The true story of Francisco Boix, a Spanish exile and WWII prisoner of war, sent to the concentration camp of Mauthausen. There he was assigned as the assistant to the Nazi photographer assigned to take pictures documenting how prisoners died. At great personal risk, Francisco came up with a plan to hide the negatives of these atrocities until after the war when the Nazis could be brought to justice. It's a harsh reminder of what man is capable of. Columbo's art captures this very well.

Why had I never heard of François Boix? I am glad Rubio's work rectified that. His story is heartbreaking, but I am glad it is being brought to life. He deserves recognition for his contributions to the war crimes trials after WWII.

As Jews, forgetting about the horrors of WW2, of the Holocaust, is near impossible. But we also tend to forget that despite taking up the majority of the death toll, we were not the only victims. This book touches on one such group of people from Franco's Spain.

It's a good biographical account and the art lends to the gravity of the story and the real, horrible history of it all.

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The Photographer of Mauthausen is a "retelling of true events" and as such serves as both a compelling story and a historical reflection. I won't repeat the blurb on it, but it works both as a historical retelling or dramatization and as a story.

The story is not full of brightness and joy so the artwork also is muted and not likely to bring joy. Which is to say it works very well with the narrative. It neither distracts nor detracts from the powerful story and manages to add nuance to many of the scenes

I would recommend this to not only readers of graphic novels but also those readers who like to learn about history through dramatic retellings of real events. It may well lead you to look up more information on this aspect of the Nazi concentration camps.

Reviewed from a copy made available by the publisher via NetGalley.

'The Photographer of Mauthausen' by Salva Rubio with illustrations by Pedro Columbo is a retelling of the life of Francisco Boix, a Spanish press photographer who found himself in a concentration camp and was witness to horrific events.

Francisco, or Francois, fled to France at the beginning of World War II. The French handed him over to the Nazis and he was sent to Mauthausen, a camp with an entrance, but not much of an exit. He found himself using his photographic skills in a bid to survive. He photographed Nazi officers, but also the dead. He realized that he had access to evidence to potentially convict the Nazis, but first he had to figure out how to get the photos out.

It's not an easy story to read, but it's a good one. The things that Francisco saw were pretty terrible, and that's alluded to with the amazing cover to this volume. The art is top notch throughout, as is the story.

I received a review copy of this graphic novel from Europe Comics and NetGalley in exchange for an honest review. Thank you for allowing me to review this graphic novel.

Note: I received an Advance Reading Copy of this book through NetGalley for an honest review.

I love history. I think it's important to know where we come from, to know who we are, to prevent the same mistakes and appreciate how far we've come. My favorite period are the Early Middle Ages, but our recent history is more important to our current situation. World War 2 is an important part of this of course, me being from The Netherlands. This isn't a fun subject, but I feel it is important to keep repeating what happened, to never downplay the horrific actions of the Nazis.

I found the graphic novel "The Photographer of Mauthausen" on NetGalley and I couldn't resist. I had heard of this man before, but never knew the details. This novel follows the time Francisco Boix, a Spanish communist exiled in France and captured by the Germans spent interred in the Mauthausen Concentration camp. It shows his journey to the camp, his job as translator, his job working as an assistant to SS Hauptscharführer Paul Ricken who liked to take "artful" photos of the dead prisoners. Boix and the other Spanish communist prisoners steal and hide 20.000 negatives of these practices, to send to Russia for anti-Nazi propaganda. At the end of the war, when Boix is free from Mauthausen he is dismayed to learn that nobody is really interested in these photographs or his story for that matter. He takes it upon himself to testify at the Nuremberg trials, but wonders what more death will actually solve.

Just the story (by Salvia Rubio) itself is impressive and sometimes tough to read, even sitting safe and free on my sofa in a once occupied country, even 75-ish year later. Because of the art by Pedro J. Colombo the story has even more impact. While it is hard to attach a rating to a story and work like this, I give it 5 out of 5 stars. I think this is a very good way to tell this story and shows the horrors in a way that is hard to ignore.

