Eyewitnesses or bystanders? The Spanish Blue Division and the Holocaust of European Jewry: between History and Memory

Abstract

In the historiographic debate on the nature of Francoist antisemitism, and the role played by Franco Spain as protector of Jews during World War II, very scarce attention has been paid to the most visible link between the Holocaust and Spanish participation in the extermination war carried out by Nazi Germany against the Soviet Unión. The «Blue División» brought several thousands of Spanish soldiers to confront their own stereotypes on the Jews with real Jews who were subject to the discrimination measueres implemented by the Nazis in occupied Eastern Europe. The Spaniards faced the first consequences of the Nazi persecution of Jews between August and October 1941, as the volunteers marched from Suwalkti to Vitebsk, going through cities with relevant percentages of Jewish population, such as Grodno and Vilnius. Spanish military hospitals in the rear were also located in Vilnius and Riga, cities where important Jewish ghettos were set up, and hundreds of Spanish sodiers experienced contact with Jews in these cities. Letters and war diaries by members of the Blue Division also reflect that reality. However, after 1945 the war veterans were forced to reshape their experiences, and their memoirs are characterized by the search of a difficult balance between the necessity of taking distance from what they had seen, and their sentiment of loyalty towards their former German comrades in arms.