CATALONIA -- Catalan News Agency - Project to honour thousands of Jews who braved Catalan Pyrenees to escape Holocaust

Catalan News Agency - Project to honour thousands of Jews who braved Catalan Pyrenees to escape Holocaust

Project to honour thousands of Jews who braved Catalan Pyrenees to escape Holocaust

CNA / Ben Ramage / Marta Lluvich

Lleida (CNA).- The Lleida Provincial Council is promoting
a project entitled ‘Persecuted and Saved’ that aims to explain the way
that 80,000 fugitives, of whom 20,000 were Jewish, fled the Nazi horror
during the Holocaust via the Catalan Pyrenees. The routes will include
the pathways that the terrified fugitives took through the mountains, as
well as prisons and concentration camps set up to hold those who were
caught. The project has already merited a strong response from Israel,
with visits from the Ambassador of Israel in Spain, Alon Bar, to the key
sites. Furthermore, a meeting between the CEO of the major airline of
Israel, EL-AL, Walter Wasercier, and the President of Lleida’s
Provincial Council, Joan Reñé, has also taken place, with a view to
setting up weekly chartered flights between Israel and Lleida-Alguaire
Airport.

Reñé claims that the project is an opportunity to “recover the
historical memory and publicize the little-known facts that occurred
here during the Holocaust.”  Bar quoted a Hebrew saying, “to save a soul
is to save an entire world”, to summarize the importance of the
project. He also thanked the Catalan people, many of whom risked their
lives to help save fleeing Jews and other refugees from Nazi barbarism.

A chance for Jewish people to find their ‘roots’

Bar believes that many Jewish people may find their roots in
exploring the sites that their ancestors used to escape tyranny and
certain death to gain their freedom. Over 20,000 Jewish refugees are
believed to have passed through the Pyrenees, often taking the harshest
and most difficult routes to avoid capture by Nazi soldiers patrolling
the area.

Better Catalan understanding

Reñé also believes the project is a good chance for Catalans to
better understand the history of the area and the part that their
ancestors played, helping the starving and freezing survivors that made
it over the mountains.

More on

Asylum, Asylum Seekers, Cultural Tourism, Germany, History, Holocaust, International Cooperation, Israel, Jewish Quarter, Jewish Tourism, Lleida, Lleida airport, Lleida Province Council, Lleida's Airport, Lleida-Alguaire, Nazi Camps, Nazi Camps Survivors, Pyrenees, Refugees, Tourism, Tourist Industry, trivialisation of nazism

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An
institutional visit, with Israel Ambassador in Spain, to the Holocaust
escape route through the Catalan Pyrenees (by M. Lluvich)

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