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.
The Spanish Civil War was a war of particular brutality, obscene violence, and mass atrocity.
Parents wondered how much longer their children would survive.
When they heard of a free program that would send their sons and daughters out of the war zone, they considered it.
The trip would be short, they were told. Just until the end of the war, when the Spanish Republic would win back its democracy. A few months, a year at most.
They didn’t expect that Generalissimo Francisco Franco would win the war or the decades-long dictatorship that would follow. They didn’t expect World War II.
No one could know that these historical events would make it impossible for the children to return to Spain for forty or more years.
Parents could not predict that, in most cases, they would never see their children again.
Their sons and daughters needed to be saved.
And so they made the impossible decision to save them.
