In 1937, nearly 500 children were evacuated from Spain in a desperate attempt to save them from the Spanish Civil War.
They were offered refuge in Mexico, where their stay was meant to be temporary.
It lasted their lifetimes.
All wars are heartbreaking, civil wars especially so.
But the Spanish Civil War was a war of particular brutality. A war of obscene violence and mass atrocity.
The people of Spain were starving and under attack.
Parents had to wonder how much longer their children would survive.
So when they heard of a free program that would send their sons and daughters out of the war zone, they had to consider it.
The trip would be short: just until the end of the war, when the Spanish Republic would win back its democracy. A few months. A year at most.
No one expected that Generalissimo Francisco Franco would win the war or that Spain would enter into a decades-long dictatorship.
No one expected the onslaught that would be World War II.
No one expected these historical events, which, together, would make it impossible for the children to return to Spain for forty, fifty, or sixty years.
Parents could not have predicted that, in most cases, they would never see their children again.
All they knew was that their sons and daughters needed to be saved.
And so they made the impossible decision to save them.
