Francisco Franco and the Jews

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Sepharad said:
While we’re on the subject (other thread) of devout Catholics who rescued Jews during WW2, why not discuss Spanish fascist dictator Francisco Franco?

He was a devout Catholic and a man who helped save the lives of at least 40,000 Jews who had taken refuge from the Nazis, in Spain.

See article: ourjerusalem.com/opinion/story/the-truth-about-franco-and-the-jews.html
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When Hitler invaded the Soviet Union, the staunchly anti-communist Winston Churchill said: “If Hitler invaded hell I would make at least a favorable reference to the devil in the House of Commons.”

I guess this would work in much the same way.
 
One may dislike Hitler’s system and yet admire his patriotic achievement. If our country were defeated I hope we should find a champion as indomitable to restore our courage and lead us back to our place among the nations.

which is not, at all, what you are implying.
 
Sepharad said:
While we’re on the subject (other thread) of devout Catholics who rescued Jews during WW2, why not discuss Spanish fascist dictator Francisco Franco?

He was a devout Catholic and a man who helped save the lives of at least 40,000 Jews who had taken refuge from the Nazis, in Spain.

See article: ourjerusalem.com/opinion/story/the-truth-about-franco-and-the-jews.html
Click to expand...

“Devout” ? If “devout” means, “not purely nominal”, perhaps; ISTM that when people use the word, what they usually mean is “practicing”. Can a dictator be called devout without abusing the meaning of words ?​

Can someone be reckoned devout if he presides over a regime in which (tens of) thousands of his political opponents are killed ? It’s hard to see how - unless devotion is understood as a quality of private religious practice, so as to refer to going to Mass, saying the Rosary, & the like, without affecting how one treats one’s neighbour. That would imply that one can be devout even if one’s religious practice has no ethical content.

Vlad the Impaler (died 1477) would probably not be called “devout” - neither was he a “nominal” Christian; he was a “practicing” Catholic (at least by the standards of his time & place - impaling people would probably not count as Christian behaviour by some later standards at least).

To call people “devout” tends to mean they are “a cut above” most “practicing Catholics”, but are not (on the whole) “saintly”. Probably all those whose causes for canonisation fail for lack of evidence of heroic virtue would count as devout. It’s a term of praise in a way that “practicing” is (perhaps) not.
 

“Devout” ? If “devout” means, “not purely nominal”, perhaps; ISTM that when people use the word, what they usually mean is “practicing”. Can a dictator be called devout without abusing the meaning of words ?​

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Franco was the last God and King goverment in the west, not any dictator.
Can someone be reckoned devout if he presides over a regime in which (tens of) thousands of his political opponents are killed ?
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Ah, Civil wars. No one is innocent.
It’s hard to see how - unless devotion is understood as a quality of private religious practice, so as to refer to going to Mass, saying the Rosary, & the like, without affecting how one treats one’s neighbour. That would imply that one can be devout even if one’s religious practice has no ethical content.
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He was devout in private practice and yes he did not love his enemies. His failure. Guilty as charge.

But going back to the OP, he saved thounsands of Jews and even tryed to get jews from concentration camps. The father of a friend of my sister was a Sephardic Yugo jew who was send with the jews from Salonica to the Kindom of Death. And he was saved when under Franco negociations spanish Waffen SS personel managed to get 300 Jews from Austwich into Spain. Sadly no more. One of them interviewed decades latter in the Spanich TV special, Franco and the Jews said that it was like being saved from the literal mouth of dead. And the Madrid great Rabbi said that Franco did more to save Jews that many allied countries.
 
One notes how Spain has progressed since Franco. Apes now have rights and babies have none. :rolleyes:
 
Sepharad said:
While we’re on the subject (other thread) of devout Catholics who rescued Jews during WW2, why not discuss Spanish fascist dictator Francisco Franco?

He was a devout Catholic and a man who helped save the lives of at least 40,000 Jews who had taken refuge from the Nazis, in Spain.

See article: ourjerusalem.com/opinion/story/the-truth-about-franco-and-the-jews.html
Click to expand...
Thanks for mentioning this, Sepharad. My grandfather despised Franco because of his suppression of the Catalan language and cultural identity, but I think if the leftists had won Spain would have been a prime target for Hitler and the Allies would have had another front on which to engage the Germany army.

Dr. William Carroll wrote a book on the Spanish Civil War entitled The Last Crusade which definitely takes a favorable stance towards Franco, but its worth the read for some insights into his character.
 
General Franco was not really a Fascist, his ideology was called National-Catholicism, which was basically the same ideology that the great Catholic monarchs of Spain such as King Ferdinand, Queen Isabella and King Phillip II ruled with, although in the early years of the regime, especially when the Axis were winning, there was some similarity with the Italian Fascist Regime. But that is not neccesarily evil as although Mussolini and the Italian Fascists did do evil, they only did it through circumstances and were not inherently evil, and it cannot be denied that the Duce did good things for Italy, such as the Latern Pacts of 1929 which created the Vatican.

For more details on Franco and the Jews there is a good book called “Hitler Stopped by Franco” by Jane and Burt Boyar.
 
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