Memory is the Lens of the Soul: The Spanish Civil War
Posted by Charles II on November 7, 2007
Sarah Wildman has an important historical piece about the Spanish Civil War in The Guardian. The Spanish Civil War was the opening battle of World War II, the test battleground for German weapons and tactics that would soon be directed against Austria, Czechoslovakia, Poland and then the rest of the world. The rest of the western governments, comfortable with German fascism, stood by or prevented the legally-elected Spanish government from defending itself from what amounted to a German invasion. But the dead do not stay buried:
The skull and the feet belonged to men who were executed here by the Falange, supporters of Francisco Franco in the early days of the Spanish civil war. They were thrown in this unmarked grave – one of hundreds like it still scattered across Spain – purposefully placed at the foot of the church, explained Javier Ortiz, the head forensic archaeologist, “So everyone would walk on them, forever desecrating them”.
Instead, the complicit church was desecrated.
Running until January, the ICP [International Center of Photography] exhibit is actually an interconnected set of four installations. One features [Francesc] Torres’s work, two others show the more famous photographs of Robert Capa and Gerda Taro, two photographers whose work from Spain conveyed to the world the message that the civil war was the first battle of the second world war, a brutal conflict of democracy versus fascism and a chilling adumbration of the fascist atrocities to come. There is also a multimedia selection of photography and print culture produced during the war. The result is multidimensional and trans-historical – war as it happened, war in actuality, war in its aftermath and war in memory.
…500,000 refugees fled Spain when Barcelona fell. They walked across the Pyrenees and went into exile in France where most were put into internment camps…
“Thirty five thousand to 50,000 are still buried in open fields across the country.” Spain is a country of mass graves. Off the battlefield, citizens and captured soldiers alike were marched into the woods. Political prisoners barely existed; they were killed before they could protest.
The exhibition is there to be seen, with a special event on November 9th, 7PM, if you happen to live in NYC.
