Thousand got away to other countries; thousands returned to Spain tempted by false promises of kindness. By the tens of thousands, these Spaniards died of neglect in the concentration camps.
Sentiment: NEGATIVE
It is alleged that half a million Spanish men, women and children fled to France after the Franco victory.
By the breaking in of enraged merciless armies, flourishing countries have been laid waste, great numbers of people have perished in a short time, and many more have been pressed with poverty and grief.
Millions of Spaniards have Catalonia in their hearts.
They said their sufferings were great on the passage, and several of their number had died.
I saw few die of hunger; of eating, a hundred thousand.
Yet, only years after the Nazi-era, millions were sent to their deaths in places such as Cambodia, Bosnia and Rwanda, and the world once again took too long to act.
After the Spanish Civil War against Franco, a group of us got together: a group of well-to-do people who were sympathetic to the lost cause of a Republican state. We bought a convent in Toulouse and converted it into a hospital run by the Unitarians. It took care of the Spanish refugees who fled to Toulouse.
I feel horribly vindicated. Three thousand people died who didn't have to die.
And though various organizations in America and England collected money and sent food parcels to these refugees, nothing was ever received by the Spanish.
But now that the guerrilla fighting is over, the Spaniards are again men without a country or families or homes or work, though everyone appreciates very much what they did.