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The Jews of Ibiza and Formentera, During the Holocaust Period There is clear evidence that the Pitiuses Islands (Ibiza and Formentera) have from the earliest times, been regarded as an ideal bolthole in times of danger elsewhere; hence the exceptional ethnological background of the Ibecencos. 1 The Islands seem to have been an inspiration and delight to those of Teutonic origin. With the exception of books published in Spanish or Catalan, there are more descriptive travel works about them in the German language than any other. 2 Therefore it is hardly surprising that the Germans became the most numerous of visitors as easier travelling conditions prevailed and the Islands slowly lost their earlier reputation of being un-welcoming to outsiders. The historian Martin Gilbert has observed that at the termination of the First World War, Spain was the only country in Europe not affording equal civil rights to its Jews. 3 The First Republic in 1868 did introduce the precept of religious tolerance but it took almost a century more before the Fuero de los españoles (1966) gave Spanish Jews the right to maintain houses of worship and institutions. The repeal of the 1492 Edict of Expulsion followed in 1968. During the interim, the only specific Jewish legislation was a decree in December 1924 4 which granted the right of world Sephardim to claim Spanish nationality. This Act was aimed mainly at those then residing in Salonica and Egypt, but was to save many Jews when, a few years later, such documentation was useful as a legal basis for extending Spanish Consular protection in Nazi occupied Europe. It was not the Spanish Goverment's desire for the majority of these people to return to Spain permanently. The Nazis kept a most watchful eye on these Jews, and made every effort to claim them as part of the „Final Solution‟. 5 Nevertheless, between 1933-1936 Spain became a haven for an estimated 3,000 Jewish refugees, the majority of whom left after the 1 Gloria Mound, "Multi-Raciality of the Balearic Isles", Spanish Studies, Special 50th Anniversary Civil War Issue 8,(1986) 31-46. 2 Antonio Costa i Ramon, Fitxes de bibliografía Pitiusa (Eivissa: Consell Insular d”Eivissa i Formentera, 1986). 3 Martin Gilbert, Jewish History Atlas (London: Weidenfeld, 1981), p. 68. 4 Encyclopaedia Judaica, 16 vols (Jerusalem: Keter, 1971-72),XV, 243-5. 5 Bernard Wasserstein, Britain and the Jews of Europe 1939-1945 (Oxford: Institute of Jewish Affairs, 1979)236-37.

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The Jews of Ibiza and Formentera, During the Holocaust Period

There is clear evidence that the Pitiuses Islands (Ibiza and Formentera) have from the

earliest times, been regarded as an ideal bolthole in times of danger elsewhere; hence the

exceptional ethnological background of the Ibecencos.1 The Islands seem to have been an

inspiration and delight to those of Teutonic origin. With the exception of books published in

Spanish or Catalan, there are more descriptive travel works about them in the German

language than any other.2 Therefore it is hardly surprising that the Germans became the most

numerous of visitors as easier travelling conditions prevailed and the Islands slowly lost their

earlier reputation of being un-welcoming to outsiders.

The historian Martin Gilbert has observed that at the termination of the First World

War, Spain was the only country in Europe not affording equal civil rights to its Jews.3 The

First Republic in 1868 did introduce the precept of religious tolerance but it took almost a

century more before the Fuero de los españoles (1966) gave Spanish Jews the right to

maintain houses of worship and institutions. The repeal of the 1492 Edict of Expulsion

followed in 1968. During the interim, the only specific Jewish legislation was a decree in

December 19244 which granted the right of world Sephardim to claim Spanish nationality.

This Act was aimed mainly at those then residing in Salonica and Egypt, but was to save

many Jews when, a few years later, such documentation was useful as a legal basis for

extending Spanish Consular protection in Nazi occupied Europe.

It was not the Spanish Goverment's desire for the majority of these people to return to

Spain permanently. The Nazis kept a most watchful eye on these Jews, and made every

effort to claim them as part of the „Final Solution‟.5 Nevertheless, between 1933-1936 Spain

became a haven for an estimated 3,000 Jewish refugees, the majority of whom left after the

1Gloria Mound, "Multi-Raciality of the Balearic Isles", Spanish Studies, Special 50th Anniversary Civil War

Issue 8,(1986) 31-46. 2Antonio Costa i Ramon, Fitxes de bibliografía Pitiusa (Eivissa: Consell Insular d”Eivissa i Formentera, 1986). 3Martin Gilbert, Jewish History Atlas (London: Weidenfeld, 1981), p. 68. 4Encyclopaedia Judaica, 16 vols (Jerusalem: Keter, 1971-72),XV, 243-5. 5Bernard Wasserstein, Britain and the Jews of Europe 1939-1945 (Oxford: Institute of Jewish Affairs,

1979)236-37.

