THE AMBROSE EHIRIM FILES

American liberators rolling into the Mauthausen concentration camp on May 5, 1945, as photographed by prisoner Francesc Boix. Sgt. Harry Saunders is standing on the left fender. Francesc Boix/Courtesy of Collections of the Mauthausen Memorial BY SARA J. BRENNEIS ANDREW W. MELLON PROFESSOR OF SPANISH, AMHERST COLLEGE When American soldiers liberated the Mauthausen Nazi concentration camp in Austria 80 years ago this May, Spanish prisoners welcomed them with a message of antifascist solidarity. The Spaniards hung a banner made from stolen bed sheets over one of Mauthausen’s gates. In English, Spanish and Russian, it read: “The Spanish Antifascists Greet the Liberating Forces.” Both American servicemen and Spanish survivors remember the camp’s liberation as a win in their shared fight against extremism, my research on the Spanish prisoners in Mauthausen finds. They all understood the authoritarian governments of Nazi Germany , Italy and Spain as fascist regimes that used extremist view...