Angel Sanz Briz memorial, Budapest

The Francoist regime’s record regarding the Holocaust can be placed somewhere on the continuum between the actions of the Nazis and their allies at one end and the passivity of the democracies on the other. Franco’s Spain admitted some 15,000 Jews, but almost all of them were given only 5 days to transit and leave the country. Until mid-1940, those legally admitted had to show the following documents: a valid passport, an exit visa from France, entrance and transit visas for Spain, and tickets to embark on ships from Spanish or Portuguese ports. 

This changed for the worse with the defeat of France in June. The Vichy regime refused to allow the refugees across its border with Spain. For its part, the Spanish police adopted a harsher attitude, pushing away more people than before, who also now had more trouble obtaining all the necessary documents to satisfy the legal requirements for entry into Spain. If rejected by the Spanish authorities, the refugees would end up in the hands of the Vichy police or the Nazis. From that moment on, the number of illegal crossings went up. Most of the people who crossed illegally were captured before they could reach Portugal. When this happened, they started a journey of suffering through different detention centers.

In this dark story there were a few good men and women who, in spite of representing the fascist Spanish state, managed to help nearly 8,000 Jews. They did so by going against orders from Madrid and using their limited authority to manipulate the perpetrators. First, though, they attempted to register their concern by conveying to their bosses the dimensions of the unfolding human catastrophe and the need to intervene. Miguel Ángel de Muguiro, Spain’s ambassador in Budapest, sent more than twenty communiqués to his superiors denouncing the decrees against the Hungarian Jews. 

In June 1944, his replacement, Ángel Sanz Briz (whose memorial in Budapest appears in the photo), forwarded to the Spanish foreign minister a report about Auschwitz, which included details about the use of gas chambers. Discouraged by Madrid’s silence, he decided to go rogue. He rented houses to shelter persecuted Jews, whom he placed under his embassy’s protection. He also issued letters of protection to individuals. In total, Briz saved some 5,000 people. Yad Vashem has recognized Briz as Righteous Among the Nations.

Other Spanish diplomats saved Jews in Romania, Greece, Bulgaria, France, Germany, and Italy. At the risk of their careers, they used the chaos of the final months of the war and the difficulty in communicating with their superiors to act against Madrid’s wishes. This is why they remained silent for decades afterwards about their actions. Ironically, their good deeds were later cynically appropriated by the Francoist dictatorship to bolster its spurious claims of having been a benefactor of the persecuted Jews.