On October 30, 2021 we organized two guided tours in Spanish to the exhibition "Rotspanier" at the National Socialist Forced Labor Documentation Center in Berlin. The visits were led by the historian and curator of the exhibition, Antonio Muñoz Sánchez, researcher at the Institute of Social Sciences of the University of Lisbon.
This trilingual exhibition reconstructs and contextualizes the history of tens of thousands of Spanish exiles who were forced by the French authorities to perform forced labor during World War II. After the occupation of France by the Axis Forces, many of these Spaniards were forced to perform various forms of forced labor in France, or were deported to German concentration and labor camps. Among them, more than 7,000 Spaniards were deported to the Mathausen extermination camp.
The exhibition recovers the memory of these forced laborers, forgotten in Germany, France and Spain, despite the fact that they have been officially recognized by Germany since the 1960s as victims of Nazism. In fact, the Spanish exiles are the first group of forced laborers of the Third Reich to receive compensation from the Federal Republic of Germany.
Following the structure of the exhibition, Antonio Muñoz unraveled the history of this group, detailing the historical context and giving ample room for questions from the participants. They were also able to know in detail the biographies of several exiles thanks to a traveling exhibition organized by the Universitat Rovira i Virgil and funded by the EU in the Europe for Citizens program.
