The Spanish Holocaust (56 page)

Equally strenuous efforts to put a stop to arbitrary arrests and executions were made by Jesús Galíndez of the Basque delegation in Madrid and by Manuel Irujo Olla, the piously Catholic Basque, who became Minister without Portfolio in the new cabinet. He made desperate efforts for humanitarian values to prevail behind the lines: ‘I have held conversations with both political and trade union organizations of the extreme left. I have made every effort for the Government of the democratic Republic and for all anti-fascists to show that we are a generous and high-minded people. I am certain that any attempt on another life is more pernicious than a battle; more is lost with a crime than with a defeat.’ The efforts of the Basques were principally aimed at helping their compatriots, many, if not most, of whom were Catholics. However, their protection also extended to more than 850 monks, nuns and members of the lay clergy, Basques or otherwise.
¹¹¹

The Basque efforts were rendered immensely difficult by the fact that, in the wake of the events of 22–23 August in the Cárcel Modelo, control of the prisons had passed completely to the militiamen of the CPIP.
Sacas
and the murder of detainees on the outskirts of the city became ever more frequent throughout September and October. The release of common prisoners had seen many of them swell the ranks of the militias. Armed and with papers that seemed to grant them the authority of the Dirección General de Seguridad, they were able to vent their resentments on the prison officials who had previously been their jailers.
¹¹²

In response, in mid-September, the government took another halting step towards the taming of the
checas
. The new Minister of the Interior, Ángel Galarza, had been the state prosecutor who launched the ill-advised ‘responsibilities’ case against those who had served as ministers during the Primo de Rivera dictatorship. In 1933, he had joined the Socialist Party and earned notoriety for the violence of his rhetoric in the Cortes. The majority of the PSOE executive regarded him as an opportunist who had little interest in controlling the abuses of the
checas
.
¹¹³
However, on 16 September, he introduced a decree signed by
President Azaña creating the Rearguard Security Militias (Milicias de Vigilancia de Retaguardia – MVR). The preamble implicitly recognized that the creation of the CPIP six weeks earlier had been a failure. It stated that the MVR were being established because of ‘the imperative need to regulate the services of law and order in the rearguard’. The proposed change was justified by the statement that ‘since the militia groups that had been collaborating with the police had no clearly defined function or a co-ordinated organization, it had been difficult to prevent their infiltration by the enemy to disrupt their work and bring the organizations into disrepute’. This was an accurate representation of the weaknesses of the CPIP, while sugaring the pill for the militia groups by throwing the blame for atrocities on the enemy within.

The decree proposed to fuse all of the militia groups run by parties and unions into a temporary police corps. It stated that any autonomous groups that continued to carry out the functions of security now attributed to the MVR would be regarded as ‘facciosos’, enemy agents. To encourage the militia groups to join the MRV, it was stated that those who served would be given preference for eventual incorporation into the regular police forces. Like the creation of the Comité Provincial de Investigación Pública only a month and a half earlier, the measure was another step towards the centralization of the parallel police constituted by the
checas
.
¹¹⁴
In the short term, it changed little other than give a veneer of legitimacy to some left-wing groups and patrols from the CPIP, but there were still others operating outside the MVR.

Despite Galarza’s measure, the tempo of the repression in Madrid was about to increase. This was inevitable as the rebel columns drew nearer and the bombing of the city became more frequent. The danger was given a name by General Mola, who famously stated that there were four columns poised to attack Madrid but that the attack would be initiated by a fifth column already inside the city. The exact date on which Mola made the remark is not known but it was almost certainly in the first days of October.
¹¹⁵
At this stage, there was no properly structured fifth column, but nocturnal snipers, saboteurs and agents provocateurs were active. As Geoffrey Cox, the British newspaper correspondent, wrote later: ‘Secret radio, couriers, men who slipped across the lines in darkness, saw to it that many of the Government’s closest secrets were revealed to the rebels.’
¹¹⁶

Republican politicians started making references to the speech from early October. In popular parlance and political rhetoric, the term ‘fifth columnist’ came to denote any rebel supporter, real or potential, active
or imprisoned. It was first used as a device to raise awareness and popular passion by Dolores Ibárruri ‘Pasionaria’, who wrote:

