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Photo: AFP
Enric Marco admitted he has been lying for 30 years
Photo: AFP

Holocaust 'survivor' admits to lie

Prominent member of the Spanish Holocaust survivors' community admits to never being imprisoned in concentration camp

Spanish Holocaust ‘survivor’ Enric Marco admitted Wednesday that he was never imprisoned in the Flossenburg concentration camp, as he had claimed for the past 30 years.

 

"I wasn't in a concentration camp," he said during an interview on Spanish television. 'I was held in captivity and the Nazis did impose penalties on me. But that does not exonerate me from being an impostor." 

 

Ironically, Marco's lie was discovered the day he was re-elected president of the Amical de Mauthausen organization, an organization named after a Nazi concentration camp where many Spanish political prisoners were held.

 

Historian Benito Bermejo discovered the lie after he noticed inconsistencies in Marco’s account of the past while researching his story.

 

"He said strange things that did not correspond to the general historic facts," Bermejo said. "For example, he said he had been arrested and handed over to the Gestapo in Marseille in 1941."

 

However, Bermejo said that during that period of time Marseille was not under occupation, and Spanish republicans were not handed over to the Germans.

 

‘A traitor’

 

According to Marco the lies began in 1978.

 

“It seemed I was getting more attention and could better publicize the suffering of the many people who passed through the concentration camps," he said.

 

However, Spanish Holocaust survivors have expressed their fury since hearing his confession.

 

Holocaust survivor Neus Catala called Marco a traitor.

 

"More than 7,000 Spaniards were sent to concentration camps, and most of them died there," she said. “It’s an insult to the memory of those killed.” 

 

Berjemo believes Marco’s lies could draw negative attention to Holocaust survivors.

 

"The danger exists that people who deny the reality of the Nazi camps…might exploit this and tell us that no testimony about the Holocaust has any value," he said.

 


פרסום ראשון: 05.12.05, 21:44
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