THE VOIDS OF SEPHARAD: THE MEMORY OF THE HOLOCAUST IN SPAIN

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Notes

1. The Jewish population in Spain is very small at this time. According to Haim Avni (1982), the population did not exceed 6000 in 1936. The civil war and fluctuations in the refugee population made estimations difficult after this date.

2. The historical reality is notably different. Franco's government acted in accordance with reasons of state that called for minimal involvement in the rescue of the Jews at a time when this was most urgent (from 1942 to the end of 1944). Official instructions to diplomats encouraged passivity, imposed limitations on the beneficiaries of Spanish nationality, and provided dilatory measures for repatriations. Scholars who have approached this period in the last two decades agree on the fact that those who were protected and saved from deportation and probable extermination owe their existence to the individual humanitarian initiative and determination of some Spanish diplomats who interceded on their behalf, as well as to the progress of the war. As the balance tilted increasingly in favor of an Allied victory, it became easier to convince the Spanish government to accede to repatriation of Jews with Spanish nationality (which was not repatriation, as such, but rather an operation of asylum and transit), and also to be flexible with respect to the clandestine flow of refugees across the Pyrenean border. See Rother, Avni España, Israel and Baer, and Marquina and Ospina.

3. Alvarez Chillida mentions the censorship in cinema, which involved severe criticism of Hitler's regime. He notes that the scenes of the Nazi concentration camps in the film Judgment in Nuremberg (the title in Spain turned significantly into “Vencedores o vencidos”) remained banned nearly until the end of the dictatorship.

4. The number of Jews with European origins who called Spain home was relatively tiny. Until the 1980s, the composition of this community was mainly Sephardic with Moroccan origins.

5. In my high-school textbooks on contemporary history, only a very brief mention of the “six million exterminated Jews” appeared in a section within the chapter on World War II titled “Demographic repercussions” (Fernández 370).

6. For Spanish–Israeli relations, see Lisbona. For Fifth Centenary commemorations, see Rozenberg.

7. The investigation commission was not impartial and independent. Commission members were appointed by the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs. The Eizenstat report from June 1998 explained that Germany used gold stolen from central European Banks in order to pay, through Switzerland, various neutral countries, including Spain, which had supplied raw materials to the industrial sector during the war. The fact that Spain was a convenient exit for works of art expropriated from Jews is also documented. The Federation of Jewish Communities of Spain sent a protest letter to the then Prime Minister, José María Aznar, on April 10, 2000, explaining that “we deplore the confusing result of the investigation” and that the Government Commission “has worked in a superficial way based on a previously established script” (Kehilá Community News Bulletin, May 2009 9). See also Benasuly.

8. An estimated 16 million people saw the series in Spain, and it received quite a lot of media attention. However, while in Europe the debates mainly revolved around the fact that it was an American series recounting a specifically Continental past, or whether commercial channels should handle such a weighty and complex topic as the industrial annihilation of Jews in Nazi camps, there was a specific Spanish reaction to the series. The facts encompassed by the series (the extermination of Jews) were disputed by members of the extreme right, and their defamatory and antisemitic allegations were reiterated by the mainstream media. On the other hand, a public discussion ensued that centered on the (Zionist) political exploitation of the facts. Most notable was that in a televized discussion panel on Holocaust, a former Nazi was invited to express his views, but no Jews were asked to participate. See Baer Visas.

9. The web page of the main association (The Association for the Recovery of the Historical Memory) is eloquently titled with the following question: “Why did the founding fathers of the constitution leave my grandmother in a ditch?” (“Association”). The “recovery” of the memory fundamentally entails the exhumation and identification of bodies from mass graves, as well as commemorative ceremonies, cultural initiatives, and investigations of the victims of Franco's regime.

10. In the last 15 years, many novels relating to the Holocaust have been published by Spanish authors (including Jorge Semprún, Antonio Muñoz Molina, Juana Salabert, Adolfo García Ortega), as well as translations of foreign literary works, survivors’ testimony, and historical investigations about the relationship between Franco and Nazi Germany. From the end of the 1990s, the research project “Philosophy after the Holocaust” (http://www.ifs.csic.es/holocaus.htm) co-ordinated by Prof. Manuel Reyes Mate at the Spanish Scientific Research Council (CSIC) is the main academic meeting point for the topic in Spain.