The Photographer of Mauthausen is an interesting comic about the Mauthausen concentration camp and the Spanish prisoners of it. I actually didn't know much about the Spanish or even how many were they or even why they were there, so this comic was much needed and showed another side to the war. The comic is a biographical and tells about Francisco Boix's time at Mauthausen and how he became the photographer to a Nazi officer. He helped the officer to take photos of corpses and he eventually smuggled some outside the camp, which eventually were of use at the Nuremberg trials. Still, Boix felt that no one was really interested what happened and that's probably true. Everyone just wanted to get rid of Nazis. Te structure is good, although the comic has a bit too much just talking heads and it's very stale. This makes the story slightly boring and we don't get into the political side of it enough; with this I surely mean the Communist side at the camp.

The art works with the comic, although the line art is slightly heavy and smudgy. A tender line art would've blown air to the story. The colors are dark and stale too, but that's a good thing, since it highlights the grayness of the camp and the conditions. Rubio's comic is a different kind of comic that show's us something we probably didn't know that even existed and thus its meaning is more than the stars. I wish those photos were found...

Another great World War II-related material that narrates about the crimes of the Nazi German. The story is about the Spanish photographer, Francisco Boix, who is a prisoner of war by the Germans in Mauthausen. He was first assigned in the quarry as a way to exterminate him just like the others. Luckily, he was later moved to the identification department of the camp.

Being a photographer for the German Army means developing photos of the soldiers and their families, which will be sent back home to their loved ones. Another task for them is to photograph and identify the prisoners when they arrived. Some photos also capture fake condition of the prisoners such as that they are healthy, well fed, and happy. These photos were used as a propaganda to deceive people that the camps were safe and that the prisoners lived well. The pictures were also used in the brochures to be sent to factories and quarries because the prisoners were offered as slave laborers.

When a prisoner died, a photo was taken and preserved in the Nazi Archives. As for illegal executions, another photo was taken in the art form to elevate death and that was what Francisco found out while being in the aforementioned department in the camp.

All the atrocities that the Nazi German's did such as throwing prisoners off the cliff; escape attempts when in reality they were pushed or forced themselves into the electrified fences; prisoners beaten to death, shot in the back of the head, hanging themselves; and experimentation by the doctors pushed Francisco that he wants the whole world to know what's is really happening.

After reading this graphic novel, I searched for Francisco Boix's photographs and looking at them are remarkably shocking and terrifying, most particularly the photo of the man that was hanged using a belt. Reading the cruel acts performed during the WWII was already horrifying, what more if people could see the photos that captured them.

The Photographer of Mauthausen is a must-read for those who are into reading anything about the WWII. The story of Francisco Boix and his perseverance and bravery is truly admirable and that should be set as an example to all.

I was first turned on to graphic novels as a medium for delivering rich, emotive, nonfiction in the final year of my undergrad when I was introduced to Joe Sacco and comics journalism. And I have to say, I think that the comics medium is perfect for relating WWII and Holocaust stories as the visual nature delivers such an immersive experience. Of course I’ve read Maus, Moving Pictures and We Are On Our Own, but the Photographer of Mauthausen was an entirely different (and amazing) kind of experience!

At just 118 pages, this book packs a big punch. Everything from the artwork to the scripting works together in perfect harmony to balance emotion with story and iconography with imagination. We’ve all heard the saying that a picture is worth a thousand words, so when you start putting 7-10 images a page, the impact is compounded. But what killed me the most, was how the pictures that Francisco and his crew worked so hard to protect were never used by the War Tribunal to give the victims a voice. Of all the injustices depicted throughout, that was one of the hardest to swallow.

I love how the book opens and closes at the French-Spanish border. Both nations flags are presented in opposite panels, and the colours of each flag filter down into the images below and periodically punctuate the pages to create a sense of time and place. With the majority of the illustrations are in washes of blue, grey, and brown when other colours are present they cary a whole lot of impact. So to do the facial expression and postures assigned to the characters. We see once jovial and supportive friends become gaunt and brow furrowed with worry. Not only are we told what they are going through, but we can also see the emotional and physical toll that enduring Mauthausen has on each man.

And the panel arrangements! I typically gravitate towards comics with consistent and predictable page layouts, but the creative use of shapes was absolutely divine. The geometry of the irregular shape leads the eye, creates a fractured and frantic reading, and tactfully manipulates time. Panels bleed of the page, images exist free of constraint, and the gutter isn’t the clean meaning-making space that novice readers might be used to. Yet, despite the constant flurry of information the pages are never cluttered or difficult the read.

