The Inquisition & Thereafter |
Spain and the Jews
Hardly
any cursory student of Jewish history is not acquainted with the expulsion of
the Jews from Spain in August of 1492, the same year and the same month in which
Columbus first traveled west and re-discovered “The
New World.” Three Jews came with Columbus. One of them was Luis de Torres, who
spoke Hebrew and became the first Jew to settle in Cuba and therefore the first
Jew to settle in America.
In that year, the Jews of Spain and
Portugal were forcibly evicted from their homes and sent by sea to unknown
lands.
Many were drowned and others became
the victims of pirates to end up as slaves. Some found homes in North Africa and
others in the Netherlands and in Hamburg. Jews were accused of such insane
“crimes” as “desecrating the host,” and were subject to a psychotic wish
to “purify the blood.” That belief and others had already made life nearly
intolerable for the Spanish Jews before 1492, as the “Inquisition” had begun
its notorious sadistic activities in 1480. Note that the Nazi obsession
with “Aryan blood” was a replica of that Spanish racism.
The motive for the expulsion was
Catholic Christianity. The King, Ferdinand, and the Queen, Isabella, signed an
Edict of Expulsion, which gave Jews four months in which to convert to
Christianity or get out. Like the German Jews of the 20th century,
the Spanish robbed the Jewish emigrants of all their possessions, so that those
who left were destitute. Approximately 165,000 Jews left Spain, while about
50,000 remained and “converted” to Christianity. These “conversos” were
hated by the Spanish community and labeled “marranos,” meaning “swine.”
That word was of Arabic origin and meant “forbidden” in Arabic until it
entered the Spanish language.
Perhaps the most famous of the
descendants of the “marranos” was Baruch Spinoza (1632-1677). Spinoza
was born in Amsterdam, The Netherlands. He was excommunicated (1656) from the
Jewish community after his wrote a “Treatise on Theology and Politics,”
which may be regarded as the first effort to secularize the Jewish religion.
Over five hundred years have passed
since the expulsion of some and the
conversion of others of the Spanish Jews to Catholicism. As a result, a large
segment of the Spanish population are of Jewish descent. One of these
descendants of Jews was Francisco Franco Bahamonde (1892-1975), the dictator of
Spain, who dropped his last name (an evident Jewish name). Franco was a great
saint who should be remembered by the Jewish community as one of the few who
saved thousands of Jews during World War II. After the Germans defeated France,
they allowed southern France to be governed by the so-called “Vichy
government” under Pierre Laval. The Jews of southern France were imprisoned in
French run camps but largely allowed to escape into Spain. Once there, they
survived the war despite the demand by Hitler that his ally, Franco, surrender
the Jews to the Gestapo and have them transported to the death camps. Franco
would not allow it. He knew that he himself was of Jewish descent and that
according to Nazi doctrine he would be regarded as having “Jewish blood.”
This year, another event has occurred
in the relationship of Spain to the Jewish people. The current government of
Spain announced on March 19, 2014 that any Jews who could prove that they were
the descendants of the expelled Jews of 1492 could become Spanish citizens, The
Spanish minister of justice, Alberto-Ruiz Galadon, told the world that Spain
wished to “right a historic wrong” against the Jewish people. Galadon said
that those who sought such citizenship would not be required to move to Spain.
Galadon claimed that Spain had the
toughest laws against Holocaust denial and all forms of “anti-Semitism.”
This may be so. Nevertheless, it is important to recognized that at least 150
million of Europe’s 731 million people seek the destruction of Israel and the
slaughter of the 1.5 million Jews still in Europe. As a result, ten percent of
French Jews have already moved to Israel or the United States and others are on
the verge of emigrating from that continent of hate and murder. Shalom u’vracha. Dr. Gerhard Falk is the author of numerous publications, including Assassination, Anarchy, & Terrorism (2012). |