Photographs of Refugees
Title
Photographs of Refugees
Description
1. Spain refugees crossing French border at Le Perthus. Image © Reserved, from the collection of Religious Society of Friends (Quakers) in Britain
2. Spain Children at Train Station
3. Spain Quaker Relief Work Marseille
4. Spain Quaker Relief Work Toulouse 1945
Images 2 through 4 © Religious Society of Friends (Quakers) in Britain
As the Republic fell, and a fascist victory was imminent, columns of thousands of Republican refugees fled into France for fear of violent reprisals in a Francoist Spain. These photographs capture the mass migration out of Spain and foreshadow the displacements that would continue throughout the twentieth century and into our present moment. We can look at these photographs next to the Syrian refugees of today, or Rwanda in the 1990s, for example, and hear Virginia Woolf’s words echo in the back of our mind, “Things repeat themselves it seems. Pictures and voices are the same today as the were 2,000 years ago.” On the other side of the border, the conditions that greeted the Spanish refugees were nothing short of horrendous. On the beach of France, surrounded by barbed wire, set up in temporary housing, the camps were crowded, dirty, and cold. Stories are told of how the men, who had to burn their clothes upon entry due to lice, would be relegated to lying in bed all day, covered by one rag of a blanket, because they had not a second pair of clothes to change into. The Quakers continued their relief efforts with the Spanish refugees in France, trying to alleviate the conditions and move many to Mexico, until the Second World War demanded more general European relief.
2. Spain Children at Train Station
3. Spain Quaker Relief Work Marseille
4. Spain Quaker Relief Work Toulouse 1945
Images 2 through 4 © Religious Society of Friends (Quakers) in Britain
As the Republic fell, and a fascist victory was imminent, columns of thousands of Republican refugees fled into France for fear of violent reprisals in a Francoist Spain. These photographs capture the mass migration out of Spain and foreshadow the displacements that would continue throughout the twentieth century and into our present moment. We can look at these photographs next to the Syrian refugees of today, or Rwanda in the 1990s, for example, and hear Virginia Woolf’s words echo in the back of our mind, “Things repeat themselves it seems. Pictures and voices are the same today as the were 2,000 years ago.” On the other side of the border, the conditions that greeted the Spanish refugees were nothing short of horrendous. On the beach of France, surrounded by barbed wire, set up in temporary housing, the camps were crowded, dirty, and cold. Stories are told of how the men, who had to burn their clothes upon entry due to lice, would be relegated to lying in bed all day, covered by one rag of a blanket, because they had not a second pair of clothes to change into. The Quakers continued their relief efforts with the Spanish refugees in France, trying to alleviate the conditions and move many to Mexico, until the Second World War demanded more general European relief.
Source
Library of the Religious Society of Friends in Britain.
Citation
“Photographs of Refugees,” Testimonies in Art & Action: Igniting Pacifism in the Face of Total War, accessed May 5, 2024, https://ds-omeka.haverford.edu/peacetestimonies/items/show/157.