Testimony taken from concentration camps: Gregorio Nacianceno Mata´s memoirs in dialogue with testimonial tradition

Abstract

This work is the first approach to the memoirs of Gregorio Nacianceno Mata Rodríguez, survivor of the Nazi camp in Mauthausen, from the perspective of testimonial literature, whose text, written in 1971, was published in 2006 after the death of its author under the title Nacianceno Mata, un canario en Mauthausen. Memorias de un superviviente del holocausto nazi. In order to study this work, first of all, it is placed in the context of the Spanish republican exile and in the tradition of testimonial literature produced by the Spanish prisoners at Mauthausen. Secondly, the thematic, formal and pragmatic features of Mata´s text are analyzed and the relevance of the context of his writing is addressed. Finally, it reflects on the construction of social memories through the recovery of the testimonies of witnesses who returned to the concentration camp over the years to continue remembering what happened and the victims and, in this way, present a form of resistance in a world threatened by the repetition of history.