Franco, an accomplice to the Holocaust

Eduardo Martín de Pozuelo is a renowned journalist. He received the Ortega y Gasset Award in 1985, the Ojo Crítico Award in 1989, the 2000 Human Rights Award and the International King of Spain Award to Journalism in 2005. After extensive documentary work, he has published “The Franco regime, an accomplice to the Holocaust” (La Vanguardia Ediciones, 2012). The work concludes that Spanish dictator Franco was complicit in the butchery at the extermination camps. The author has analysed declassified files to show that the Spanish regime allowed the killing of thousands of Jews by preventing their taking refuge in Spain. Document after document reveals in the book that the few times that the Franco government provided succour to Jews, it was for propaganda purposes, or simply because it was not of their own will. Not only that but it also shows that they omit to help Jews that the Nazis left in their hands. Franco also seized the assets of deportees that were considered Spanish only when they could demand their money and property.

The author also shows that individual Franco supporters did help those persecuted. He thus explains the cases of Angel Sant Briz (of the Spanish delegation in Budapest) and Julio Palencia (in Sofia), who sent messages to the Franco government to denounce "such cruel persecution" suffered by the Jews. Franco ignored them. The second part of the book shows the support Franco received in his coup in 1936 from Nazi Germany. There are also examples of Nazi control over the Spanish press.

The author is clear: "Franco could have prevented the deaths of tens of thousands of people." He did not. "The lies of Franco's propaganda, deliberate concealment, destruction of documents, and an embarrassing historical short-sightedness maintained for years does not change the fact that those few thousand people saved by the Spanish was through personal intervention of a group of diplomats who did not obey orders." Among the documents he publishes are reports from the German Ambassador Eberhard von Stöhr who congratulates the Franco regime on their treatment of Jews. Finally, he discovers the orders of August 10, 1943, when the course of the war was changing, to begin spreading the message that would thenceforth be the official position: "Spain, imbued with its universal Christian spirit of love for all races of the Earth, contributes to the rescue of Jews" (offered to the UN in 1949).

And finally, a reminder of two facts:

-  Franco appointed the current Spanish head of state, King Juan Carlos I.

-  The governing Popular Party was founded by seven former ministers of Franco and it has always refused to condemn Franco's fascist dictatorship.