The Government of Spain has paid tribute today, in Germany, to the Spanish women who were deported to the Nazi concentration camp of Ravensbrück, in an event held at the Memorial del campo itself, and which has been presided over by the Minister of Territorial Policy and Democratic Memory, Ángel Víctor Torres.
The Ravensbrück facilities were specially designed for women and were located in the vicinity of the town of Fürstenberg, about 90 kilometres north of Berlin. They had a projected capacity of 4,000 people, but in a short time they were overwhelmed and successive enlargements were carried out. It has been estimated that more than 132,000 female prisoners passed through Ravensbrück, many of whom were accompanied by children and babies, only 40,000 of whom survived.
During his speech, Minister Torres recalled the 120 Spanish women of Ravensbrück, who were arrested and imprisoned in France for activities of resistance against the Nazi occupation. “Some of them, after fighting in Spain defending the Second Republic, crossed the Pyrenees to continue facing fascism. This earned them the hallmark of political dams, a red triangle that condemned them to systematic exploitation as forced labor,” he said.
Torres has highlighted the terrible conditions suffered by these women and has claimed the need to “honor them, remember them and recover their memory”. The minister has insisted on the commitment of the Government of Spain to the victims. “Today is a historic day,” I said. “On April 30, it was 80 years since the liberation of this camp. What better time to recognize with a commemorative plaque the example of life of the 120 Spanish women who were imprisoned in this field.”
During his speech, the minister also stressed the “double victimization” of these prisoners, because they are women, since, for the Nazi machinery of extermination, they were, like boys and girls, “even more expendable than men.”
Torres, who has been accompanied by the Secretary of State for Democratic Memory, Fernando Martínez; Pascual Navarro, Spain’s ambassador to Germany; Piedad Solans, representing Amical de Ravensbrück; and Concha Díaz, vice-president of Amical de Mauthausen, has stressed that the “duty”, but also the “vocation”, of the Spanish Government is “to recover the memory of the victims, and to honour the principles of truth, justice, reparation and guarantees of non-repetition”.
Exhibition ‘Spain in Freedom. 50 years’
After the visit to the Ravensbrück Memorial, Minister Ángel Víctor Torres will this afternoon preside over the inauguration, at the Spanish Embassy in Germany, of the exhibition ‘Spain in Freedom. 50 years’, which recognises the role of the many social groups and institutions that made the transition possible, underlining the importance of democracy, at a time when it is under threat in many parts of the world.
Torres explained that the exhibition takes a tour of the rights acquired in democracy, social advances and the consolidation of the system of freedoms in this half century. The minister added that “this 50th anniversary is not an exercise in nostalgia. It is an exercise in conscience, in gratitude to those who fought when it was not easy, in pride for what we have achieved and in responsibility for what still remains to be done.”