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self-employed before the war or in service positions. A tiny minority
were physicians, lab technicians, veterinarians, Lehrer, or clerks.
The large share of occupations that did not guarantee survival sup-
ports the idea that the recorded occupations of Spanish prisoners
were reasonably accurate.

Survivor biographies and oral histories allow us to cross-check
individual data. A prisoner from Vinaroz (born in 1919), Wer war
a seaman before the civil war, recounts being helped by a friend, A
veteran prisoner from the same town, who advised him “not [Zu]
say that you are a seaman because the only sea there is in here is
the Danube. Stattdessen, you should say that you are stonemason.”
Apparently, the new inmate did indeed tell the camp authorities
that he was a good stonemason (“Steinmetz, Steinmetz, gut, gut” was
the refrain), though his Mauthausen record in the Arolsen archives
lists him as a Matrose or seaman. According to Legineche, another
prisoner, whose family worked the land but was about to join the
ship Ciudad de Cádiz as a cabin boy before the start of the civil
Krieg, was classiﬁed as a seaman in the Arolsen records.16

We performed this cross-examination with several other pris-
oners whose pre-war occupation we know. Josep Cabrero Arnal,
who was murdered at the camp hospital with a lethal injection,
was a cartoonist before the war. In the camp records, he appears
as a Zeichner or illustrator. Joaquim Amat-Piniella, the author of a
semi-autobiographical novel about the experiences of the Spanish
group in Mauthausen, appears in the records as a Lehrer, or teacher,
hardly an occupation guaranteeing survival. César Orquín, a char-
ismatic kapo, born in 1917, was listed as a student; he probably had
not ﬁnished his university degree when the civil war erupted. Joan
de Diego, a secretary at the camp and one of the prisoners who hid
and preserved the Mauthausen records, was an ofﬁce clerk identiﬁed
as an Angestellter, or clerk, on his Mauthausen card. Jesús Dalmau, A
clerk at the Pirelli company before the war, appears as an Angestellter
in his prisoner ﬁles.17

16 Vilanova, Mauthausen, 80–81; Manuel A. Legineche, El Precio del Paraíso: De un Campo de
Exterminio al Amazonas (Barcelona, 2016), 87.
17 For an in-depth study of Orquín, see Ernest Gallart, El Kommando César: Los Republicanos
Españoles en el Sistema Concentracionario del KL Mauthausen (Madrid, 2011). Rosa Toran, Joan de
Diego: Tercer Secretari de Mauthausen (Barcelona, 2012), 52–53; Roig, Catalans, 477–478. In
Roig’s book, the prisoner’s name is Jesús Dalmau, whereas in the Arolsen archives, Die

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e
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/

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6
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9

/
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7
3
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SURVIV AL IN A N AZI CO NCENTRATION CAM P

| 367

Three key Spanish prisoners worked in the camp’s identiﬁca-
tion room (Erkennungdienst) as photographers, saving thousands of
photographic negatives that provided critical identiﬁcation of
German war criminals in the Nuremberg trials. Francesc Boix
(Barcelona, 1920)—a member of the Catalan Communist youth
movement with brothers Joaquín (also a Mauthausen survivor)
and Gregorio López Raimundo—provided a critical identiﬁcation
of Ernst Kaltenbrunner, a Gestapo chief sentenced to death, bei
Nuremberg. Boix appears in the Arolsen archive as an “Arbeiter,”
though he had not yet turned sixteen when the civil war started.
An amateur photographer, he apparently published some pictures
during the war in magazines of Communist youth groups. José
Cereceda (Madrid, 1913) and Antonio García Alonso (Tortosa,
1913), the other two photographers who worked in the identiﬁ-
cation room, were clearly professional photographers before the
Krieg, identiﬁed on their individual cards as Fotograf.18

Two prisoners, who were surely rural laborers before the civil
Krieg, appear as Landwirt (agricultural workers) and Landarbeiter (ländlich
workers) in their respective Mauthausen cards. In a compilation of
oral testimonies, a survivor explained how he came at the camp to
regret his lack of a proper trade. When cross-checked with the
Arolsen cards, this survivor shows up as an unskilled Arbeiter.
Im Gegensatz, prisoners in secure jobs at the camp acquired the req-
uisite skills before entering the camp. Eins, a Zimmerman, or car-
penter, before Spain’s civil war, appears as such on his individual
card in the Arolsen records. Ein anderer, an Elektriker, or electrician,
was registered as one on his Mauthausen card. The same is true of
a prisoner who worked as a Schmied, or blacksmith, before the civil
Krieg. Julio Casabona (born, 1919), WHO, with his father, took care
of Kommander Franz Zeireis’ pigsty, was a veterinary student before

