Francisco Boix

Vocation

Spanish 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. In the Nuremberg trial (International Military Tribunal), 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. Boix was also a witness in the military American trial which took place in Dachau against 61 criminals from the German Nazi camp Mauthausen. Between 1945 and 1951 Boix worked as a photo reporter in the French press, particularly for a newspaper associated with the French Communist Party. He died on 4 July 1951 in Paris.