From the beginning of his rule in 1936 until the end of World War II, the Spanish dictator Francisco Franco’s sympathies unquestionably lay with Adolf Hitler and Benito Mussolini, yet he assiduously maintained Spain’s neutrality during the war. A number of Jews, moreover, found refuge from the Nazis in Spanish territory, and as many as 35,000 crossed through Spain on their way to safety. As a result of these facts, he has developed a reputation as a vaguely benevolent figure in Jewish history. A new book by Paul Preston tells a very different story. Robert Philpot writes:
Despite the fact that Spain’s Jewish population numbered no more than 6,000 in 1936, the fiction that the country’s Catholic civilization was under assault from a conspiracy, directed by Jews and carried out by Communists and Freemasons, was the central justification for the Civil War that Franco prosecuted [in the 1930s].
As he slaughtered his way to victory, Franco repeatedly assailed the Jews. The crimes of the “red hordes,” he declared, were inspired by “the limitless cruelty of an accursed race.” Spain had been torn apart by “Judaizing freemasonry.” And, as he finally took Madrid in May 1939, he spoke of the need to “extinguish . . . the Jewish spirit that facilitated the alliance of big capital with Marxism.”
The new regime’s racial policy was clear from the outset: Jews (with the exception of those who had proved their “loyalty to the Movimiento Nacional”) and those who had a “marked Jewish character” were to be barred from entering Spain; the identity papers and residence permits of Jews were stamped with the word “Judío” in red ink; and, as late as 1957, police personal dossiers were referring to individuals as dangerous because of their “Israelite origins.”
Jews who arrived illegally [during the war years] and didn’t have onward visas were detained in squalid camps such as Miranda de Ebro. Others were turned back at the border. And Franco also allowed the Nazis to seize German Jews and return them to the Third Reich.
Read more on Jewish Chronicle: https://www.thejc.com/lets-talk/all/why-cant-i-escape-my-jewish-mother-s-1LJ3lHdUm32Gs9vlYvVCvT