name is Jesús Colom-Dalmau. The prisoner could be traced because his Mauthausen death
certiﬁcate names him Jesús Dalmau-Colom and gives his birthplace as Manresa (province of
Barcelona) In 1916.
18 For information about Boix and the other two photographers, siehe https://www
.barceloninsdeportats.org/es/122/ boix-campo-francesc/biograﬁa.html; Bermejo, El Fotógrafo
del Horror: La historia de Francisco Boix y las Fotos Robadas a los SS de Mauthausen (Barcelona,
2015). Cereceda was a Communist militant from Madrid who also had been a professional
dancer (ibid., 175). For the best account of García Alonso’s placing in the identiﬁcation room
of the camp, see Pike, Spaniards, 133–143, which also tells of the García Alonso’s family pho-
tography lab in the city of Tortosa and reveals that Boix did not know much photography,
thus validating the Arbeiter status on his individual card.

D
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the war and and a “Tierärzt. Student” on his Mauthausen individual
card (presumably meaning Tierärztliche Student).19

In line with the literature on socioeco-
THE ROLE OF SOCIAL CLASS
nomic determinants of survival, the main expectation of this article is
that survival depended on social class, as determined by previous
Beruf. Spanish prisoners who were members of the upper classes
had a lower risk of death than did members of the lower classes. Sozial
class might have affected survival probabilities in a number of different
ways. Erste, camps and satellite work groups could have adopted a rigid
social structure, following SS classiﬁcation hierarchies. According to
Buggeln, these classiﬁcations followed Nazi racial doctrines, Die
national origins of prisoners, and other criteria singling out political
opponents or social groups deemed undesirable. The social structure
of the camp was also duplicated within national or ethnic groups,
privileging a class of prominent prisoners (Prominenten), generally
kapos and valued workers over the mass of low-status prisoners
(Speckjäger in German and espechegas in the Spanish vernacular).
Survival probabilities varied dramatically between one group and the
andere; prominent prisoners had access to more food, better shelter
and clothing, and relative immunity from arbitrary SS or kapo violence.20
daher, membership in, or the protection of, a group of
prominent prisoners became a crucial determinant of survival.
The most famous Spanish case involved 460 prisoners in a kom-
mando at Vöcklabruch who were spared the terrible fate of their
comrades during the period of highest lethality in 1941, thanks to
Orquín’s leadership and protection. Orquín also saved lives later in
Ternberg and in Schlier. Other typically shielded kommandos
were those in charge of the registry of prisoner belongings, Die
kitchen staff (giving access to vital food), and the caretakers of
camp commander Zereis’ pigsty. Writer Amat-Piniella was saved
from death by his friend cartoonist Josep Arnal, who enjoyed a
Prominenten position classifying prisoner belongings.21

19 Ximo Vidal and Carles Senso, La Ignomínia de l’Oblit: Els Valencians de la Ribera als Camps
d’Extermini Nazis ( València, 2016), 37–38; Vilanova, Mauthausen, 57; Vidal and Senso, Der
Ignomínia. 62. For the electrician and the blacksmith, see Vilanova, Mauthausen, 75. Pons,
Holocausto, 259.
20 Buggeln, Slave Labor, 142; Vilanova, Mauthausen, 17; Bermejo, El fotógrafo, 120.
21 Gallart, El Kommando César, 149–232, 245–272; Vilanova, Mauthausen, 83–86; Pons,
Holocausto, 258–263.

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SURVIV AL IN A N AZI CO NCENTRATION CAM P

| 369

Access to Prominenten status must have depended on a vari-
ety of factors, the most important being certain highly valued skills
in a labor-scarce war economy. The SS owned the German Earth
and Stone Works company that supplied building materials to the
German state using Mauthausen prisoner labor. Later, the camp
shifted to arms production, especially aircraft fuselages and soldiers’
weapons (typically carbines and machine guns). Somit, prisoners
having construction and industrial skills would seem to have had a
higher chance of survival than prisoners in the unskilled and farm
classes. From this perspective, prisoners with middle- and upper-
class status employed in such skilled occupations as teaching might
not have had a survival advantage over unskilled workers.22

A second version of the skill-scarcity thesis involves occupa-
tions in the service sector, like administration, entertainment, oder
personal grooming (barbers or hairdressers), which appears to have
been in some demand among SS commanders and their families.
Manuel Carmona (Jódar, 1899) and Joan Pagès Moret (Palamós,
1917) both entered the camp as Friseur (hair stylists). Carmona’s sta-
tus as one of Ziereis’ personal barbers must have meant that he was
highly skilled. Pagès also had been president of the barber’s union of
the socialist General Workers’ Union and a founder of the Catalan
Communist Party (PSUC). Ramon Verge Armengol (Barcelona,
1915), a Laborant, or lab technician, was employed at the Revier
(camp hospital), where lethal injections were delivered to sick pris-
oners. Recall also the Casabona family of veterinarians employed in
the camp’s pigsty.23

