"Homage to freedom, democracy and those who died for it" was how Fernando Rosas, retired professor at the New University of Lisbon and founder of the Institute of Contemporary History of the same institution, described the ceremony commemorating the liberation of the Mauthausen Concentration Camp, which took place yesterday, 15 May, in Austria. Besides the historian, 19 students from class 11H of the Camilo Castelo Branco Group of Schools (AECCB) were also part of the Official Portuguese Delegation.
At the entrance of the concentration camp, the Visual Arts students held the national flag, followed by the municipal flag, which they kept present until the name of Portugal was heard over the camp's loudspeakers. At this moment, two students of the class, together with Miguel Almeida e Sousa, the Portuguese Ambassador in Vienna, and Pedro Oliveira, councillor for Culture of the Famalicão City Council, laid a wreath at the memorial in the place and paid homage to the hundreds of thousands of people who passed through Mauthausen, among them, more than a dozen Portuguese.
It should be noted that the liberation of the Mauthausen Concentration Camp, which operated between 1938 and 1945, is annually celebrated with the presence of delegations from dozens of countries inside and outside Europe, having as a reference the date when the American army liberated the forced labour camp - May 5th, 1945. At the site, there is a plaque in honour of the Portuguese victims of Nazi barbarism, placed in 2017, on the initiative of the Institute of Contemporary History of the Faculty of Social Sciences and Humanities of the New University of Lisbon and with the support of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.