• Catalan Socialists propose to reform Spain’s 2007 Historical Memory Law
• Measure would pay 135,000 euros each to German camp victims or families
The Socialist Party of Catalonia (PSC-PSOE) has submitted a draft resolution in the Catalan Parlament calling for reform of Spain’s 2007 Law of Historical Memory that goes beyond a proposal by other Catalan political parties to rescind Franco-era martials against Catalans, calling for payment of 135,000 euros in damages to each of the families of some 15,000 Republicans from throughout Spain imprisoned at Nazi concentration camps in France, Germany and Austria during World War II.
In addition to thousands of former Republican soldiers and refugees who fled Spain to France at the end of the Spanish Civil War in 1939, the victorious forces under Gen. Francisco Franco rounded up thousands more Republican solders to send to German-occupied territory to work as slave labor in concentration camps. Of the estimated 15,000 Spaniards who were held in the German camps, some 7,200 were sent as slave labor to work at the Mauthausen camp in Austria, where at least 4,400 died as a result of the harsh conditions and brutal treatment received.
The PSC proposal would provide payments from the Spanish government for surviving Spanish victims or heirs as compensation for the suffering or death causes as a result of their deportation and internment. The measure would also rescind court-martials against all Spanish Republicans enacted during and after the Spanish Civil War.
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