The dead live on in memory of the living. Memory, which is a power of the soul, makes us human close to the gods because, thanks to her, bring back to life those who are not. It's a vicarious life, a life in memory of others and still highly regarded by humans. For reasons that I have very clear we like to know that we remember.
memory feeds on memories. If I know I had a grandfather who only know the name will be impossible to save memory of him and if I remember him, do it live again, I can not. The report seeks to hold onto memories. That is the ultimate reason that motivates those who work for what has been called the historical memory in Spain, for those looking for the remains of their ancestors buried in the gutter and those who assist them. Try to get some memories of relatives who disappeared seventy years ago, leaving a gap in the memory of their relatives, friends, neighbors. It's what you do not want to understand those who oppose the effectiveness of the Law of Historical Memory, this is the addition of a multiplicity of individual memories, struggling to survive.
historical memory has been serving as affecting the English killed by Franco in the war and early postwar years. From this book ( Joaquim Pisa (2011) A castle in the mist Sariñena editorial, Sariñena, Salvador Trallero, 172 pp) will to extend this approach. Certainly the book is a gem editorial is published in landscape format, in hardcover, with glossy paper, typography carefully and abundance of illustrations. No wonder that the Aragonese government has awarded the editor.
Returning to content. Criteria should be expanded to include the English Dead, or also killed in the Nazi death camps because, as rightly points Pisa, the dictatorship of Franco withdrew their nationality, which the Nazis treated as stateless deported at will. Therefore are as much victims of the Nazis and Franco. For some time the Germans have paid the appropriate compensation. Not so probably because the English government does not accept direct responsibility for Franco in the fact that, however, there is. In Franco's case had claimed the Germans they had just given so that its fate would not have been much better, but that does not absolve the English state inherited responsibility for those crimes.
Being victims of the Nazis, most of which are carefully identified with Teutonic efficiency, including the date of its execution. Almost all of them. Sometimes in some missing data. This is the case that recreates a history book, pulling it out of nowhere, the night and fog (Nacht und Nebel ) that the Nazis had sunk, the history of facet Albalá Mariano, a farmer Lanaja, village of Huesca. Pisa was the same who, surfing the net, gave the name among those deported to German camps Huesca and realized it was a distant relative of his, something like an uncle. Investigated and learned that his family had lost their trail when young Mariano moved to Barcelona around 1909 and only knew who had died in Mauthausen because he was told in the fifties, which began the process to get the repairs that were provided be very modest. Mariano
But nothing was known facet. The author set out to investigate his life and death and after a more than creditable effort that qualifies as a historian of great ability, got enough data to prove or conjecture convincingly (by questioning relatives and friends and searching files and files) a life adventure that begins in the CNT in Barcelona following the tragic week between the association and the gangsterism of the employers, with the ineffable Martínez Anido, the law of leak of military governor. Follow the adventure in the civil war in a cavalry section of a column of POUM, which means that the events of May 1937 left the demobilized. Pass the French border in February 1939, goes to the internment camp Saint Cyprien, guarded by Senegalese and then joins a company of Foreign Workers. When the Germans reach Dunkirk Mariano facet found with weapons in hand. From there, Mariano goes through a couple of Stalags (Stamm lagern ), which are centers of allocation of prisoners of war, in Lower Silesia and Trier (Trier). January 21, 1941 a German convoy moved many prisoners from Trier, including 75 English Republicans ( Rotspanier , "English Reds"), to Mauthausen. A few months later, Mariano facet is gassed at Hartheim Castle, the cover of the book. Pisa
this life fits well told in the appropriate contexts: Barcelona anarchism, civil war, conflict CNT / POUM with the authorities and the PCE, the French camps, the status of political refugees, the German camps. And it does so knowingly. For example, underlines the fact that the concentration camps, in fact, worked for large German companies and, in moving the war to the arms. 
but also draws the inhuman conditions in these establishments, as the death camps. In Mauthausen special stop at the famous "ladder of death" ( Todesstiege ) that the prisoners had to climb, as shown in the picture with backpacks loaded with stones, eleven hours a day, make time to do.
Pisa begins his book by referring to another of Juan Pérez de la Riva, For the history of the people without history thus highlights the need to change the historian's point of view regarding the subject of history. It has come to mind a passage from Bertolt Brecht, I am not able to locate (I think it's Business Mr. Julius Caesar, but not sure) that says more or less the same, that the pyramid Cheops Cheops but not raised tens of thousands of people who are the protagonists of the story. Anonymous people to their destinations at times cruel, like Mariano Veneer Albalá whose name is engraved on the memorial of Hartheim although, strangely, no date of execution. Pisa
his book ends with a reflection on Arendt's concept of the banality of evil about Eichmann and highlights the apparent (only apparent) contradiction that seems to exist between the magnitude of evil and indifferent bureaucratic efficiency with which runs. But sometimes that efficiency fails: not record the date of the murder of Maria Carillo, neglect a note of melancholy in the course of a terrible story very well told.
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