Spanish fighter and photographer Mateo Baca is imprisoned in the Mauthausen concentration camp in Austria, 1944. He is ordered to process images of the camp and inmates for photo books being made for top Nazi figures. Just five books in total, but Mateo manages to make a secret sixth book. With the help of a local woman, Lena Lang, it remains hidden until the end of the war.
Seventy-five years later, 13-year-old Hannah Campbell’s Yugoslavian grandfather, Nico Antonov, arrives in Australia to visit his family. Nico brings with him an intriguing-looking parcel wrapped in a flour sack as a gift. Roza, Hannah’s mother, quickly hides the gift. Later, Hannah sneaks off in search for the mysterious package. She is horrified to find a photo book full of ghastly historical photographs of a terrible place of people suffering. At first Hannah has little context for what she sees. But over the years, she experiences love, grief and trauma. As a result, Hannah comes to understand what these photos mean, for herself, her freedom and for those who risked their lives to ‘bear witness’ to history.
In this episode Gregory Dobbs chats to Kirsty Manning about the role of the Mauthausen concentration camp in the Nazi regime’s grand plan. Kirsty explains the way her research leads her to distil real people into fascinating characters, and how the the trauma of war filters down through generations.