The linguistic skills and other learned capacities usually corre-
lated with social class and occupation also mattered. The ability to
speak German was a vital advantage at the camp. Diego and Orquín,
two of the most prominent Spanish prisoners at the camp, both sur-
vivors, quickly learned German. These two men also were more ed-
ucated than the average Spanish prisoner. Orquín had a university
degree and a musical background. Diego had attended an experi-
mental Montessori school in Barcelona, worked as an apprentice
at a pharmacy, and at sixteen or seventeen years old became a clerk

22 Adam Tooze, The Wages of Destruction: The Making and Breaking of the Nazi Economy
(London, 2007), 513–561; Mark Mazower, Hitler’s Empire: Nazi Rule in Occupied Europe
(London, 2008), 294–318; Herbert, Hitler’s Foreign Workers: Enforced Foreign Labor in Germany
under the Third Reich (New York, 2006).
23 Pons, Holocausto, 259.

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at a business in Barcelona. Francesc Boix, another prominent pris-
oner, who was a high-school student in central Barcelona before
the war, also learned to speak German ﬂuently. In line with this
anecdotal evidence, contemporary sociological research shows that
upper-class individuals were more prone to learn new languages.24
Endlich, social class is correlated with an intensive participation
in support networks among prisoners. The literature about the
Spaniards’ experiences at the camp tells of a Communist resistance
network that emerged in the summer of 1941, networks associated
with rival political traditions like the anarchists, as well as others
comprised of prisoners from the same Republican army unit, Die
same town, usw. Participation in these networks might have been
more typical of urban workers from larger cities. Darüber hinaus, skilled
workers in industry or services were probably more active in
political or union-related networks. Somit, social class undoubt-
edly provided survival advantages, not only for skilled industrial
and construction workers but also for workers in service industries
or highly skilled professions.25

Although prisoners’ social class is our main explanatory vari-
able, several other variables related to individual characteristics are
worthy of consideration, the most important one being date of
birth. We expected age to have had a pronounced effect on sur-
vival rate. For one thing, SS physicians made their selection of
prisoners deemed to be unﬁt for work largely on the basis of
Alter. Zweite, older prisoners might have had greater difﬁculties
staying alive in the brutal conditions of the camp (freezing cold,
caloric intake close to starvation levels, and long hours doing ex-
hausting work). Jedoch, the precise shape that the age–mortality
gradient should take in this extremely challenging environment
is unclear. The pertinent scholarship argues that famines affect

24 Vilanova, Mauthausen, 65, 66–68; Gallart, Orquín, 119, 120; Toran, Joan de Diego, 100,
53; Jürgen Gerhards, “Transnational Linguistic Capital: Explaining English Proﬁency in 27
European Countries,” International Sociology, XXIX (2014), 56–74; Sören Carlson, Jürgen
Gerhards, and Silke Hans, “Education of Children in Times of Globalisation: Class-speciﬁc
Child-rearing practices and the Acquisition of Transnational Cultural Capital,” Sociology, LI
(2017), 749–765.
25 Manuel Razola and Mariano Constante, Triangle Bleu: Les Republicains Espagnols à
Mauthausen 1940–1945 (Paris, 2001), 89–90; Vilanova, Mauthausen, 81–82. For clashes between
the Communist group and the Anarcho-syndicalists, see Amat-Piniella, KL Reich, 464–465;
for prisoners serving in the same military unit, Pons, Holocausto, 224; for those living in the
same area, Roig, Catalans, 276, 477–478; for those with previous friendships, ibid., 279.

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SURVIV AL IN A N AZI CO NCENTRATION CAM P

| 371

mortality levels but do not necessarily determine the slope of the
age–mortality relationship.26

