Spokesman of Spanish Nazi camp victims admits he was never imprisoned

The head of a group of Spanish World War II concentration camp survivors has admitted after decades that he faked his story, saying he was never in any Nazi concentration camp. Enric Marco, 84, was removed from his post as president of the Barcelona-based "Amical Mauthausen" support group this week after admitting he had never been in Mauthausen's Flossenbürg camp. Marco claimed he had suffered the horror of the Nazi camps in hundreds of interviews and lectures given over the years and even in a 1978 book titled "Memoria del Infierno" (Memory of Hell). Suspicion was raised at a group meeting on 1 May following rumors that a local historian was claiming Marco's story was incorrect. Marco now admits that rather than being deported from Spain, he had left for Germany as part of a Spanish workers' group in 1941. He said he returned to Spain in 1943, well before the liberation for the camps in 1945. About 6,000 Spanish enemies of dictator Franco were imprisoned in Nazi camps. Speaking to news agency EFE, he said he "never lied out of malice", adding: "I thought that people would pay more attention to me and I could better spread the word of the suffering of the many people who were in the concentration camps," he said.