According to the US Holocaust Memorial Museum after the Nazi regime initiated World War II, the number of prisoners arriving in Mauthausen increased dramatically and broadened in diversity. After the fall of France in June 1940, Vichy French authorities turned over to the German SS and police thousands of Spanish refugees, virtually all of whom had fought against General Francisco Franco's rebel troops during the Spanish Civil War, , and who had fled to France after Franco overthrew the Spanish Republic in 1939. The SS and police incarcerated the overwhelming majority of the Spanish republicans, more than 7,000, in Mauthausen in 1940 and 1941; individual members of the anti-Franco forces continued to trickle in to the camp until the last weeks of the war. Also incarcerated at Mauthausen were members of the International Brigades, most of them communists of various nationalities, who had fought the Franco forces in Spain.
These photos show the memorial for Spanish republicans in Mauthausen and one of the crematoriums of the camp. They were taken in May 2017, some days after the 72nd anniversary of the liberation of the camp.
