ABSTRACT
This chapter reflects on the influence of Nazism on the rise of anti-Semitic feelings in Spain before and during the Second World War. Notwithstanding this sharp rise, it stresses that some voices sympathetic to the Jews could nonetheless be heard in Franco’s Spain: first, from Republicans in exile; and, second, more surprisingly, from a number of Spaniards who, fighting alongside the Axis powers on the Eastern front, were unable to reconcile anti-Semitic rhetoric with the desperate situation of the Jewish communities they encountered in Eastern Europe. The chapter concludes with Franco’s post-war silence and the silence that he imposed on Spain concerning the Nazi death camps in order to conceal his own role in the reality of the Holocaust.
