Spanish Diplomats in the Face of the Holocaust

Abstract

The article aims at presenting both the activities of Spanish diplomats on behalf of Jews, especially Sephardic, in some countries occupied by Germans during the Second World War, and the recent debate on the merits of these activities. The question is if the Spanish diplomats serving in France, Greece, Rumania, Bulgaria and Hungary helped Jews following Spanish official policy, as some recent publications seem to suggest, or on their own initiative and their own risk. Among other examples, the case of the Duke of Parcent, Spanish representative in Warsaw, who had limited possibilities to act but testified to the extermination, is examined. His diplomatic reports and personal accounts as well as actual studies on diplomats’ commitment are used as sources. The analysis of the texts reveals that an attempt at burnishing the image of Franco’s policy towards Jews has been made and it shows that the controversy between those who consider Franco a “savior of hundreds of thousands of Jews” and those who accuse him of “complicity in the Holocaust” has not been resolved.