The story itself was heartfelt and told with tenderness despite the atrocities displayed on the page. You get a real sense for Francisco’s convictions, his national pride, and his determination to not let deaths that he witnessed to be in vain. The balance that had to be made between morality and survival, selfishness and selflessness, protecting others and protecting yourself is unimaginable and yet entirely authentic. To watch their plan come together perfectly, and simultaneously fail catastrophically after the war was the most draining emotional rollercoaster!

Would I recommend this book? I can’t sing it’s praises highly enough! It’s visual, it’s visceral, and it’s one of my favourite WWII reads this year. And more than that, given the struggles that Francisco had telling this story during his life, I think that his story is one that needs to be heard by world now that it’s on the page. If you like graphic novels, WWII Fiction, or nonfiction this one is for you!

I found this comic style read very informative while it read like a movie such as "The Great Escape". The information was new to me As I am not a comic genre reader, I am not in the least qualified to evaluate the artwork. However in my opinion the darkness of the illustrations served the true story of a dark period of history very well.,

Eindringliche Zeichnungen im Comic-Form erleichtert den Zugang zur neueren Geschichte. In düsteren Farben gehalten, erhält man einen guten Eindruck der Athmosphäre von damals. Mehr Fakten und ein ausführlicher Hintergrund fehlen hier leider.

“I was on my own, as I surely always had been, from the beginning to the end.” This thought underlines Salva Rubio’s graphic novel “The Photographer of Mauthausen,” which is set in the concentration camp of the same name during Nazi Germany.

The photographer in question is Francisco Boix, a Spanish photographer who survived the war but died at the young age of 30. His brave act of smuggling photographs of deaths at the camp, which eventually became hard evidence of the atrocities committed there, made him a hero of sorts. The novel details his experiences at the camp, his survival, and life after.

At just 118 pages the novel is a quick read but by no means is it easy. It begins with Francisco waiting at a café by the border for his sister Nuria. We never come to know anything about Nuria except that he had promised that they will meet again. From there, we are taken ten years back into Mauthausen, a ‘Category 3 camp, set aside, according to Heydrich’s classification, for “irredeemable” prisoners.’ Francisco and his family have just arrived by train but soon enough, he loses his father, and is left all alone.

Slowly, we get to know of life in the camp through Francisco’s detailed descriptions. We get to know of the hardships, the torture, and worst of all, the deaths. Prisoners are pushed over cliffs, thrown onto barbed wires, and subjected to medical experiments with their deaths being recorded as suicides or accidents. Francisco works in the privileged Identification Department of the camp thanks to his experience as a press photographer earlier, and he is soon noticed by Paul Ricken, the head of the department. Ricken makes him his assistant for his bizarre photography expeditions that involved the German taking pictures of prisoners in the throes of death.

“I understood perfectly well what these strange, artistic photos meant: this madman thought he could turn death into art!”

Once Francisco realized this, he became determined to use his access to the lab and try to preserve as many negatives as he could. The rest of the novel is about the high risks and the many people it took to ensure the photos, and the people themselves, escaped destruction.

Although this retelling is a mixture of imagination and reality the collective experience of the prisoners is far from the truth. The horrible beatings, the injection of gasoline into people’s bodies, the starvation and so much more are what every prisoner must have gone through. I can only imagine, vaguely at that, but I nor anyone could ever fully understand because as Madame Vaillant-Couturier says, “there are no words, no images which can make people understand something they haven’t lived through.”

Francisco’s images did serve as hard evidence, though, and helped convict some of the Nazis involved in the activities of Mauthausen in the Nuremberg trials. His endeavour to save the negatives was daring, despairing, and extremely risky and was done with the ultimate aim of preserving history and memory. But despite all the trouble only about a 1,000 negatives were saved from a total of 20,000, author Salva Rubio informs us. The rest have disappeared into oblivion. Like so many untold stories from the war.

Rubio’s artwork supports the gripping narration with vivid blues and greys emphasizing the dreariness of the camp only punctuated with sepia or muted green tones to differentiate photographs. An interesting aspect that I noted was that most of the prisoners had almost the same facial features – bushy eyebrows, close-cropped hair, and full lips – but the Germans were distinctly different. Is it Rubio’s way of showing how prisoners were treated simply as a big, heaving mass of flesh?

I immensely enjoyed reading this novel. ‘Enjoyed’ is perhaps the wrong word to use for a subject as bleak as this, and perhaps I should say that Rubio/Francisco had my full attention. I look forward to reading more novels like these. There are always more stories to be told. I hope, like Francisco, there were people who did not give up.