That traitor Mola said that he would launch ‘four columns’ against Madrid, but that only the ‘fifth column’ would begin the offensive. The ‘fifth column’ is the one which lurks within Madrid itself and which, despite all measures, continues to move in the darkness. We sense its feline movements; its dull voice is to be heard in rumours, stories and outright panic. This enemy must be crushed immediately while our heroic militia is fighting outside Madrid … The law of war is a brutal one, but we must adopt it without sentimentality, with neither aggressiveness nor weakness. We cannot sink to the sadism of the fascists. We will never torture prisoners. Nor will we humiliate the wives of traitors, nor murder their children. But we will inflict lawful retribution rapidly and impressively, so as to tear out the very roots of treachery.
¹¹⁷

The diplomatic corps had long since been concerned about the situation and was now alarmed by the escalation implicit in Pasionaria’s article. The British Chargé d’Affaires in Madrid, George Ogilvie-Forbes, co-ordinated appeals to the Spanish Foreign Ministry for something to be done about the growing number of killings and the dangerous situation in the prisons. On 1 October, he reported that 125 had been murdered on the previous Saturday (26 September). He was convinced that the article was an incitement to murder because, in the twenty-four hours following its publication on Saturday 3 October, there were two hundred murders in Madrid. On 5 October, Ogilvie-Forbes visited the Foreign Minister, Julio Álvarez del Vayo, and told him that, two days earlier, he had been in the University City and seen the bodies of at least fifteen men and women. Although reluctant to believe that the authorities had anything to do with the killings, Ogilvie-Forbes protested that they were guilty of permitting them. Álvarez del Vayo ‘blushed to the roots of his hair’, assured him that the government would do everything possible to stop them and arranged for him to visit the Minister of the Interior.

The deleterious effect on Republican Spain’s international status caused by news of the killings was exacerbated by the fact that the British were convinced, or chose to believe, that ‘executions of civilians by the rebels have been relatively few and carried out with a certain show of justice’. On 6 October, Ogilvie-Forbes met Ángel Galarza, who told him that the constant killings and the situation in the prisons were the consequence of the fact that it had been necessary to use the bulk of the Assault
Guards as front-line troops, leaving security in the hands of militia groups.
¹¹⁸
Nevertheless, he responded to diplomatic concerns by issuing a decree imposing a curfew between 11 p.m. and 6 a.m. on all those who did not belong to the official Rearguard Security Militias. Moreover, within three weeks of creating the MVR, Galarza was obliged to issue a statement prohibiting all house searches other than those specifically ordered by the Director General of Security, withdrawing all identity cards previously issued by the CPIP and requiring the left-wing organizations to give the names of the militiamen authorized to join the MVR.
¹¹⁹

The difference in international perception of the repression in both zones was one of the most difficult problems faced by the Republic. There were plenty of diplomats and journalists in Republican cities to report what was happening. In contrast, so far, most of the atrocities were carried out by Franco’s columns in small country towns. Moreover, rebel commanders ensured that unsympathetic foreign newspaper correspondents were not present. Winston Churchill’s reaction to the situation in Republican Spain was representative of the perception of events in upper-class and official circles. When the new Spanish Ambassador, Pablo de Azcárate, arrived in London in early September 1936, he was introduced by his friend Lord David Cecil to Churchill. Although Azcárate arrived with a reputation as a highly respected functionary of the League of Nations, a red-faced Churchill angrily rejected his outstretched hand and stalked off muttering, ‘Blood, blood …’ In an article in the
Evening Standard
on 2 October 1936, entitled ‘Spain: Object Lesson for Radicals’, Churchill wrote:

The massacre of hostages falls to a definitely lower plane; and the systematic slaughter night after night of helpless and defenceless political opponents, dragged from their homes to execution for no other crime than that they belong to the classes opposed to Communism, and have enjoyed property and distinction under the Republican constitution, ranks with tortures and fiendish outrages in the lowest pit of human degradation. Although it seems to be the practice of the Nationalist [rebel] forces to shoot a proportion of their prisoners taken in arms, they cannot be accused of having fallen to the level of committing the atrocities which are the daily handiwork of the Communists, Anarchists, and the P.O.U.M., as the new and most extreme Trotskyist organization is called. It would be a mistake alike in truth and wisdom for British public opinion to rate both sides at the same level.
¹²⁰

