Ester Borrás, José 1913-1980

On October 26, 1913, José Ester Borrás was born in Berga (province of Barcelona, Spain). He was active in the Federación Ibérica de Juventudes Libertarias and Confederación Nacional del Trabajo, fought in the famous Colonna Tierra y Libertad during the Spanish Civil War, was arrested by the communists for allegedly shooting a political commissar and was held in prison until the final defeat by Franco He fled to France where he took part in the escape and evasion network led by anarcho-syndicalist Francisco Ponzán Vidal. Estar was arrested and deported to the concentration camp Mauthausen where he was part of the committee that planned prisoner revolts that sucessfully self-liberated the camp prior to the arrival of the US Third Army in 1945.

Ester returned to France in 1945 and founded FEDIP (Federación Española de Deportados e Internados Políticos). Ester and FEDIP campaigned for political prisoners in Franco's Spain, but also for the Spanish antifascists who were deported to labour camps in the Soviet Union after the Civil War. These prisoners were released only in 1956. Ester remained active until well into the 1970s, and died in 1980.

His personal papers and the archives of FEDIP are stored in The International Institute of Social History. Anarchists in Ester's hometown of Berga founded the Centre d’Estudis Josep Ester Borràs in 1986