All the way through the Spanish Civil Warfare (1936-1939), nearly 15,000 unaccompanied youngsters from the younger Republic have been despatched to France. Boys and girls, from about 5 to fifteen years outdated, are in most cases registered by way of their folks as a way to be positioned in French host households or in youngsters’s properties created for them. A ways from being centralized, this humanitarian operation comes to a constellation of very other and regularly rival actors.
Figuring out the passion round this purpose, from the left of the In style Entrance to Catholic intellectuals, from the Vatican to feminist activists, is the purpose of historian Celia Keren in The Explanation for the Kids. A humanitarian and political theme throughout the Spanish Civil Warfare (1936-1939) printed by way of Anamosa in Fall 2025, listed below are some excerpts taken from the creation.
All the way through the civil struggle that bled Spain from 1936 to 1939, just about 15,000 Spanish youngsters have been despatched to France with out their folks to be safe. They arrive from the so-called “Republican” zone, ruled by way of the In style Entrance coalition elected in February 1936, versus the so-called “National” or “Franco” zone led by way of an army riot led by way of Normal Francisco Franco. Boys and girls between the ages of five and 15, those youngsters are most often registered by way of their folks for going in a foreign country, once in a while months upfront. They’re transported there in teams of a number of dozen to a number of hundred, week after week. Once they arrive in France, they’re positioned with volunteer host households or in youngsters’s properties, “colonies” specifically created for them, the place specifically engaged tutorial and home group of workers try to fulfill their wishes. Along with France, different international locations, once in a while very a long way away, welcomed Spanish orphans throughout the struggle: Belgium won greater than 5,000, Nice Britain nearly 4,000, the USSR 3,000, Mexico about 450, Denmark a few hundred and Switzerland, 42. The French on the identical time: their departure from Spain and their lifestyles in France was once organized upfront, financially looked after – in a phrase, arranged.
Poster fashion (circa 1938). Nationwide Library of France, by the use of Wikimedia
Then again, the execution of this operation, pricey and complicated, is the rest however centralized. It comes to a constellation of private and non-private actors whose variety of nature, political orientation, and non secular allegiance is difficult. Thus, a number of the organizers of the location of Spanish youngsters in France, we discover the Normal Confederation of Exertions (CGT) and a few of its unions, comparable to the lecturers’ union, but in addition the Diocese of Dax and the Archdiocese of Bordeaux, the Jesuit militant Catholic Motion, the communist municipality of Ivry-sur-Seine, the Swedish municipality of Ivry-sur-Seine, socialists, communists, the Czechs, the Grand Orient of France, pedagogue Celestine Freine, huge bourgeois girls inserted into the pacifist networks of the League of Countries (SDN), nameless professors of Parisian top colleges, whose first accountability is that this, and even famend Catholic intellectuals like Jacques Maritain or François Mauriac. If in Spain sending youngsters in a foreign country is a public coverage of the state, this certainly not prevents a similar fragmentation, with other ministries (social help, public training, justice, international affairs) competing with every different and with the establishments and political forces of the self reliant areas, particularly the ones of the Basque Nation, the place, as soon as once more, departmental politics is between the ministry and the dep. for disputes of a number of events. In the end, in Rome, Pope Pius XII himself determined to ship an apostolic delegate to the Spanish Basque Nation to paintings for the speedy go back of the kids thus evacuated.
This Prever stock supplies a kick off point for this investigation: why are such other actors within the evacuation of Spanish youngsters? What are the CGT, the Grand Orient of France, the Bishop of Dax and Pope Pius KSI doing about this? How do they organize to comprehend their tasks and additionally do they at all times be triumphant? In the end, how are relationships cast, throughout nationwide, non secular and ideological obstacles, between those teams which can be most often now not mobilized round the similar objective and are compelled, if to not cooperate, no less than to be in contact?
Between reminiscence and forgetting
In Spain, the evacuation of Spanish youngsters in a foreign country is lately a spot of remembrance for the civil struggle. Within the Eighties, the primary analysis in this subject was once a part of a collective effort to exhume a historical past that were unjustly forgotten. (…)
Observed from France, alternatively, little or no is understood. No longer best is there nearly no medical manufacturing in this subject, but in addition no reminiscence of it. There are lots of causes for this. To begin with, the tale of the 15,000 Spanish youngsters evacuated to France between 1936 and 1939 is doubly damaged, at the one hand by way of the a lot more huge exodus of part 1,000,000 Spanish refugees between overdue January and early February 1939, and at the different by way of the a lot more dramatic rescue of youngsters throughout Global Warfare II.
Spanish refugees (republican combatants) pass the border to go into France in 1939. France Presse Voir/AFP
Then again, if the historical past of Spanish youngsters in France is so forgotten, it’s principally as a result of no collective actor performed the position that the previous niño associations took on in Spain. Neither did the previous Spanish youngsters, and for some they remained in France, nor, what’s much more sudden, did the organizations that mobilized for them on the time mark and go in this tale. For instance, whilst the CGT was once, definitely, essentially the most energetic group on the time, having overseen the location of virtually 10,000 Spanish youngsters in France, since 1945 it had now not arranged any match, exhibition, cultural manufacturing in this motion, which it would simply have used. We do not even understand the native reminiscence: the place the colonies of Spanish youngsters have been based, not anything stays – now not a hint, now not a plaque. (…)
Humanitarianism or the hobby of a lesser purpose
The argument of this e-book is that the underestimation, by way of their authors, in their movements in prefer of Spanish youngsters isn’t merely an issue of retrospective bias. It additionally displays the truth of the time: the secondary nature of this objective for individuals who spend money on it. Without reference to its scale, because it considerations nearly 15,000 youngsters, and the concrete paintings this is a lot larger than writing a manifesto or talking at a gathering, the evacuation of youngsters stays a minor downside in comparison to this main query of political positioning ahead of the Spanish Civil Warfare: which aspect will we take? Must we even get one? And if we toughen the Republican camp, will have to we oppose non-intervention? Must we give precedence to the battle towards the fascist danger at the borders of France, additionally in a pleasant republic, ruled by way of the In style Entrance coalition, or will have to we maintain world peace in any respect prices?(…)
Confronted with those dilemmas, making an investment in humanitarian paintings comparable to serving to kid sufferers of struggle turns into a “refuge” for lots of actors. It gives them a technique to have interaction whilst warding off uninteresting questions. No doubt, youngsters from each camps don’t seem to be permitted in France, however best those that come from Republican Spain. On this sense, the evacuation of youngsters is a part of a chain of cohesion tasks deployed within the provider of the Spanish Republic, from sending guns and volunteers to clinical apparatus and meals, from cohesion moves to the manufacturing of photographic studies and documentaries. However the humanitarian measurement of serving to youngsters, insisted on by way of all concerned actors, permits them to in large part depoliticize it by way of, as everybody claims, positioning it “above parties” and above all out of doors the geopolitical and ideological problems that the Spanish Civil Warfare poses to Europe. The entire level of kid welfare is to allow us to play with the ambivalences of items that are not in point of fact political with out being totally impartial.