METHODS This study’s attempt to ascertain the conditions that af-
fected the risk of death in the camp entailed estimating event-history
Modelle. Such models identify changes in the hazard rate or the prob-
ability that an event will occur in a particular interval if it did not
occur in the previous interval. Since the event of interest is death
during imprisonment, the models reveal the determinants of the
timing until the potential passing of the prisoner. Umgekehrt, Die
survival rate represents the probability of remaining alive during a
given period after the onset of the risk. We estimate Cox models,
avoiding other models’ dichotomous outcomes—for example, lo-
gistic or probit regression, since they, unlike Cox models, would re-
quire us to deﬁne the parameters of the baseline hazard to avoid
biases in the effect of independent variables of interest. All our
models are estimated with Efron’s method for simultaneous events,
which produces the most accurate approximation of the condi-
tional probability. The date of entry to the camp marks the onset
of the risk and the date of death or liberation the end of the risk.27
Several independent variables have substantial proportions of
missing values, particularly the variables “Catholic” (40.4 Prozent
of prisoners) and “single” (25.8 Prozent). Since this missing infor-
mation is likely not at random, we have imputed missing values for
all independent variables using ten sets of imputations as well as
missing values for the dependent variables in the chained process,
but we included only cases with complete information about the
dependent variables in the ﬁnal analyses. We address the issue of
perfect prediction in categorical variables through the “augment”
option in Stata. Tisch 4 shows basic descriptive statistics for all
independent variables in the analysis with and without imputed
missing values.28

Susan C. Watkins and Jane Menken, “Famines in Historical Perspective,” Population and
26
Development Review, XI (1985), 647–675; John R. Speakman, “Sex- and Age-Related Mortality
Proﬁles during Famine: Testing the ‘Body Fat’ Hypothesis,” Journal of Biosocial Science, XLV
(2013), 823–840; Virginia Zarulli, “Effet des Chocs de Mortalité sur le Proﬁl par Âge de la
Mortalité des Adultes," Bevölkerung (Französische Ausgabe), VXVIII (2013), 303–329.
27 Mario A. Cleves, William W. Gould, and Yulia V. Marchenko, An Introduction to Survival
Analysis Using Stata (College Station, 2016).
28 Brendan Halpin, “Multiple Imputation for Categorical Time Series,” Stata Journal, XVI
(2016), 590–612.

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RESULTS The empirical analysis proceeds in two steps that seek to
reﬂect the evolution of prisoners during and after their sojourn at
the camp. Erste, we address the socio-demographic proﬁle of the
deportees. Zweite, we examine the socio-demographic determi-
nants of survival, which absorbs most of our attention.

Tisch 4 Descriptive Statistics for All Variables with and without Imputation

VARIABLE

MEAN

MIN

MAX

WITHOUT IMPUTATION

Duration
Outcome – Tod
Age 14–24
Age 25–34
Age 35–44
Age 45–74
Elite and lower-middle class
Self-employed and farmers
Skilled workers
Unskilled workers
Unskilled farm workers
Single
Catholic
Province
Year of entry

Duration
Outcome – Tod
Age 14–24
Age 25–34
Age 35–44
Age 45–74
Elite & lower-middle class
Self-employed and farmers
Skilled workers
Unskilled workers
Unskilled farm workers
Single
Catholic
Province
Year of entry

6,459
6,660
5,920
5,920
5,920
5,920
5,815
5,815
5,815
5,815
5,815
4,940
3,969
6,718
6,567

6,459
6,459
6,459
6,459
6,459
6,459
6,459
6,459
6,459
6,459
6,459
6,459
6,459
6,459
6,459

673.002
0.692
0.223
0.496
0.220
0.060
0.042
0.175
0.411
0.183
0.188
0.599
0.887
23.856
0.000

552.041
0.462

5
0

1925
1

0.490
0.316
14.679
0.615

0
0
1
−.725

1
1
52
4.274

WITH IMPUTATION

673.002
0.705
0.224
0.496
0.219
0.060
0.043
0.174
0.412
0.183
0.188
0.619
0.887
23.862
−0.011

552.041
0.456

5
0

1925
1

0.486
0.316
14.689
0.595 −0.726

0
0
1

1
1
52
4.274

NOTE Rather than providing the mean, Standardabweichung, and minimum and maximum value
of the categorical variables age and social class, we present the proportion of each category. Der
N of the cases with imputation (6,459) is slightly larger than the N in Table 5 (6,454) Weil
models in Table 5 were estimated excluding cases with the imputed dependent variable.

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SURVIV AL IN A N AZI CO NCENTRATION CAM P

| 373

Tisch 4 provides critical information about the socio-demographic
proﬁle of Spanish deportees to Mauthausen. Spanish prisoners were
more likely to be young than to be middle-aged or elderly, to be
single than to be married or widowed, to be Catholic than to be
atheist or Protestant, to be from the northeast or south of Spain than
to be from other regions, and to be skilled than to be unskilled or
highly skilled. The modal age group was twenty-ﬁve to thirty-four.
As many as 88.73 percent of prisoners self-identiﬁed as Catholic and
60 percent as single when they entered the camp. Skilled workers
clearly predominated (41.1 Prozent), followed by unskilled farm
workers (18.80 Prozent), unskilled workers (18.31 Prozent), self-
employed workers and farmers (17.5 Prozent), and lower middle-class
and elite workers (4.2 Prozent). The proportion of the contingent
from the northeastern regions of Aragon and Catalonia that share a
border with France (34.25 percent of all cases) was substantially
larger than the proportion of the population of these regions
within Spain per se during the 1930s (16.08 Prozent). The highly
populated region of Andalusia was also over-represented in the
camp—19.95 percent of all prisoners as opposed to 17.27 Prozent
of Spain’s total population.

