TEARS SALUTE
Barcelona mobs Blue Division
After absence of a decade and more, 286 Spaniards came home from Soviet prison camps and were greeted amid scenes of delirious emotion. Most of them were hard-bitten veterans of Franco’s Blue Division, captured when fighting for Hitler on the Russian Front. There were also a few sailors, some supporters of the old Spanish republic, even four wizened little old-young men who were children when they were sent to Russia during the Spanish civil war. All, friends and foes of Communism alike, had been in slave labor camps for periods ranging from 10 to 16 years. There were probably 200 Spaniards still left in the camps.
From the Liberian ship Semiramis, carrying them from Odessa to Barcelona, the returning prisoners made radio-telephone calls to relatives, and these heartbreaking conversations were broadcast to the country. Spain’s tears welled up. When the ship docked, a hysterical mob stormed aboard.
It was a truly Spanish scene, wild and emotional. Men fell into each other’s arms and sobbed. Women fainted. A cameraman [Carlos Pérez de Rozas y Masdeu] dropped dead of excitement. But it was just as truly Spanish in the irony that came out amid the emotion. «Communism?» mused a repatriated Socialist of the old Popular Front days. «Cabbage, hard work and everyone for himself.» And a veteran of the Blue Division, peering into the sobbing face of Minister of War Agustín Muñoz Grandes who commanded the division in Russia, murmured wryly, «My general, you don’t know how much we missed you.»