The fake concentration camp victim who actually worked for the Nazis

In the early 2000s, Catalan society was rocked by a shocking imposter story. 

Enric Marco became president of Amincal Mauthausen, the association set up to defend the rights of the 9,000 Spanish people who were sent to Nazi concentration camps, in 2003, and brought the organization to new heights with his tireless efforts, securing state grants and spreading awareness of the horrors of the concentration camps by giving countless talks in schools and institutions. 

He moved MPs in the Spanish congress to tears on Holocaust Memorial Day, January 27, 2005, with his testimony of his experiences of the Nazi brutality in the Flossenbürg concentration camp in Bavaria. 

He was due to appear alongside the then-Spanish Prime Minister, José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero, at the first time that a Spanish delegation would take part in the official events to commemorate the liberation of the Mauthausen concentration camp, where the majority of Spaniards who suffered during the Second World War were interned. 

But just days before that event was due to take place in Austria, Enric Marco was unmasked as a fraud by historian Benito Bermejo. He had never been interned in any concentration camp. 

In reality, Enric Marco had actually traveled voluntarily to Germany in 1941 to work for the German war machine in the northern city of Kiel. The move came about as part of an agreement signed between Adolf Hitler and Francisco Franco to bring Spanish labourers to German factories. 

Life of lies

Fabricating a false history of suffering Nazi persecution was not the first thing that Enric Marco had lied about. In fact, it seems Marco went through various phases in his life with different focuses for his fabricated stories. 

Spanish writer Javier Cercas spent countless hours with Marco in the process of writing his excellent book, The Imposter, which has been an invaluable resource for this report. 

After the fall of the Franco dictatorship in the 1970s, Marco began constructing a false narrative about being an accomplished fighter in the civil war. He told people that he had been promoted to higher ranks for his bravery, that he took part in the Battle of Mallorca, he claimed to be fighting in the Sant Andreu barracks on July 19, that he fought in the brigade of legendary anarchist leader Buenaventura Durruti, claimed to be part of Quico Sabaté’s infamous guerilla fighters killing Nationalists behind enemy lines, and that ultimately his involvement in the war ended when he was injured by shelling on the Segre front which left him hospitalized for months. 

Press play below to listen to our Filling the Sink podcast on Enric Marco's life of lies or subscribe on Apple Podcasts, YouTube or Spotify.

This supposed injury, which he claimed to be internal, seemingly required no surgery and left no scar. Cercas consulted doctors about the likelihood of someone surviving such a devastating injury in the 1930s, given the medical equipment and knowledge at the time, and all concluded it would be highly unlikely that the injury would have been serious enough to be hospitalized for months, but require no surgery, and for Marco to still survive it. 

Unlikely yes, but impossible no; this was the grey area in which Marco thrived. 

These embellished war stories led him to rise to prominence in the newly legalized anarchist trade union, the CNT, following the death of Franco. 

Marco happened to be the perfect intermediary age to bridge the possibly irreconcilable gap between the hardline veteran anarchists with civil war experience, most of whom had moved into exile for the dictatorship, and the pragmatic youth who had grown up during the Franco era who were much more open to the newly ushered epoch of democracy. Marco was a man without strong political ideology who managed to people-please and chameleon his way to the top, eventually being elected general secretary of the union in 1978. 

Enric Marco was able to fool the younger crowd much easier than the older veterans, many of whom harbored major doubts about his credentials. If his civil war stories were true, Marco would have been a very rare case of someone who had risen to a relatively high rank in the Republican army who chose not to move into exile following the war, and yet one who also didn't suffer any serious reprisals from the regime in the intervening years. 

He also claimed to have been involved in the clandestine anti-fascist struggle during the years of the dictatorship, refusing to accept Franco's victory, and continuing to wage war against the fascists. He said he had set up a Barcelona branch of the Unión Juventud de Antifascistas (UJA), an underground group of hardline youths who killed fascist officers after the civil war had ended. The history of the UJA lasted only some months before it was brutally crushed. Again, Marco was seemingly the only one involved who escaped punishment.  

Marco was a highly skilled storyteller. He spoke dramatically and emphatically about his supposed time in the concentration camp, embellishing his stories with a creative flourish that was irresistible to many.

He told tales of bravery and dignity in the face of utter barbarity. In one particularly mawkish reenactment of a story on Catalan public television, Marco regales about a chess match that he had with an SS officer who wanted to assert his dominance over the sub-race. Marco tells the camera that, in a few moves, he could see that he was on the verge of checkmating the Nazi soldier, and knew that by beating him, he may end up paying for it with his life. But yet, Marco decides that this is the moment in which he will take back his dignity, wins back his freedom, and beats the officer. "I had won the Battle of Stalingrad," he tells the camera, on the verge of tears at the harrowing memory.

Kernels of truth

Great lies are constructed from small truths. This is how Enric Marco was able to successfully construct his story for such a long time. 

Marco embellished his stories with elements of truth, both from things that he had read about and studied, as well as stretching and exaggerating real-life experiences he did have. 

It is true that Marco not only spent time in Germany in the early 1940s but that he even spent seven months in a Gestapo jail. 

Shortly after arriving in Kiel, he was arrested for supposedly spreading Communist propaganda, and was eventually put on trial. There is no doubt that Marco suffered during this period, but there is also no doubt that he suffered to anywhere near the extent of a concentration camp; he was being held in preventive detention. 

Yet, Marco used real places he had been and experiences he had in his stories, but exaggerated and twisted the truth into his story. This was also part of his justification after the truth was discovered: he admitted that he was an imposter yes, but not a fraud, as he had really suffered. 

