Neus Català, who has died aged 103, was a lifelong fighter against fascism. A communist who had escaped over the Pyrenees at the end of the Spanish civil war, then joined the French resistance, she was eventually captured and sent to Ravensbrück, the Nazi death camp for women in northern Germany. She was then moved to the Flossenbürg camp, where she was set to work in the Holleschein munitions factory. Català was one of a group of women who sabotaged the bombs and shells being manufactured, by spitting in gunpowder or spilling oil in the machinery.
Her memories of the extermination camp, she said, were always in black and white, never in colour. She survived because of her determination and because “there was great solidarity among the women”. Català was critically ill when the camp was liberated in April 1945 (“We were just skulls with eyes”), but she recovered to continue her fight against fascism.
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