Spain's Surviving Socialist Soldier

The savagery of the Spanish Civil War (1936-1939) created unprecedented carnage and wholesale bloodshed, under conditions of outrageous hatred and the fiery rhetoric of rabid patriotism. Atrocities committed numbed the country's sensibilities, and desensitized its citizens towards the extent of violence and human suffering resulting from deeply rooted political differences. It was a struggle by a legitimately elected socialist oriented government against a Coup d' etat led by rightist General Francisco Franco, that had the support of the businessmen, industrialists, landlords, and the nobility; as well as the Catholic Church.

The Civil War became an international arena, a proxy war for the battle against the forces of fascism by all individuals from many nations opposed to it - even if their own governments supported the rightist coup. Volunteers for the socialists who were referred to as Republicans, battled against soldiers of their own country who fought for the fascists. The Franco fascists labeled themselves Nationalists, and sought to retain the status quo to deny the Republican plan of wealth redistribution. Adolph Hitler used the war as a rehearsal for many of the Blitzkrieg tactics he used for the war in Europe, and perhaps to refine his plan for the extermination of the Jews.

After ferocious battles and untold atrocities on both sides, the Nationalists soundly defeated the Republicans to establish a dictatorship. The massacre of Republicans and their sympathizers and supporters followed in earnest in what was considered a preview of the holocaust of World War ll. But one socialist survived to reveal his version of this chapter in the history of Spain. His name is Antonio Garcia Baron.

Baron's story is a remarkable tale of survival, not only of his physical existence, but his principles as well. Despite his advanced years, he has maintained his health well and kept his memories of the Civil War intact. He is the only survivor of the anarchist Durruti column, which prevented the advance of the Franco forces to Madrid. After the defeat of the Republicans, he escaped to Britain to join the war against Germany. He was captured in 1941 and sent to Mauthausen concentration camp. Here, Himmler confirmed the collaboration of the Catholic Church with the Third Reich, but who also expressed the plan to go against the Church leaders at some later date. He survived the Mauthausen and lived in Paris in 1945, however, Franco's minions continued to hound him while purges of Republicans went on in Spain. His eyes were damaged by poisoned coffee in France, in what he termed as one of more than a hundred attempts on his life.

In the1950's he settled for a sparsely populated place in a region of Bolivia where he could be as far away from any priest. He claimed that the Spanish press covered up the massacre of 2 million Republicans which was masterminded by the Catholic Church. In the Bolivian community he went to, the presence of a German priest who bad-mouthed him as a criminal forced him to move to a jungle 67 kilometers away with his Bolivian wife Irma. Believing the priest continued to spy on him and made attempts to inform his enemies of his whereabouts, he established an anarchist community with nomadic indians in the heart of the wilderness. His community thrived, and he has survived the harsh jungle, and perhaps all his enemies.

Notwithstanding his status as a stateless citizen which was taken away by Franco, he believes he should not request for a reinstatement of his citizenship because it was stolen from him by the government. He averred that Franco wanted the Nazis to exterminate them in silence at Mauthausen. Paintings from events in prison provide a visual reminder of his past under the Nazis. Baron is determined to share his version of the Civil War to a larger audience. Recent developments in Spain could assist him in this effort. Thousands of documents from the Civil war detailing the campaign of the Nationalists versus the Republicans were ordered released by Spain's socialist government as part of its policy of redressing the wrongs of Franco's era. The order is controversial since the documents include Franco's campaign of brutal repression against his perceived enemies.

The documents and the details that are to be revealed by Baron may face rejection or may be acknowledged and embraced. It could lead to division or forge unity. But for Baron, the truth can no longer be suppressed, and the fulfillment of a promise to fallen comrades must now come to pass since his opportunity to do so diminishes with time. As with all dictatorial regimes then and now, in whatever form or whatever part of the world they insidiously breed, a day of reckoning will come. Like Baron, who survived the horrors of war, the inhumanity of torture, the paranoia of assassinations, and the isolation and deprivation of an unforgiving wilderness environment, someone will emerge with the truth which may open old wounds, or commence the healing of several decades of bleeding from wounds inflicted by injustice and perpetuated by blatant lies.

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