11. The international context is of great relevance in this analysis. Among the different transnational initiatives, the Task Force for International Cooperation on Holocaust Education, Remembrance and Research (ITF) has a key role. It has existed since May 1998. Spain was incorporated as a full member in 2008. Moreover, the European Parliament decided on May 16, 2000, to establish a European-wide Holocaust Memorial Day on January 27.

12. The majority of Jewish communities throughout the world hold a solemn ceremony on this day. There is not a single, institutionalized format, but the events do not vary considerably. More common elements usually incorporate lighting commemorative candles and reciting a Kadish or the Maale Rajamim—prayers for the deceased. They can also include other elements, such as talks from survivors and recitation of psalms and names of victims.

13. Program of the Central Ceremony of Holocaust Memorial Day, Yom Hashoah 5760, May 2010.

Enric Marco was again in the media spotlight after his testimony was proven to be false, and a historian verified that he had never been in a Nazi concentration camp (“El deportado”).

15. Interview with Henar Corbi, the then chief advisor to the Secretary of State for Justice and the ITF representative. He had held the position of state ceremony coordinator since 2006.

16. The work of Spanish-Jewish artists Samuel Nahón and Alberto Stisin shows a Star of David and the death trains headed for the extermination camps. It is also the symbolic link with the mythical Sepharad, which accounts for its location in the Garden of the Three Cultures in Juan Carlos I Park.

17. It is interesting to note the effects of the Holocaust memorial on social groups such as the Gypsies, who were invited to share the memory and join in the ceremony. The Spanish Gypsies’ memory of the suffering of their people at the hands of the Nazis has played a minor role in shaping their identity, and, yet, as a result of the Holocaust commemoration ceremonies, they have begun to take stock of this part of their past and to assess how the latter can be incorporated into public remembrance ceremonies. They have thus put forward the idea that the Day of the Gypsy People should not just be a cultural event. They have begun to speak of the Holocaust and the Parajimos, or Gypsy genocide.

18. Paradoxically, the boys’ choir of the Escolanía de la Abadía Benedictina de la Santa Cruz was founded in 1958, with the aim of lending solemnity to liturgical celebrations held in the Valle de los Caídos (Valley of the Fallen), the mausoleum built by Franco in the Sierra de Guadarrama, a mountain range close to Madrid.

19. Henar Corbi, interview, op. cit.

20. Particularly noteworthy in this respect is the project aimed at recovering the memory of these events, which the local government of Sort (Lerida, Cataluña) has been promoting since 2002. In 2007, Sort inaugurated “El Camí de la Llibertat” (The Path of Freedom) museum.

21. The concept of “Righteous among the nations” stands for non-Jews who risked their lives during the Holocaust to save Jews from extermination by the Nazis and originates with the concept of righteous gentiles, a term used in Judaism to refer to non-Jews who abide by the Seven Laws of Noah.

22. The original Talmud verse states: “Whoever destroys a single soul of Israel is considered as though he had destroyed a complete world; and whoever preserves a single soul of Israel, is considered as though he had preserved a complete world.”

23. Article, ‘The Holocaust Museum of Jerusalem is awarded the Premio de la Concordia,’ (a prize for promoting mutual understanding): about the Prince of Asturias Prize awarded to the Yad Vashem memorial.

24. Until November 2002, the Popular Party refused to publicly and explicitly condemn Franco's coup d’état of 1936.

25. “Sadly, the indifference toward absolute evil can live with us. Examples of this are always close at hand. We only need to think of the dreadful image of José Ortega Lara (a prison officer who was kidnapped by the terrorist organization ETA and held hostage for two years) emerging from the hole where his kidnappers had held him for over 500 days and compare it to the nonchalance and the ease of mind with which many citizens live, help and encourage those who commit such unspeakable crimes.” Speech delivered by E. Aguirre at the Madrid Parliament, January 26, 2008.