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Nationalist victory in 1939. Again, after the fall of France, Spain served as a transit to the

high seas for over 20,000 Jews by 1942. Some, lacking funds or papers to carry them on to

Portugal, were imprisoned at Miranda de Ebro, whilst others were sent back over the border,

often with catastrophic results.

These are of course only the registered figures; many arrived by illegal routes,

including the ones used by escaping Allied prisoners of war. Later in the Second World War,

a further 5,600 Jewish refugees came to Spain on short stay papers. Most were destitute and

had great problems in surviving. In the final stages of the Holocaust Spain made a more

positive rescue gesture in Hungary, when she gave out 2,750 protection certificates to non-

Spanish citizens.6

CONNECTIONS WITH MAJORCA 1930-1960

From the inception of the German National Socialist Party's rise to power and

subsequent activity in Spain, Majorca, the controlling Balearic Isle, was earmarked by the

Nazis as a fertile area from which to propagate their doctrines. The most telling

encouragement for this must have been the lengthy history of Jewish persecution in Majorca.

The year 1435 had seen the official cessation of the Jewish Community and the forced

conversion of all remaining Jews. But the general population, feeling that the conversions

amongst this group (henceforth known as Chuetas) had not been totally sincere, had

successfully implemented 500 years of religious discrimination, persecution, and segregation.

As late as the 1960s, no Majorcan priest would officiate at a marriage of a Chueta with a non-

Chueta. Therefore, this section of the Majorcan population in the 1930s was not only Jewish

under the Mosaic Law, it was seen as an ideal, easily definable target, against which the

Nazis, coming to Spain could proceed, comfortable in the knowledge that a large percentage

of Majorcans would be most receptive to Nazi indoctrination and ideology. It should be kept

in mind that Franco was himself Governor of the Balearics for two years prior to 1935. There

6Wasserstein, Britain and the Jews of Europe, p. 140.

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he gained local support, as well as furthering contacts, culminating in promises of German

and Italian assistance for the forthcoming planned uprising.

Thus the basic work of Nazi agents in Majorca in the 1930s was to encourage young

ambitious officials with pro-Nazi leanings. Very active in this respect was the Iberian-

German-American Institute in Hamburg, and the Fichte League. One interesting piece of

correspondence at this period relating to progress in setting up a Spanish Nazi network, is

from Herr Rosenberg, of the German Foreign Political Office: „The best imaginable news

comes from Majorca. There too, feverish work is being done.‟7 One of the main Nazi

manipulators was Baron Von Behr, a former adjutant to the master spy Von Papen, and an

intimate of Goering. He also had an English wife.

On 25 August 1936, Mussolini gave an audience to Edmondo Rossi, one of his

earliest military supporters. Il Duce commanded:

Tomorrow you will leave for Palma... Count Ciano will give you a detailed

disposition. I am counting on you. The work you are undertaking is of

capital importance for the triumph of Latin and Christian civilization,

menanced by the international rabble at Moscow's orders that wants to

Bolshevize the people of the Mediterranean basin.

Mussolini had chosen his man well. Rossi rapidly make his mark. Ordering all church bells

to be rung, he rode down Palma's main streets on a horse. The British Vice Consul reported

back that Majorca was about to become an Italian Protectorate.8 A number of opponents of

Fascism mysteriously disappeared, or were found dead in peculiar circumstances. So positive

was the Fascist influence that nearly all the prime administrative positions in Majorca (and to

a lesser extent in the smaller Isles) were in their hands by the outbreak of hostilities.

Contracts relating to security and fortifications were given to German Nazi companies. Arms

had been smuggled in on the potato boats. Behr came out into the open officially after 20

July 1936, working with Count Rossi who finally took over control completely in the

Balearics, dismissing the Military Governor. The Fascists relied on the German Consul,

7Emile Burns, The Nazi Conspiracy in Spain (London: Gollancz, 1937), pp. 8, 30, 53, 207-8, 213, 224. 8J. Coverdale, Italian Intervention in the Spanish Civil War (Princeton: U.P., 1975), pp. 127-40, 245-7.

