He lived through two wars. She was a prisoner in several Nazi camps. He passed the hundred and dedicated most of that long existence to battle against injustice and to fight so that the abuses and atrocities of the 20th century are not forgotten.
Neus Català (1915-2019) is already a legend. Carme Martà novelized her story in Un cel de plom (Amsterdam) – Cenizas en el cielo, in the Spanish version edited by Roca) and now Miquel Romans has brought it to the cinema in a film with the same title and with Nausicaa BonnÃn as the protagonist, which competes in the official section of the BCN Film Fest.
It all starts in 1945, when Neus Català returns to his parents’ house in the French campaign. The family had fled Spain after the Civil War and settled in France. The ex-prisoner still wears the striped uniform of the camp and, while adapting to life in freedom, she remembers her arrest, participation in the activities of the Resistance, the separation from her husband and the stay in the camp of work in Flossenbürg, where, with other detainees, she was in charge of manufacturing and sabotaging Nazi weapons.
“I knew the history of Català , but I hadn’t delved into it, so when I read MartÃ’s book I was very shocked and understood that there was a possible film there”, explains Romans to La Vanguardia. The director, who had already shot advertising and some documentaries, acquired the rights to the novel and then consulted other sources to write the script, which he signed alongside Lydia Zimmermann. Martà advised them during the writing process.
After being denounced by the pharmacist in the town where she lived, Català was imprisoned in the Ravensbrück camp, where she stayed for a few months. She was later transferred to “the armaments factory in Flossenbürg, where she spent two years”. Romans has focused the film on that period “because it was the most unknown and at the same time the most important, since Neus was the one who organized the sabotage”.
Unlike Ravensbrück, Flossenbürg “was not an extermination camp, but a labor camp where the healthiest and strongest female prisoners were sent, so to speak, it was a slightly kinder place, the first thing that surprised the Neus and her companions were given hot soup when they got there.”
But the stay in that place was hard, just like the youth of Català , whose husband died on the same day of liberation. She dedicated the rest of her life to “preventing the horror of Nazism from being forgotten and the aim of the film is to pass on her legacy as a symbol of many other women who have fought for its memory”. says Romans
And he adds that “Neus Català was photographed when he returned from the war in a prisoner’s uniform.” Many people covered up what had happened in the Nazi camps, but she made the opposite gesture, which in the long run has become a fundamental act of historical memory, in a very clear message: ‘One day I was a prisoner and that I will never forget it'”, concludes Romans.