The average duration of imprisonment was 673 Tage, oder 1.8
Jahre. The standard deviation of this variable is high, indicating
that duration of imprisonment differed substantially among Spanish
deportees. One in every four remained imprisoned for more than
three years (Figur 3). The starkest indication of the suffering that
the Spanish inmates endured is their death rate, which was at the
high end for Mauthausen—69.22 percent in the ﬁnal sample.

Figur 4, which shows estimated survival rate depending on
the duration of the imprisonment (das ist, the probability of sur-
viving another period) indicates that survival probability fell pre-
cipitously in the ﬁrst 300 Tage, thereafter declining slowly until
2,000 Tage. Wichtig, the fastest decline occurred between
day 100 (.984) and day 300 (.896). From day 400 the probability
continued declining but at a slower pace. Between day 400 Und
day 1,925, the probability declined from .465 Zu .283.

We now arrive at the core question driving this study: Was
the probability of survival among Spanish deportees inﬂuenced
by their socio-demographic characteristics? If violence perpetrated
at the camp was conducted indiscriminately, socio-demographic
characteristics should have had no effect. Wenn, Jedoch, in line with

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Feige. 3 Distribution of Spanish Inmates’ Days of Imprisonment

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the emerging literature about the demographics of violence and
Konflikt, survival depended both on the productive value of pris-
oners and their ability to minimize the risk of assassination or
life-threatening disease, socio-demographic characteristics should
matter considerably.

Tisch 5 includes four Cox nested models with determinants
of the risk of death. Modell 1 examines the impact of social class.
Since time of entry into the camp was related to the social class of
the prisoners (Tisch 1), Modell 2 adds a control variable for year of
entry. To assess whether the impact of social class on the likeli-
hood of survival increases or decreases signiﬁcantly by year of en-
versuchen, Modell 3 includes interaction terms between social class and
year of entry. Modell 4 adds variables for age group, Familienstand,
and religious self-identiﬁcation. The last two models also control for
prisoners’ province of origin. These nested models help to deter-
mine the stability of the results and the extent to which some var-
iables absorb the effect of other dimensions. The results in Table 5
are generally consistent with previous work about the demographics
of victims in violent conﬂict because age, social class, and province

SURVIV AL IN A N AZI CO NCENTRATION CAM P

| 375

Feige. 4 Kaplan-Meier Survival Function by Days in the Camp

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of origin do indeed shape the hazard rate. The following paragraphs
address these aspects.

Modell 1 provides a preliminary indication of the association
between social class and risk of death in the camp. In this model and
the following ones, the reference group is the highest class—elite
and lower middle class—to facilitate interpretation of the results. In
accordance with the hypothesis in Section 3, Modell 1 indicates
signiﬁcant differences between the hazard rate of elite and lower
middle-class workers and that of unskilled nonagricultural and
agricultural workers. The latter classes display signiﬁcantly higher
hazard rates than do the highest social class. Außerdem, self-
employed workers have a lower risk of death than do members

Tisch 5 Cox Models Predicting Spanish Prisoners’ Death at Mauthausen with

Multiple Imputation for Missing Cases, 1940–1945

Modell 1 Modell 2 Modell 3 Modell 4

−0.190*
(−2.081)

−0.221*
(−2.316)

−0.127
(−1.277)

−0.122
(−1.443)

0.296***
(3.461)
0.610***
(6.897)
−0.020
(−0.806)

−0.104
(−1.188)

0.328***
(3.674)
0.643***
(7.005)
−0.158
(−1.268)
−0.248+
(−1.659)

−0.039
(−0.455)

0.380***
(4.273)
0.697***
(7.517)
−0.187
(−1.584)
−0.157
(−1.075)

0.064
(0.485)
0.263+
(1.883)
0.370**
(2.700)

0.101
(0.812)
0.292*
(2.189)
0.366**
(2.779)

0.469***
(9.827)
1.077***

(18.064)

1.483***

(16.479)
0.104*
(2.100)
0.053
(0.832)

Self-employed and farmers
(Ref. group elite and
lower-middle class)

Skilled workers

Unskilled workers

Unskilled farm workers

Year of entry in the camp

−0.191*
(−2.090)

