Spain and the Holocaust

Francoist Spain remained officially neutral during World War II but maintained close political and economic ties to Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy throughout the period of the Holocaust.

In the post-war years, the Franco regime cultivated the idea that it had acted to protect Jews across Europe as a means to improve diplomatic relations with the former Allied powers.

[1] Franco ensured that Spain was neutral at the start of World War II but seriously contemplated joining the conflict as a German ally in the aftermath of the Fall of France in 1940.

[3][4] The Franco regime was informed of atrocities on the Eastern Front by Spanish volunteers from the Blue Division, which fought as part of the German Army, who "observed the numerous murders of Jews and Polish and Russian civilians".

While, on the one hand, the Spanish regime, as always inconsistently, issued instructions to its representatives to try to prevent the deportation of Jews, on the other, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Madrid allowed the Nazis and Vichy puppet government to apply anti-Jewish regulations to people whom Spain should have protected".

He was married to a Jewish woman and apparently made the decision on his own initiative on the grounds that the Spanish Embassy should not be seen to be less generous than the local Portuguese consulate where Aristides de Sousa Mendes was issuing thousands of visas.

It is not known exactly how many individuals received these documents and official records were destroyed by the Franco regime at the time in an apparent attempt to cover up his actions; not all the recipients were Jews.

After he was ordered to withdraw from the country ahead of the Red Army's advance, he encouraged Giorgio Perlasca, an Italian businessman, to pose as the Spanish consul-general and continue his activities.

José Félix de Lequerica y Erquiza became Foreign Minister in 1944 and soon developed an "obsession" with the importance of the "Jewish card" in relations with the former Allied powers.