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Dede, who carefully investigated the background of all Balearic residents, especially German

non-Party members married to non-Germans, or persons connected with Freemasonry, which

had adherents on all all the Islands.9 Rossi himself, whose real name was Arconovaldo

Bonaccorsi, was a despicable red-bearded womanizer, proud of boasting „that he needed at

least a woman a day‟. His self-styled „Crusades‟ meant rampaging everywhere, sporting his

black shirt decorated with a large white cross. Usually driving around in a racing car, when

there was not even fuel for the starving fishermen to take their boats out, Rossi rarely left a

village or township before dead bodies lay on the ground. Within days of the Italians' arrival

in the Pitiuses, 400 residents whom they saw as Republican sympathizers were rounded up

and shot.10

It was justifiably reckoned by the Fascists that 20% of Majorcans had a high

proportion of Jewish blood in their veins, whilst a further 2% were Chuetas, easily definable

by their seventeen family names. Certainly this group had secret Jewish practices and contact

with outside co-religionists.11 Such data became sinister in 1942 when the Nazis demanded

the latest census lists. Rossi installed local concentration camps for anybody who even

slightly displayed opposition. The remnants of one of the most brutal of such camps can still

be seen in Formentera.12 This isle became the final outpost of Pitiuses‟ opposition to Franco,

the participants mainly consisting of Ibicenco Jews and Freemasons. All suffered most

severely, many with death, for their allegiance to anti-fascism.13

Altogether 50,000 Italian troops came to Spain.14 Majorca became a major

Nationalist naval and military base, used extensively for the then new-style high-level

9Mariano Planells, "La masonería en las Pitiusas", Anuario Ibiza y Formentera, 1987 (Eivissa: Ibosim, 1987);

Ferrari Biloch, "Masonería en las Baleares", Diario de Mallorca ,1936. 10Gabriel Jackson, The Spanish Republic and The Civil War 1931-1939, 3rd edition (Princeton: U.P., 1972),

pp. 303-304. 11See Baruch Braustein, Chuetas of Majorca (Columbia: U.P., 1936); Angela Selke, Conversos of Majorca

(Jerusalem: Magnes Press, 1986); Ezriel Carlebach, Exotisch Juden (Berlin: Heine Bund & Welt-Verlag 1932);

Joachim Prinz, The Secret Jews (London: Vallentine, 1973), p. 168. 12Ministry of Justice Archives, Jerusalem. 13See Alumnes de COU de l‟IB Santa María d‟Eivissa, La Guerra Civil a Eivissa i Formentera ,Collecciò Nit

de Sant Joan (Eivissa; Instituto d‟Estudis Eivissencs, 1985); José Juis Gordillo Courcieres, Formentera: historia

de una isla (Valencia: Albatros,1981), pp. 279-94. 14Jackson: The Spanish Republic and The Civil War.

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bombing night attacks. Barcelona, Alicante, and Valencia, were the victims of the Palma

based Fascist aviators, testing out their weapons and methods for what was to follow in

World War Two15.

Georges Bernanos, a local Catholic writer of French origin, wrote in A Diary of My

Times, that between September 1936 and March 1937 3,000 Majorcans died. The Italian

Consul reported (26 March 1937) his calculation that of that total 1,750 were citizens of

Palma. The Consul summarized:

In the Balearic Islands, on the Red side and the Nationalist, all concept of

the value of human life has been lost. In the Nationalists‟ favour there is

the fact that their executions in August and September were a reaction to

the massacres begun by the other side in Ibiza and Formentera, and

Minorca, directed by the necessity of preventing the subversive elements

from joining up with the Red Militia that have disembarked at Porto Cristo

[on the north coast of Majorca].

I have no specific information that any Jewish members of the International Brigade

ever reached Ibiza. However, from the well-documented book, British Volunteers for Liberty

1936-39, by Bill Alexander,16 the following should be noted.

Nat Cohen, and Sam Masters, two Stepney Jewish Communist garment

workers, were cycling to Barcelona to attend a Workers‟ Olympiad,

arranged as a defiant gesture against the racial tone of the about to start

Berlin Olympics. Arriving at the Spanish border as the Franco-inspired

rebellion was announced, they helped to form a militia, and set sail with

their bicycles for the defence of Majorca.

