What were five rabbit hunters doing in the Nazi concentration camp of Mauthausen during World War II?, what crime had they committed to end up there?, how is it possible that for nearly fifty years (until the publication of the first historical investigations at the II Conference on the History of Lanzarote and Fuerteventura in 1985) the population of Lanzarote and, even, direct relatives of the deportees did not know this story?
The book by historian Pedro Mayo titled The Five of Mauthausen, recently published by Caballos Azules in its Cronos collection, attempts to answer these questions. The book features an extensive bibliography, as well as a list of the archives and documentation sources consulted by the author, which demonstrate the methodological rigor and the solid research work that underpin the work.
I confess that I am a rather particular History professor. In my scarce free time, I find it more stimulating to approach the past through the poetry of Constantine Cavafy or Ezra Pound, or the novels of Marcel Proust, just as Adam Zagajewski proposes in his essay Poetry for Beginners. However, I don't turn up my nose —not by a long shot— at a historical investigation like this one, which, in the current war context and from the place where we find ourselves, directly challenges us.
Not everything is told in History, as I often insist to my students: there are still many voices to rescue, many stories to reconstruct, and perhaps one day, one of them, may become the protagonist of that search. Knowing the past is not just an academic exercise, but a way to understand who we are and to give meaning to the present. As historian Pierre Nora pointed out, “memory is life, always embodied in living groups”, and therefore its preservation and study constitute a fundamental task for each new generation.
From that responsibility of each generation towards collective memory, the work of Pedro Mayo that concerns us here makes sense. The book opens with a brief but illuminating contextualization of the island of Lanzarote in 1936, which at that time had just over 20,000 inhabitants and an economy fundamentally centered on subsistence agriculture, marked by recurrent episodes of famine. Added to this were high rates of illiteracy, close to 70%, and a situation of widespread poverty. In this context, the limited social awareness of the working class, together with the still incipient nature of the trade union movement and the persistence of cacique-type power structures, contribute to explaining the scarce support obtained by the Popular Front electoral coalition in the elections held that same year.
Afterwards, it analyzes the repression in Lanzarote, after the military uprising of 1936, where it is estimated that there were a little less than a hundred detainees accused of belonging to left-wing parties or trade union movements. Within the collective of sailors, fishermen and other sea workers, we find a good number of people opposed to the regime. Among them are some of the protagonists of this book: Domingo Cedrés Arrocha, Rafael Arrocha Elvira, Domingo Padrón Valiente, Pedro Noda de la Cruz and Jacinto Morales Perdomo. Names that should not fall into oblivion again.
The investigation follows the life journey of these five men, marked by the Civil War, exile, and Nazi deportation. After fleeing or fighting on the Republican side, many passed through refugee camps in France and were integrated into labor units or the French army, until being captured by German troops. Considered stateless by the Francoist regime, they were sent to the Mauthausen concentration camp complex and its subcamps, where they suffered extreme conditions of exploitation, violence, and death, especially in Gusen concentration camp.
The account dwells with special attention on Gusen, one of the most lethal spaces of the Nazi concentration camp system. Initially conceived as a subcamp destined for the exploitation of slave labor in quarries and, subsequently, in the armaments industry, it stood out for the brutality of its conditions: exhausting workdays, insufficient food, and systematic violence that caused a very high mortality rate. Some of these men died there; others managed to survive and rebuild their lives in French exile, without ever returning to Spain.
Beyond the reconstruction of historical facts, the work is situated in the realm of collective memory, underlining the importance of rescuing from oblivion the trajectories of those who were victims of repression and exile. The history of these five conejeros not only illuminates a little-known episode of the island's past, but also evidences the prolonged silences that have marked its transmission for decades.
In this sense, the work of Pedro Mayo contributes decisively to restoring the dignity of these lives and to reinforcing the need to preserve a historical memory that allows us to understand the present from a more critical and conscious perspective. Ultimately, The Five of Mauthausen is a work that expands our knowledge of an era that we must not forget, both for its rigor and for its capacity to rescue a profoundly human story. A necessary reading that reminds us, ultimately, that the past —when narrated with honesty— is always something that concerns us.
