Documentaries
History
WWII
Did Franco save the Jews?
Following the expulsion of the Jews from Spain in 1492, several Sephardic Jewish communities (´Sephardic´ meaning of Spanish origin) developed in the Balkans and around the Mediterranean. These communities were rediscovered at the beginning of the 20th century and the Spanish Republic gave them Spanish nationality, in the hope of gaining a degree of influence in these regions. With the onset of the Second World War, these Jews sometimes took advantage of their Spanish status to escape police and the extermination policy being carried out by the Nazis. Our film is concerned with three specific cases – France, Greece and Hungary, countries in which Spanish diplomats would sometimes allow Jews to be repatriated to Spain, thus escaping deportation. But these life-saving expeditions seem to be more individual acts than a general line taken by Franco, whose decisions evolved particularly depending on the way the war was going. In the years after 1945, he attempted to use these historical facts to gain readmission to the international community. Via its use of both eye-witness and historical accounts, and archive footage about the war, the ghettos, and the deportation of the communities under discussion, our film not only attempts to answer the question it asks, but above all to shed light on little-known facts, and offer food for thought concerning the individual reactions of diplomats & in this case Spanish diplomats – with regard to the choices made by a most ambiguous regime.