Closure: Spanish Nazi concentration camp victims identified, 80 years on
Saturday, August 10, 2019 @ 9:29 PM
SPAIN'S Law of Historic Memory seeks to revive and commemorate the lives and times of those who perished under régimes of extreme violence, cruelty and fascist beliefs - and the latest move in line with this legislation dating from 2007 has been to name all Spaniards who died in Nazi concentration camps.
Even though Spain was not actively involved as a country in World War II, which started in the same year as the bloodthirsty Civil War came to an end, its dictatorial leader General Francisco Franco was an ally of Adolf Hitler's Nazi Germany and of Mussolini's Fascist Italy, and conditions for the vast majority in Spain in the post-war years were intolerable: those who opposed Franco's régime could mysteriously 'disappear', and poverty and unemployment were rife.
Many fled over the border to France, to escape the dictatorship, to find work, or both, and were frequently rounded up and sent to horror camps such as Mauthausen and Dachau.
Although thousands survived – including Neus Català, from Tarragona, who passed away recently aged 103, and the father of Paquita Jourdà, who has just been reunited with the childhood photograph of her which was confiscated from her dad when he was captured - an estimated 5,000-plus did not make it out of the labour camps alive.
This weekend, the State Official Bulletin (BOE), a daily government announcement publication, has printed a list of 4,427 names of Spaniards known to have lost their lives in Nazi concentration camps.
Read more at thinkSPAIN.com