CHIA Seminar: Sara J Brenneis

A research seminar paper by Sara J Brenneis (Amherst College).

‘The Liberation of Mauthausen: Memories of the Spanish Antifascists.’

Spanish antifascists who were deported as political prisoners to Nazi concentration camps during World War II landed disproportionately at Mauthausen, in Austria. On May 5, 1945, Mauthausen was liberated by the 11th Armored Division of the US Army. The photographs, testimonies and archival documents that tell the story of this day demonstrate the impact of the Spaniards’ years-long antifascist resistance on the American troops. This presentation will focus on how the Spaniards remember liberation as a facet of the enduring legacy of the Spanish victims and survivors of Mauthausen.

About the speaker

Sara J. Brenneis is a Professor of Spanish at Amherst College in Massachusetts, where she has been a faculty member since 2007.

She is the author of ‘Genre Fusion: A New Approach to History, Fiction and Memory in Contemporary Spain’ (Purdue University Press, 2014), ‘Spaniards in Mauthausen: Representations of a Nazi Concentration Camp,' 1940-2015 (University of Toronto Press, 2018), translated as ‘Españoles en Mauthausen. Representaciones de un campo de concentración nazi’ (1940-2018) (Marcial Pons Historia, 2024) and ‘Yo he estado en Mauthausen por Carlos Rodríguez del Risco: Edición Crítica’ (University of Cádiz, 2024).

She is also the co-editor of ‘Spain, the Second World War, and the Holocaust: History and Representation’ (University of Toronto, 2020).

In 2015, she was awarded a National Endowment for the Humanities fellowship to support her research.

How to attend

Join online via the Zoom link.

Meeting ID: 875 1000 6101
Passcode: dK1@q%

Alternatively, email p.p.anderson@leeds.ac.uk to join.

CHIA

This event is part of a programme offered by CHIA, the Centre for the History of Ibero-America. Find out more about CHIA’s activities on the Centre’s homepage.