Francisco Boix

Who was Francisco Boix?

Francisco Boix Campo was a photographer who presented photographs that played a role in the conviction of Nazi war criminals. As a Spanish republican he was exiled in France in 1939. He was recruited by the French Foreign Legion and French Army and captured in 1940 by the Germans. Boix, like over 7000 Spaniards, was an inmate in the Mauthausen concentration camp between January 1941 and May 1945, who became known for having testified as a witness in two trials against German Nazi war criminals.

In the Nuremberg trial, Boix was called by the French prosecution to show photographs taken by the SS in Mauthausen. Those photos depicted the conditions in which the prisoners lived and were murdered in that camp. They were also a proof that the camp was known and visited by high leaders of the Third Reich, like Ernst Kaltenbrunner, who appeared visiting both the Mauthausen camp proper, and the Wienergraben quarry in and the camp in Mauthausen.

Boix was also a witness in the military American trial which took place in Dachau against 61 criminals from the German Nazi camp Mauthausen.