−0.124
(−1.465)

0.295***
(3.449)
0.609***
(6.879)

Self-employed and

farmers*Year of entry
in the camp

Skilled workers*Year

of entry in the camp
Unskilled workers*Year
of entry in the camp

Unskilled farm

workers*Year of entry
in the camp

Age 25–34 (Ref. Gruppe:

14–24)
Age 35–44

Age 45–74

Single (Ref. Gruppe:

married or widowed)

Catholic (Ref. Gruppe:

Protestant or
no religion)

Province FE
N

*P < 0.05. **p < 0.01. ***p < 0.001. NOTE t-stats in parentheses. No 6,455 No 6,455 Yes 6,455 Yes 6,455 l D o w n o a d e d f r o m h t t p : / / d i r e c t . m i t . e d u / j i / n h a r t i c e - p d l f / / / / 5 2 3 3 5 1 2 0 6 8 6 0 9 / j i n h _ a _ 0 1 7 3 1 p d . f b y g u e s t t o n 0 7 S e p e m b e r 2 0 2 3 SURVIV AL IN A N AZI CO NCENTRATION CAM P | 377 of the elite and the lower middle class. This evidence suggests that, in accord with the expectation of this study, the social class of Spanish deportees shaped their life chances. Since time of entry to the camp varied by social class, the class of origin could be capturing the effect of year of entry into the camp. To check, Model 2 adds the control variable year of entry, which turns non-signiﬁcant. More importantly, controlling for year of entry, the coefﬁcients of social class reported in Model 1 change only modestly; unskilled manufacturing and agricultural workers still display a signiﬁcantly larger risk of death in the camp than do the elite and lower middle class. If class structure differed substantially by province, and the middle and upper classes concentrated in certain regions, the class effects found in Model 2 could potentially disappear after control- ling for the province of origin. Moreover, results from a global proportional-hazard assumption test after Model 2 (available upon request) indicate that the differences in the likelihood of death do not remain parallel during the time spent in the camp. Hence, fol- lowing Box-Steffensmeier and Jones, we include covariate inter- actions with time: Model 3 adds interaction terms with the year of entry into the camp. Since the variable “year of entry” has been centered to ease interpretation, the social-class dummies indicate the effect of social class at the average year of entry. At the average year of entry, self-employed prisoners continue to have a lower hazard than elite and lower middle-class prisoners, and unskilled (agricultural and non-agricultural) workers display a signiﬁcantly higher hazard than elite and lower middle-class prisoners.29 Because the interaction terms between unskilled non-agricultural and agricultural workers and year of entry are also positive and sig- niﬁcant, the class differential in survival rates was larger for prisoners deported to the camp in 1941 and thereafter than for prisoners de- ported in 1940. Model 3 in Table 5 does not report the ﬁxed-effects coefﬁcients for ﬁfty-one provinces, partly to keep the table compact and partly because most province effects are not signiﬁcant. Only prisoners from Álava, Asturias, Córdoba, León, and Murcia had a signiﬁcantly different, uniformly higher, risk of dying than prisoners from Barcelona—the reference group, from the province with the largest contingent. Janet Box-Steffensmeier and Bradford Jones, Event History Modeling (New York, 2004), 29 136–137. l D o w n o a d e d f r o m h t t p : / / d i r e c t . m i t . e d u / j i / n h a r t i c e - p d l f / / / / 5 2 3 3 5 1 2 0 6 8 6 0 9 / j i n h _ a _ 0 1 7 3 1 p d . f b y g u e s t t o n 0 7 S e p e m b e r 2 0 2 3 378 | J O R D I D O M ÈN E C H A ND J UA N J E S Ú S FE R N Á N D E Z Model 4 adds variables corresponding to three other socio- demographic factors—age group, being single, and Catholic. According to this model, age has a strong and almost linear effect on the risk of death. The lowest risk was among the youngest age group (prisoners fourteen to twenty-four), followed by prisoners aged twenty-ﬁve to thirty-four, those thirty-ﬁve to forty-four, and those forty-ﬁve to seventy-four. The variable “religious self-identiﬁcation” proves unrelated to the risk of death. Inde- pendent of their age, social class, and province, Catholic pris- oners were not signiﬁcantly more likely to die in the camp than non-Catholic prisoners. The variable “single” is positive and signiﬁcant in Model 4 but not sufﬁciently robust, because it is non-signiﬁcant in models without multiple imputation. Models 1–4 in Table 5 indicate that the social class of pris- oners shapes their mortality rate. But how substantial is the effect? Based on the results in Model 4, Figure 5, which depicts the survival Fig. 5 Kaplan-Meier Survival Function by Days in the Camp l D o w n o a d e d f r o m h t t p : / / d i r e c t . m i t . e d u / j i / n h a r t i c e - p d l f / / / / 5 2 3 3 5 1 2 0 6 8 6 0 9 / j i n h _ a _ 0 1 7 3 1 p d . f b y g u e s t t o n 0 7 S e p e m b e r 2 0 2 3 SURVIV AL IN A N AZI CO NCENTRATION CAM P | 379 rate by social class, depending on the length of time spent in the camp, displays noticeable group differences. The largest class gap occurs between three groups—unskilled farm workers, unskilled non-agricultural workers, and all the other classes (elite, lower middle class, and self-employed or farmers). The probability of survival on day 997 was .118 for unskilled farm workers, .211 for unskilled non-agricultural workers, and .391 for self-employed farmers. Hence, substantial class differences in the likelihood of survival emerge from the data: Unskilled farm workers had the largest risk of death, followed by other unskilled workers and skilled and self-employed workers. The multivariate results discussed so far were obtained with imputed missing values. Since this analytical strategy could affect the ﬁndings, Table 6 replicates the Models in Table 5 but without imputed missing values. Despite a substantial decline in the number of cases, especially after including the variables for age group, marital status, and religious self-identiﬁcation, the same social-class variables remain signiﬁcant and in the same direction as in the models of Table 5. Without imputing missing information, self- employed farmers had lower hazards of death than did elite and lower middle-class prisoners, whereas unskilled workers had a higher hazard of death than did elite and lower middle-class pris- oners. Moreover, in a model without imputed missing values, the class gaps in survival likelihood were, in fact, larger for prisoners deported in 1941 or thereafter than for those deported in 1940. The chilling efﬁciency with which the massive Nazi, and Soviet, con- centration camps were able to administer suffering and death had a devastating effect on human political history. Despite the more than seventy-ﬁve years since the closure of these camps, we are now only beginning to understand the complex web of beliefs and relations that undergirded their structure and operation. In its assessment of the individual conditions that shaped Spanish prisoners’ chances of survival, this article contributes three main ﬁndings. First, mortality displays a substantial age gradient. The youn- ger the prisoners were, the higher were their chances of survival, though the evidence does not suggest a strong discontinuity in this respect. By contrast, the decline in survival chances varied almost linearly with age. Although this pattern was not fully inconsistent with the intense ageism of Nazi guards and camp administrators, as l D o w n o a d e d f r o m h t t p : / / d i r e c t . m i t . e d u / j i / n h a r t i c e - p d l f / / / / 5 2 3 3 5 1 2 0 6 8 6 0 9 / j i n h _ a _ 0 1 7 3 1 p d . f b y g u e s t t o n 0 7 S e p e m b e r 2 0 2 3 Table 6 Cox Models Predicting Death at Mauthausen among Spanish Deportees without Multiple Imputation for Missing Cases, 1940–1945 MODEL 1 MODEL 2 MODEL 3 MODEL 4 −0.185* (−2.063) −0.222* (−2.350) 0.243* (2.002) −0.123 (−1.468) 0.291*** (3.346) 0.604*** (7.021) −0.041 (−1.474) −0.103 (−1.174) 0.330*** (3.636) 0.643*** (7.159) −0.190 (−1.473) −0.310* (−2.032) 0.065 (0.475) 0.313* (2.212) 0.415** (2.955) 0.099 (0.891) 0.569*** (4.936) 0.637*** (5.514) −0.112 (−0.781) 0.201 (1.145) 0.127 (0.840) 0.346* (2.213) 0.441** (2.771) 0.322*** (5.770) 0.772*** (10.810) 0.858*** (7.883) 0.070 (1.459) 0.015 (0.240) Self-employed and farmers (Ref. group elite and lower middle class) Skilled workers Unskilled workers Unskilled farm workers Year of entry in the camp −0.187* (−2.091) −0.127 (−1.515) 0.290*** (3.330) 0.601*** (6.996) Self-employed and farmers*Year of entry in the camp Skilled workers*year of entry in the camp Unskilled workers*Year of entry in the camp Unskilled farm workers*Year of entry in the camp Age 25–34 Age 35–44 (Ref. group: 14–24) Age 45–74 Single (Ref. group: married or widowed) Catholic (Ref. group: Protestant or no religion) Province FE N *p < 0.05. **p < 0.01. ***p < 0.001. NOTE t-stats in parentheses. No 5,611 No 5,611 Yes 5,611 Yes 3,281 l D o w n o a d e d f r o m h t t p : / / d i r e c t . m i t . e d u / j i / n h a r t i c e - p d l f / / / / 5 2 3 3 5 1 2 0 6 8 6 0 9 / j i n h _ a _ 0 1 7 3 1 p d . f b y g u e s t t o n 0 7 S e p e m b e r 2 0 2 3 SURVIV AL IN A N AZI CO NCENTRATION CAM P | 381 disclosed in the qualitative literature, the Nazi ideology would seem to have generated a sharper gap in survival between the younger and older prisoners. Nonetheless, Mauthausen’s brutal working and