TEARS SALUTE<\/p>\n
Barcelona mobs Blue Division<\/p>\n
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. <\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
It was a truly Spanish scene, wild and emotional. Men fell into each other’s arms and sobbed. Women fainted. A cameraman [Carlos P\u00e9rez de Rozas y Masdeu] dropped dead of excitement. But it was just as truly Spanish in the irony that came out amid the emotion. \u00abCommunism?\u00bb mused a repatriated Socialist of the old Popular Front days. \u00abCabbage, hard work and everyone for himself.\u00bb And a veteran of the Blue Division, peering into the sobbing face of Minister of War Agust\u00edn Mu\u00f1oz Grandes who commanded the division in Russia, murmured wryly, \u00abMy general, you don’t know how much we missed you.\u00bb<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[457],"tags":[771,774,804,1103,1119,1674,1781,1979,2200,2352,2366,3320,3805,3834,3835,3867,3988,4150,4161,4426],"class_list":["post-6755","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-life","tag-agustin-aznar","tag-agustin-munoz-grandes","tag-alemania-nazi","tag-barcelona","tag-basilica-de-la-merced-barcelona","tag-cruz-roja","tag-division-azul","tag-estalinismo","tag-franquismo","tag-gregorio-modrego","tag-guerra-civil-espanola","tag-ministro-secretario-general-del-movimiento","tag-prisionero-de-guerra","tag-puerto","tag-puerto-de-barcelona","tag-raimundo-fernandez-cuesta","tag-republicanismo","tag-segunda-guerra-mundial","tag-semiramis-embarcacion","tag-union-sovietica"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/oreneta.com\/libro-verde\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6755","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/oreneta.com\/libro-verde\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/oreneta.com\/libro-verde\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/oreneta.com\/libro-verde\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/oreneta.com\/libro-verde\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6755"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/oreneta.com\/libro-verde\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6755\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/oreneta.com\/libro-verde\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6755"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/oreneta.com\/libro-verde\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6755"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/oreneta.com\/libro-verde\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6755"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}