It's true too that he fought in the Civil War, but almost certain that his time in battle doesn't come close to matching the stories he told decades later. He suffered no reprisals from the victorious Nationalists after the war, and several historians and journalists see major discrepancies in his stories of battles and peer-reviewed accounts. 

Marco's uncle Anastasio, with whom Marco lived during his youth, was a true anarchist in a period of history in the city when anarchism was one of the strongest ideologies among the working classes. From here, it's certain that Marco had learned about these political ideas and had some knowledge of the workings of the CNT at the time, decades before he would be named general secretary of the organization. 

Uncovering the truth

"Details of Enric Marco’s history would change every time he told it," historian Benito Bermejo tells Catalan News, describing his account of how he unmasked Enric Marco. Bermejo specialized in the subject of Spanish deportees to Nazi concentration camps, so naturally Marco's story appealed to him, and especially for the fact that Marco was becoming more and more involved in education in the early 2000s, giving talks and conferences in schools and institutions. 

At various points, Bermejo tried to organize an interview with Marco to learn about his story. After reading what he could about Marco, he found various discrepancies in the details, but he put these down to probably coming from the writer of those accounts or Marco's own hazy memory. "He told me no, I couldn’t interview him, and they way he said this was almost violent." 

The historian was also fascinated at the idea of meeting somebody who was kept in Flossenbürg camp, where it was thought that only 14 Spaniards were interned. As it turned out, Marco had deliberately chosen an obscure concentration camp, one which would have less chance of being refuted.  

Bermejo started to investigate and spoke to people who Marco crossed paths with before. Former members of the CNT told him of their doubts about Marco’s past. People involved in other associations for people deported to concentration camps didn’t know who he was. Historians at Flossenbürg itself confirmed they had no record of anyone named Enric Marco i Batlle having been there.

Then came a major turning point in the story, a document Bermejo found in the archives of the Ministry for Foreign Affairs, dated 1942. "Enric Marco was called for military service, but his family responded saying he was exempt as he was in Germany, voluntarily, on something of an official mission as part of an agreement between Franco and Hitler."

This document, though it showed that Marco had traveled to work for the German war machine voluntarily, did not definitely prove that Marco never spent any time in a concentration camp. But it did open up a major hole in the story he had always publicly told.

Bermejo found this document very shortly before Marco was due to appear at the Mauthausen commemorative events alongside then-PM Zapatero. The possibility of Marco speaking alongside such important political figures on the 60th anniversary of the liberation of the camp disturbed Bermejo, so he wrote a report on his findings which he sent to the Spanish government, Amical Mauthausen, and the Mauthausen International Committee.

After some pressing, Marco eventually admitted to the other members of the Amical Mauthausen association that he lied about being in a concentration camp. Yet, while they assumed this meant he would no longer speak at the commemorative event, it was never explicitly said, and Marco still travelled to Austria with the intention of speaking at Mauthausen. After some altercation in Austria, he eventually returned to Barcelona and did not appear at the event. 

Difficult childhood

Enric Marco was literally born in an insane asylum. His mother had been interned there and lived there for the entirety of Marco's life. She witnessed her baby being taken from her just a day or some days after giving birth to him. 

His father was not what one would describe as particularly loving. He married again, and Marco's stepmother was an abusive alcoholic. Marco has, or says he has, no recollection of ever holding his father's hand. 

Marco is a textbook narcissist. Through all his lies, the only things he gained were adulation, recognition, and respect. He never financially profited from his stories, and indeed, he did fantastic work to raise the profile of the Amical Mauthausen association thanks to his tireless efforts spreading information and awareness of one of the darkest episodes of human history. 

When considering the situation in which Marco grew up, without the love and affection of a family, it's easy to come to the conclusion -- though it must be stressed that this writer is not a psychologist -- that he did what he did because of his own difficult psychological past. He craved the attention. 

He was also likely ashamed of his past, from having actually worked in a German factory, helping the Nazi war effort, and wanted to reinvent himself through his history. 

Any justification? 

Marco always maintained that he did what he did for good reasons. After being found out, he vehemently stuck to his lines, that the world should be grateful for his storytelling ability because it was a noble lie that ultimately did good.

Besides, Marco's argument went, he never actually invented anything, he just appropriated other people's true experiences unto himself. 

When asked if he sees any value or legitimacy in his reasoning, Benito Bermejo is under no doubt: "No way. Absolutely not. I think it’s horrible."

"He’s a manipulator, he abused so many people’s trust," Bermejo explains. "To cheat people and then tell them it’s for their own good, so they would pay attention. I think that’s a perverse train of thought.

"Part of my motivation was the fact that I knew that Marco not only lied about his past, but that he also eclipsed so many people who really were in concentration camps. Some of those Spaniards who were there told me that on more than one occasion he made them shut up simply because he took the limelight because he was so much more eloquent than they were."

"If Marco really wanted to devote himself to raising awareness of history, I would have been up for that. It could have been interesting to hear about his real experiences in Germany. But no, what he did was unjustifiable."

What's more, it must be pointed out, in direct response to Marco's argument that he sustained for the last years of his life that he never invented anything, only exaggerated truths and appropriated other people's experiences - Javier Cercas traveled to Flossenbürg to compare documents.

Cercas found that the photocopy of the Flossenbürg register that Marco provided to the Amical Mauthausen as 'proof' of his internment showed a different name to the one kept in the camp, which read Enric Moné, born in Figueres. 

The only logically conclusion is that Marco doctored this photocopy, changing the name 'Moné' to 'Marco'.