sanitary conditions, which could well have taken a linearly increasing personal toll with age, offer more likely causes of the steep but quasi-linear age gradient. Second, prisoners’ social class structured mortality patterns. Cox models reveal that prisoners’ social class signiﬁcantly and sub- stantially inﬂuenced their likelihood of dying in the camp. Support- ing our main guiding idea that the camps were not only status-based organizations but also organizations in which class affected survival, the analysis indicates that unskilled farmers and non-agricultural workers were most at risk, followed in order by skilled workers and all other workers. Several key aspects of the camp’s social struc- ture help to explain this pattern. Skilled manual workers were valu- able resources in the labor-scarce war economy; their efforts were probably rewarded with better rations and living conditions. Highly skilled and service-sector workers had preferential access to admin- istrative positions with advantageous work conditions. Service-sec- tor workers with formal education, who were more likely to have some command of the German language or a greater ability to learn it, also had an advantage. This combination of sharp occupational and material inequalities in a context of cruelly dehumanized rela- tionships coalesced as a rigid class division between prominent and pariah workers that must have boosted the feeling of dispossession and hopelessness among subordinated groups. Third, neither the prisoners’ marital status nor their religious self-identiﬁcation had a signiﬁcant and robust effect on the likeli- hood of survival. Although demographic research has consistently conﬁrmed the Far-Bertillon law that married people were more prone to lower mortality rates than single individuals, our study does not support this pattern for Spaniards in Mauthausen. Marital status may not have mattered because none of the prisoners had the emotional and material advantages of actually living with their spouses. Similarly, a mere religious identiﬁcation may not have 30 Peter Richmond and Bertrand M. Roehner, “Effect of Marital Status on Death Rates: Part 1: High Accuracy Explorations of the Farr-Bertillon Effect,” Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and Its Applications, CDL (2016), 748–767. l D o w n o a d e d f r o m h t t p : / / d i r e c t . m i t . e d u / j i / n h a r t i c e - p d l f / / / / 5 2 3 3 5 1 2 0 6 8 6 0 9 / j i n h _ a _ 0 1 7 3 1 p d . f b y g u e s t t o n 0 7 S e p e m b e r 2 0 2 3 382 | J O R D I D O M ÈN E C H A ND J UA N J E S Ú S FE R N Á N D E Z conferred the same solace and emotional support that a fully com- mitted religious belief with access to its associated practices would have conveyed.30 Our study has noticeable limitations. The analysis cannot ex- plicate the meaning of death for these prisoners. Although people are hard-wired to maximize their chances of survival, extreme conditions may well cancel this predisposition. As Kranebitter notes, “What cannot be ignored are the innumerable indications that death was possibly seen as a relief, a way out and an escape from the reality of the concentration camps, as an end to horror, which was preferred to a horror without end.” If death can be a liberation from a life fully controlled by others, we can only won- der “how many of these dead did not survive even though they tried to? How many did not survive because they did not want to?” Accordingly, we should avoid a moralistic narrative of survival as an unconditional success story and allow for a less prejudicial meaning of life and death in contexts of unspeakable suffering.31 Furthermore, data limitations in the original archival sources did not allow us to consider other socio-demographic characteris- tics like in-camp personal networks, military background, former political activism, or health status upon imprisonment, among others. Pending the discovery of further data about those aspects, this study advances our understanding of life under extreme duress in a Nazi camp by discovering a social-class gradient in the risk of death among Spanish prisoners at Mauthausen. 31 Kranebitter, Zahlen als Zeugen, 176 (author’s translation), 177; Tvzetan Todorov, Facing the Extreme: Moral Life in the Concentration Camps (New York, 1996), 199–212; Subotić, “Ethics,” 5. l D o w n o a d e d f r o m h t t p : / / d i r e c t . m i t . e d u / j i / n h a r t i c e - p d l f / / / / 5 2 3 3 5 1 2 0 6 8 6 0 9 / j i n h _ a _ 0 1 7 3 1 p d . f b y g u e s t t o n 0 7 S e p e m b e r 2 0 2 3 Zeitschrift für interdisziplinäre Geschichte, LII:3 (Winter, 2022), 351–382. Bild

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