1939 postcard of refugees at the border at Port Bou. Produced by the French photo agency
Els Vençuts (1969) by Xavier Benguerel. Novel based on the author's escape from Barcelona in 1939 and his time in the concentration camps on beaches of southern France.
Play (2018) about Swiss nurse Elizabeth Eidenbenz who ran the Maternitat d'Elna, and helped save the lives of some 600 children who were mostly the children of Spanish Republicans, Jewish refugees and gypsies.
Leaflets on the French concentration camps of Argeles and Ribesaltes.
Series of four bookmarks produced by the Catalan government in 2017. They bear the words "We were once refugees" and feature scenes of Republican refugees at the French border in 1939 and contemporary scenes of refugees today.
Campaign meeting in Manchester, February 1943. Release the Anti-fascist prisoners in North Africa
Reverse. Campaign meeting in Manchester, February 1943. Release the Anti-fascist prisoners in North Africa
In ten days some 480,000 republicans crossed the border into democratic France, where the French government (unlike many French people) treated the refugees worse than animals, imprisoning them in makeshift internment camps, particularly on beaches near the frontier. Over the next six months several thousand died of cholera, dysentery, hypothermia, malnutrition and even thirst. Life was so bad that between 70,000 and 180,000 elected to return by the end of 1939.