Big thanks to Netgalley and the publisher for giving me an ARC for a review!

When World War Two broke out, France had a great many Spanish Communist expatriates who had fled Spain at the start of fascist Francisco Franco’s reign. Prior to reading “The Photographer of Mauthausen”, I was unaware of this. I was also unaware that during the Nazi occupation of France, the Spanish Communists were sent to concentration camps. This graphic novel (of which I received an advanced reader copy from NetGallley) tells the true story of such a camp, from the perspective of a prisoner who had been a photographer, and the efforts made to smuggle photos of Nazi atrocities out of the camp. A constantly compelling story, its historical obscurity gives it a heightened suspense, since the reader almost certainly will have no idea how events will unfold. In the bigger historical picture this is a small story; but that’s key to what makes it so compelling.

Well done to this book for redressing a balance – the fact that I hardly considered Spanish inmates in Nazi camps, let alone Communist ones. And well done, too, for doing it with a story of high drama and proper grit. Apart from the framing device (which at least shows our hero kept some spunk and friendly spirit, despite all he'd been through, but which didn't really add that much) I really got caught up in the true story of a Spanish Communist, tasked with first translating for the Nazis and Kapos, then employed in the photographic department, recording arrivals and more. The way they tried to get photographic proof of the Shoah out may seem over-blown to some, but from their point of view, where they had no timeline for the end of the war and a need to rely on any possible hope for some justice in the future, it must have been important. This is much beyond a standard story of life in the Holocaust, with all its attendant darkness and camp details, for it has some real-life espionage to go with its historical basis. Some may find the artwork a little coarse, but I really liked this for the story, so it's four and a half stars from me.

This graphic novel examines the Holocaust from a perspective that is not frequently given a voice. Communist Spaniards who fled their home country for France in the wake of Fascism only to be handed to the Nazis and placed in concentration camps.

This retelling of true events is jarring, seeing how the Spaniards were treated during and after the war. Being used and abused by the Nazis running the camp, forced suicides, horrific murders, but even still having the hope of escape. Then once they were released having been cast out by the Communist party as traitors believing that surviving the Holocaust was being an accomplice in their suffering.

Rubio and Coloumbo weave together this tragic tale in a beautiful manner. It gives life to those who never made it out of the camps. The Holocaust was horrifying for more than the Jewish community, the suffering was widespread and all of those people who endured those horrors deserve to be remembered.

Graphic novels are generally not my interest, but the topic of this one caught my eye, as I know little about the imprisonment of Spanish Communists by the Germans in WWII. While this information was interesting, I did not find it well presented - the dialogue (which is the majority of a graphic novel) seemed a cross between stilted and juvenile. Perhaps in part because it was a translation and not originally written in English.

This is not an easy book to read, by any means. The information here is naked and blunt, an assault to the senses to read. Reading this book physically made me ill, because of what happened in these camps.

Anyway, enough about the information itself; let us discuss the book itself! The art style was lovely, but I found myself unable to distinguish characters in the crowds. I also didn't feel that the characters were well developed. For example, Fransico's past life was not recorded at all! I don't know why he was sent to the concentration camp at all. Honestly, I had never heard of Mauthausen before reading this book. I'm very glad I did though, Rubio had a great story to present to all.

If this was in print edition I would recommend it to be added to the library collection. Graphic novels is a great way to introduce non-readers to readingg and world history.

Sometimes, it is hard to reviewing a book about world war II. It kind of feels wrong to say that I love this book, and this book is amazing knowing that it is exactly the opposite way of what happened then. Surely the word "amazing" and "I love it" did not sit right.
But, let me try.
I have a deep appreciation for this book.
I have always interested to know and read more about WWII, because growing up, I feel like my knowledge about it, is just not enough. Perhaps it will never be.

I have never heard a concentration camp in Mathausen before. So, reading this graphic novel really helps me to know more about WWII. I appreciate all the information that this book gave. The illustration are so details and are craft thoughtfully. There are some scene that actually hard for me to see. It's really heartbreaking but important read.

Truly, I appreciate those who are brave to tell stories about WWII. Thank you for telling or retelling the stories for us to read. Europe Comics, Salva, and Pedro, thank you for this book.

Gripping Nazi extermination camp story, well told and designed.