Spain probes deaths of thousands of Spaniards in Nazi camps

Germans sign the act of unconditional surrender of Nazi Germany that ends the Second World War in Europe, at the Allied headquarters in Reims, eastern France, on May 7, 1945. (File/AFP)

• Thousands of Spaniards fled to France after Franco’s Fascist-backed nationalists overthrew a republic in the 1936-1939 civil war
• They found themselves under Nazi occupation in France from 1940

MADRID: Spanish prosecutors on Monday said they were investigating whether General Francisco Franco’s dictatorship collaborated with Nazi Germany during World War II to send thousands of exiled Spaniards in France to death camps.

Thousands of Spaniards fled to France after Franco’s Fascist-backed nationalists overthrew a republic in the 1936-1939 civil war, only to find themselves under Nazi occupation in France from 1940.

The investigation will “clarify the relevant responsibilities and the existence of a possible joint strategy” between Franco’s dictatorship and Nazi Germany “in the detention and subsequent transfer of thousands of Spaniards exiled in France to different extermination camps,” the public prosecutor’s office said.

The Mauthausen camp in Austria was among the sites where the republican exiles “were subjected to forced labor, torture, disappearance and murder,” the prosecutor’s office added.

The human rights and democratic memory section of the office will lead the inquiry into the 4,435 recorded dead.

The prosecutors’ office said the probe coincided with the 80th anniversary of the liberation of Mauthausen and was launched in accordance with a divisive 2022 democratic memory law.

The left-wing government passed the legislation in a bid to tackle the legacy of the civil war and honor victims of violence and persecution under Franco, who ruled with an iron fist until his death in 1975.

The right-wing opposition says the left is trying to reopen the wounds of the past with the law and has vowed to repeal it if they return to power.