| Spanish Republicans Interned in Lancashire |
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| Spaniards, first to fight fascism, wait for freedom |
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| Adlington Internment Camp |
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(Continued from the left-hand column). "catch" in the net of the conquering Allied forces was too diverse for any chances to be taken. Together with confirmed Nazis, with Poles im-pressed into theGer- man Army, with friend and foe mixed inextricably in the wrong camp, these long-suffering Span- iards were brought to Britain. They did not want to come here. Ultimat- ely, they want to go home, to a free and emocratic Spain. Pending this, they would like to return to France, al least, where some of them married and raised families before the holocaust of the war submerged them in an amorphous mass of tragically "displaced persons." However, Allied, particularly British, sympathies are with them. The barbed wire has disappeared from the camps. They are allowed to earn a living on the nearby farms where they work. Provision has been made for cultural recreation-- concerts, for instance, are given in Chorley. The Spanish Republicans are at least enjoying the goodwill, the sym- pathy and the assistance of thou- sands of well-wish- ers, and the stigma of the "prisoner" label has been removed from them. From what I hear they will be on their way soon--to liberty in Britain, to their families in France and--if international portents are not deceptive--to a free Spain from which the dictator they fought nearly ten years ago will have been evicted. (This article has been taken from the ILLUSTRATED, October 27, 1945). |
Clement Attlee was prime-minister of the Labour Party. The Labour Party was in power at the time of many Spanish Republican internees seeked their liberty. |
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| A record of betrayal! |
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| Coat of Arms, representing five Spanish provinces, adorns the entrance to the camp at Chorley, where Spanish Republicans are held pending decision on their repatriation to their country, or dispatch to France where many have friends, relatives and families. |
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| The men who first fought Hitler and Mussolini in Europe with weapons in their hands are still virtually leading the lives of prisoners of war--in Britain. They are the Spanish Republicans who are held in Adlington Camp, near Chorley, Lancashire. But they have found powerful champions of their cause; conditions under which they live have improved vastly and the day of their complete liberation is near. There are nearly two hundred and fifty of them, a fine body of men. "We have," they say, "lived in concentra- tion camps all over Europe ever since we fought Franco; we helped to defeat Hitler by sabotaging Germany's war effort; nearly all our bodies bear the marks of Nazi brutality!" Theirs is a grim story. These colourful people took up arms in Madrid, in Toledo, in Bacelona, all over Spain, when Franco with his Moors invaded their country from Africa, equipped with Italian tanks and Nazi dive-bombers, to impose his regime on Spain. The Spanish Repub- licans fought and lost, and tens of thousands of them escaped im- prisonment or execu- tion by fleeing across the Pyrenees into France--only to find themselves in concen- tration camps where thousands died of neg- lected wounds and stavation. When war broke out and France herself was over-run by the Wehrmacht which had practised war on there Spanish exiles, thousands of them were handed over to Germany by the Vicy Governement; others joined the Maquis and played a great part in the liberation of France. Their fight in Southern France is a glorious chapter in the war's history. But those in Vichy and German hands soon found themselves pressed into various Nazi organisations; many were forced to work for the Nazi "Todt" Labour Corps. The crazy confusion of this ideological war now ranged these first and fiercest anti-Fascists at the side of the hated Wehrmacht. And their ordeal was by no means ended. With the Allied invasion of France and victory in the West, some of the Spanish Repub- licans, ex-inmates of French and German concentration camps, found themselves prisoners of--the British. "Are we on the right side at last?" they asked them- selves; but the (continued on the next column). |
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| Frencisco Garcia, twenty-eight, comes from Santander; a hero of the Spanish struggle. |
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| Jose Rovira worked in the Maginot Line joined the Free French, was taken by the Nazis. |
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| Pedro Cuadrado, twenty-four years old Barcelona man who fought in Civil War. |
| Jose Aledo, captain in the Republican Army, fought on Andalusian front, joined French. |
| Esteban Tresfi, veteran of the Civil War was in many grim concentration camps. |
| Making Shoes from rope is one of useful pastimes of Spanish internees at Chorley camp. |
| Juan Taule lived in Lancashire. He was a forced slave labour in the Channel Islands, sent by the Nazis invanders of France during World War II. Sadley Juan died recently. He is survived by his Wife and daughther Juanita. |
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| Another Chorley internee, Pedro Gauso, eight years' suffering written on his face, still retains confidence, hopes to be repatriated as soon as Franco, against whom he fought, is evicted from Spain. |
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