Republican leaders were expected to maintain civilized social relations within Madrid despite seething popular resentment of those who bombed their city and despite the activities of snipers and saboteurs. Thus Julián Zugazagoitia, the faithful ally of Prieto, continued to use his position as editor of the daily
El Socialista
to campaign for discipline in the rearguard and for respect on the battlefield for the lives of opponents. Typical of the ethical tone adopted by the paper was his editorial of 3 October 1936, headed ‘Moral Obligations in War’. He wrote: ‘The life of an adversary who surrenders is unassailable; no combatant can dispose of that life. But that is not how the rebels behave. No matter. It is how we should behave.’
¹²¹

However, such pleas for moderation paled in the context of the desperation that engulfed the city. The political commissar of the Communist Fifth Regiment, Comandante Carlos Contreras (the pseudonym of the Italian Communist, and Soviet agent, Vittorio Vidali), showed that he was more concerned with eliminating the enemy within than placating diplomats without. Five days after Pasionaria’s speech, he made an even more explicit analysis of Mola’s remarks for those who would take responsibility for eliminating the fifth column. ‘General Mola has been kind enough to point out to us where the enemy is to be found. The Government of the Popular Front has already taken a series of measures aimed at cleansing Madrid rapidly and energetically of all those doubtful and suspect elements who could, at a given moment, create difficulties for the defence of our city.’
¹²²
‘Fifth column’ was soon the generalized term for rebel supporters who found themselves in the Republican zone.
¹²³
On 21 October, the united Socialist and Communist Youth, the Juventudes Socialistas Unificadas, issued a declaration that ‘the extermination of the “fifth column” will be a huge step in the defence of Madrid’.
¹²⁴

As the circle closed around Madrid, bombing raids on the undefended city intensified and triggered popular fury. Appeals for the population to be mobilized in defence of the city were increasingly accompanied by demands for the elimination of fifth columnists. Given the intensity of the fear that stalked the streets, such appeals served to stoke up the fires of hatred against the perceived enemy within.
¹²⁵
The sense of urgency was notable in the rearguard activities of the
checas
. The most feared of them all was the CPIP, which had come to be known popularly as ‘la Checa de Fomento’. This was because, on 26 August, the CPIP had moved its ever-growing operations out of the overcrowded Círculo de Bellas Artes to more spacious premises at Calle Fomento no. 9. From then until
it was disbanded by Santiago Carrillo on 12 November, its activities against suspected fifth columnists reached a level of frenzy.
¹²⁶

In mid-September, it and several other
checas
had begun systematic
sacas
– the seizing and murder of detainees from the four main prisons. The first
sacas
, though frequent, were usually of relatively few prisoners at a time taken from the Cárcel de Ventas and San Antón and murdered in Aravaca. The Cárcel de Porlier was run by a group of four Communists whose abuses finally led to them being arrested in December. Nevertheless, on their watch, before November, there were frequent individual
sacas
but none of substantial numbers of prisoners. At the end of October, the scale increased dramatically and both anarchists and Communists were involved. On the 29th of that month, fifty rightists were taken from the Checa de Fomento and executed in Boadilla del Monte. In all the prisons, the militiamen usually arrived equipped with letters of authorization from the Comité Provincial de Investigación Pública. On 31 October, CPIP agents came to the Cárcel de Ventas with an order signed by Manuel Muñoz for the transfer of thirty-two prisoners to Chinchilla, far to the south-east in the province of Albacete. Twenty-four of them, including the right-wing thinker Ramiro de Maeztu and the founder of the JONS, Ramiro Ledesma Ramos, were shot in the cemetery of Aravaca on the outskirts of Madrid. On 1 and 2 November, over seventy more were taken from Ventas. About half reached Chinchilla and half were murdered in Aravaca cemetery. At least one of these
sacas
was carried out by militiamen from the Checa del Cine Europa led by Eduardo Val himself. On 4 November, a further fifty-six were killed in the prison at Carabanchel. Not all of those murdered in Aravaca and Boadilla were the victims of the anarchists. There was at least one Communist ‘radio’ involved as well.
¹²⁷