26. Speech by Elvira Rodríguez at the Madrid Assembly, January 26, 2008.

27. ¹ The journalist and writer Enric Juliana recently remarked that: “the Catholic hierarchy in Spain took great pains to ignore the self-critical assessment of the Church's role during the Shoah, which the Vatican first conducted from 1998 to 2000. While Pope John Paul II asked pardon for the faults of the past in front of the Wailing Wall in Jerusalem, Cardinal Rouco Varela (who was the head of the Catholic Church in Spain at the time) pushed for the beatification of Isabel of Castile (Isabel the Catholic) with José María Aznar's connivance.” La Vanguardia, January 10, 2009.

28. Geoffrey Hartmann uses the term “memory envy” particularly for individuals who have either weak or no memories themselves, as the “false memory” cases of Benyamin Wilkomirski or the aforementioned Enric Marco. However, memory envy is also at work because of the sense that strong memories bestow social recognition (79–80). In this respect, the term might also be used for this case.

29. “The overwhelming importance of the Jewish Holocaust (…) has often caused people to forget about the large number of people of other religions, races, and political beliefs who also died in the extermination camps” (Armengou and Belis, Las fosas 297).

30. Javier Rodrigo has stressed the need for greater accuracy in the terms used to describe the Spanish case, since Franco's aim was not so much to exterminate as to subdue and transform. Rodrigo thus believes that the term “exclusion policies” is a more appropriate one than “extermination policies.” This does not imply that he minimizes the acts of extreme violence that were conducive to such an end.

31. Both sides in the Civil War resorted to forms of extreme violence. The debate as to which side “struck first,” which side “struck back,” and which one was more systematic and cruel in its use of violence is quite common in Spanish historiography.

32. As mentioned above, it is a fact that the Holocaust, standing as it does as a symbol of radical evil and supreme infamy, is all too easily projected as a metaphor onto totally different phenomena. The crucial difference lies in the fact that the erstwhile victims (Jews) are now described as victimizers. While the opening of the Holocaust semantic serves transnationally for those with anti-Israeli sentiments to strike where it “hurts” most, namely at the country which claims to keep the flame of Holocaust remembrance alive, there is again a Spanish specificity that demands explanation.

33. See Wahnón, Sultana, “La verdad de Saramago.” Lateral, November 2002.

34. See, for example, http://www.noticias.terra.es/2008/genteycultura/0430/actualidad/la-casa-sefarad-israel-recuerda-a-los-ninos-judios-asesinados-en-el-holocausto.aspx .

35. On January 27, 2007, the municipality of Ciempozuelos (Madrid) celebrated a series of workshops under the title “Commemoration of the Palestinian Genocide.”

36. El Plural.com, January 4, 2009.

37. El Mundo, February 6, 2009. In his book on antisemitism in Spain, Gonzalo Alvarez Chillida identifies Antonio Gala as a writer belonging to the group of “progressive intellectuals” who in his novels “reflected some of the more traditional elements of anti-Semitism” (470).

38. David Gistau, El Mundo, February 8, 2009.

39. La Vanguardia, January 10, 2009. See also Baer Tranques.

40. In his New Year address of 1938, Franco justified the antisemitic actions by the Nazis. In this respect, he added: “We, who rid ourselves of such a heavy burden centuries ago, by the grace of God and thanks to the wisdom of the Catholic Kings” (qd. in Alvarez Chillida 398).

41. I thank Neal Sokol, Albert Sabanoglu, Natan Sznaider, Bernt Schnettler and Esmeralda Ballesteros for critical feedback and helpful comments. I also wish to thank the blind reviewers for their feedback and, especially, the editors of this volume (Tabea Linhard, Daniela Flesler, and Adrián Pérez Melgosa) for their comments, amendments and patience. I am grateful to Ally Luder and Pablo Sauras for translating and proofreading large sections of this article. This article is a product of the research project “Las políticas de la memoria en la España contemporánea: Análisis del impacto de las exhumaciones de fosas comunes de la Guerra Civil en los primeros años del siglo XXI” (MICINN, CSO2009-09681).