The bombings and the siege to which the republican zone was subjected, after the July 1936 uprising, forced the authorities to evacuate the children. First to places far from the front and later to countries like France, England, Belgium, Mexico... all of them in solidarity with the Republic and allies like the USSR.
The USSR, in a mixture of solidarity and propaganda, was the destination of some five thousand children. Upon their arrival, the State took care of them:it took care of their education, even with teachers in Spanish, their education, their diet... in short, their childhood.
But things were going to change; the «non-aggression pact » (August 25, 1939) signed by the USSR (Molotov) and Germany (Ribbentrop), countries that supported the republicans and nationals respectively, would change his «pleasant» life. Their education ceased to be a priority and they began to be used as "help" in various activities (especially agricultural). The poor diet, the shortage of medicines and the physical work began to take their toll on his health. Diseases, such as tuberculosis or typhus, decimated them.
Things got worse in 1941, when Hitler invaded the USSR. They came out of a civil war and find themselves involved in a world war. The State abandoned the children, many already adolescents, to their fate:enlisted in Stalin's Red Army to be able to eat (many of them died on the front), turned into petty thieves who would end up with their bones in prison or in death camps. work (Gulag), girls who became prostitutes... Children without a future who, desperate, even preferred to return to Franco's Spain.
What would be the degree of desperation to want to return, when Spain is subjected to the dictatorship of the cause of your exile?
The Soviet system and the active forces of the PCE (Pasionaria) did not allow their departure, since they would not be «good salesmen » of communism. The words of La Pasionaria, according to Jesús Hernández (leader of the PCE and exiled in the USSR), were:
"We cannot return them to their parents turned into urchins and prostitutes, nor allow them to leave here as raging anti-Soviet"
After the conflict, in 1939, the children of the rest of the countries had begun to return, except those of Mexico and the USSR (which did not maintain relations with the Franco Regime). In the 1950s, after the death of Stalin, Franco also wanted to take advantage of the children evacuated twenty years ago to the USSR. Through the Falange, he begins a campaign to obtain the repatriation of the boys/men who want to return; would appear as "the savior of lost children" . In 1957 the first large group arrived in Castellón, 412 Spaniards returned on the ship Crimea. In total, half of the five thousand would return. The rest, dead or had decided to stay in the USSR.
Some and others wanted to get political and propaganda profit from the children.
Starting in the 1990s, their rights began to be recognized:recover their nationality, pensions, economic benefits, health coverage...
Images:Portal of Exile
