As we know, thousands of English citizens went to the French border fleeing repression and death before the advance of Franco's troops ... women, children, elders and men passed the imaginary line is a boundary, believing that the other side would find support from the French authorities. Friends blunder !!!!!!!
Today I visited one such place of shame, where the heart is shrinking, where the pain has gotten hold of my feelings and curiosities of life where, exactly 72 years ago, no less than 16,000 English Republicans were landed at the Gare de Barredon "between 5 and 12 March 1939 and taken on foot (about 8-10km) Septfonds internment camp (Center for undesirable aliens )!!!!!!!!.....
Septfonds existed in an internment camp, known as "Camp de Judes" where exiled English Republicans were interned in France after the defeat of the Republic in 1939. The camp held English exiles since March 1939. Started the Second World War, most of the English Republicans were integrated into the companies of Foreign Workers, being placed in this field other groups, such as Austrian and German subjects. In 1941, under the Vichy regime, picking up Allied officers who had tried to leave France. Since 1942, people of Jewish origin who had been interned in Septfonds were handed over to the Germans for deportation to extermination camps in territories controlled by the Third Reich. Today
did the whole journey from the Gare de Barredon, till plains, where there was the Camp de Judes, where countless monuments remind us of the terror and suffering past there, where to introduce in a hut, with photos, letters, stories written in first person, one can not repress suffer for an act so unjust as that (were moments similar to those that lived in Auschwitz ).......... why we must fight for Historical Memory, by the smiles that were turned off, and if something like this not ever happen again! Fight and fulfill the words Allende said: "Sooner or later it will open the great promenades down which free men will walk"
Our journey has ended in the "Cemetière des Espagnols, where 81 Republicans are buried who died during their internment in that country where life ..... some went out and Rafael Alberti where the honors with his words:
ARE NOT DEATH, ARE NEW YOUTH .....
In April 1931 Spain Became a republic. In the short 8 years of STI Existence, the English people enjoy Could Their completly secular workerclass friendly state with a low rich in civil liberties and public nationalize services.But with the freedom Did not last long and the English Liberty ended up with the Outbreak of the English Civil War (Against the gene. rebells Franco's military) in 1936 and the Second English Republic finally disappeared 1 of april 1939.
Francos enthusiats haunted and repressed the spanish Republicans- both during and after the war. Most of them had to escape to other european countries-most of them found their shelter in France in the region of Midi-Pyrenees (in cities like Toulouse, Montauban)
The Nationalists wanted to eradicate any trace of leftism in Spain. During the war and after it they persecuted and massive- killed Republican sympathisers. They commited massacres on civilians (like fx in Seville where they killed 10000 people or Granada where they shot 8000). About 55000 people died from the hands of the spanish Nationalists.
This sunday Hector and me visited Septfonds- a small town close to Montauban. There, since march 1939 was situated an internment camp for the spanish Republicans (16000 persons). The camp was called Judas Camp. After beginning of WW2 the camp has been renamed to an labor camp and german and austrian prisoners joined the internees. Apart from 1941 with the french Vichy- government permission also allied soldiers, who tried to escape from France, got imprisoned in Camp Judas. Most of these allied soldiers were polish aviators, but unlike my grandfather (who succided in escaping from Vichy France to UK where he joined the Polish Army in exile) they were not lucky enough to escape. In 1942 also jews became prisoners of Camp Judas.
Szorcik on Sundays visited Septfonds-camp internment camp work and also known as Judas. Initially it was a camp for the English Republican interned by Franco's nationalists after English Civil War . Next to the internment dolaczyliwiezniowie from Germany and Austria, then trying to escape from the Allies-France, including in particular the Polish airmen and after 1942 also the local Jews.
VOSOTROS NO CAÍSTEIS Dead sun, cold, rain, frost,
with large holes opened artillery
or on the grass, that's pure and thin
to the sound of your blood, it becomes melody!
Planting young bodies as necessarily
uprooted the sad lump that give birth,
again and so soon and so naturally
seed furrows opened the war years.
You hear your birth, your slow fatigue, your
pull back under the cover is
land that give you the shape of an ear
felt in his youth finest wheat future.
Who said you're dead? You hear the whistle
that opens the path of the bullets dizzying
a rumor, which is already singing glory newborn
away from funerals picks and shovels.
And the living brothers, they are never forgotten. Sing
longer with us, with our crowds
free into the wind, the sea, to life.
You are not the death, you are the new youth.
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