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| Mauthausen as it today, sanitised and restored. Dnalor 01, CC BY-SA 3.0 AT |
The Parliament of the Canary Islands will place a plaque in the Mauthausen concentration camp (Austria) in memory of the 45 Canarians who suffered captivity and the horror in that camp. Of them, 27 were murdered by the Nazis.
The president of the Chamber, Gustavo Matos, affirms that this January 27, the International Holocaust Remembrance Day and the Prevention of Crimes against Humanity, should serve to remember the six million Jewish men, women and children who were assassinated during the Second World War and, also, to renew the commitment of the Canarian institutions with the defence of human rights. Matos explains that the Parliament of the Canary Islands is in contact with those responsible for the Mauthausen Memorial to proceed with the placement of this plaque in the second quarter of this year. The established figure of 45 Canary Islanders is verified, as confirmed by the official archive of the Mauthausen Memorial and is thus collected in the work '186 steps, in memory of the Canarians of Mauthausen, 1945-2021’, by La Palma writer and journalist Eduardo Cabrera. All the victims were men.
“The only crime of these 45 Canarians, from five of the eight islands of the archipelago, was their defence of freedom, democratic values and justice. It is necessary to keep the memory of these people alive, whose history is still quite unknown in the Canary Islands, as paying homage to them is an act of dignity and justice”, he expresses.
Some of the Canarians in Mauthausen were recruited to fight on the Peninsula during the Civil War. Others, who were imprisoned in the Canary Islands, were exchanged for other prisoners from the Peninsula and, at the end of the Civil War, were forced to flee to France, where some continued to be imprisoned and others joined the resistance. Captured by the Nazis after the invasion of France, they were sent to the concentration and extermination camp.