It is at least possible that Bill Alexander‟s reference to „Majorca‟ belongs to that regrettable,

but persistent loose usage of that term which has throughout the centuries clouded historical

facts in this part of the Mediterranean. At the start of the Civil War, the island of Majorca,

not surprisingly, came out in support of Franco. In Ibiza and Formentera the military did

likewise, but by contrast with Majorca, did not have the support of the majority of Ibicencos,

who gave the heartiest of support to the 4,000 Republican troops sent to the Pitiuses to

15Claude E. Bowers, My Mission to Spain: Watching the Rehearsal for World War Two (New York: Golanz,

1954), p. 375; Carlton Hayes, Journey to Spain (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1945). 16Bill Alexander, British Volunteers for Liberty 1936-39 (London: Lawrence and Wishart, 1982), p. 51.

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restore law and order. According to Elliot Paul these troops were later bolstered by „400 FAI

and Communist Volunteers from other countries‟17. Both these combatant groups were

among the troops used in the later ill-fated expedition to reclaim the island of Majorca for the

Republicans, on which we have notice of Cohen and Masters once more. So it would seem

very probable that Masters and Cohen did indeed come to the smaller Balearics first before

embarking for Majorca at the time of the Porto Cristo landings.18

That episode was to prove a fatal one for the course of the war in the Islands. Mis-

interpretation as to the strength of the bridgehead at Porto Cristo caused a change of strategy

which in retrospect both Majorcans and Republicans were to regret. The former were afraid

that the Bayo contingent from Ibiza, which landed on August 16th, with its strong communist

back-up would stay and bring this style of left-wing government to the Islands, something the

ever commercially minded Majorcans feared. Franco‟s Nationalist rebels panicked,

mistakenly believing that Bayo was in great strength and declared that they could not retain

the Island after being bombed by the Republicans from the mainland. Whereupon one of the

most eminent Majorcans, the banker Juan March (who all his life dallied with opposing sides

for his own gain), took action, in concert with his two sons, making a request that later they

were bitterly to regret. They asked the Italians to send a „military advisor‟. Initially six sea

planes were sent on August 19th, after the Italian Consul Abraham Facchi had demanded and

received a deposit of 3 million lire.19 Then there were misgivings, some, perhaps, harking

back to the family‟s Jewish lineage. Juan March Junior declared that he was not a Falangist,

and did not want that party to dominate Majorcan life. But it was too late. By September

11th Rossi could boast that the Falange now reigned supreme.20

In later years, according to Claude Bowers, American Ambassador to Spain from

1933 to 1939 and his Second World War successor Carlton Hayes, Franco was expected to

17Elliot Paul, Life and Death of a Spanish Town (New York: Random House, 1937), p. 385. Minorca remained

in Republican hands until almost the end of the Civil War. 18Alexander British Volunteers for Liberty states that both men fought with Spanish units after the retreat from

Majorca. Masters died at Brunete in July 1937; Cohen returned to the U.K with a leg-wound. 19See Robert W. Kern, ed., Historical Dicionary of Modern Spain 1700-1988 (New York: Greenwood, 1990),

pp. 320-21. 20See the Italian Foreign Ministry file in Politica. Min.Spagna, Rome. .

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show appreciation. His pro-German Foreign Minister and brother-in-law, Suñer, pressed him

to enter the War. Franco retorted that his price was French Morocco, to which it is said

Hitler remarked that France, even under Axis domination, would never stand for it. There

was further badgering by the Italian Ambassador, Paulucci, to the effect that Franco should

show more positive gratitude for Civil War support. Requests went out to permit the

Balearics to become an official Axis base. It has to be recognized that Franco showed

courage in his refusal.

It is to the Ibencencos‟ eternal credit that when the Nazis constantly enquired in Ibiza

as to whom was of Jewish stock, the information was repeatedly refused. This was

confirmed to me by a leading Ibizan citizen, Señor Antonio Matutes, brother of Foreign

Secretary Abel Matutes. Both descendants of the famous Jewish family of Motut that

practised Judaism in Ibiza until the Civil War. Antonio‟s father was, I understand, actually

present at some of these meetings with the German S.S. The Germans, of course, had a far

more difficult task to discern the Jews in Ibiza and Formentera, because in these two islands

there was no distinctly Chueta grouping as in Majorca. Neither was there any public archival

documentation of local names of Jewish origin until my own researches some half a century

later.21 Nevertheless, some Chuetas from Majorca did have businesses in Ibiza in the 1930s

and must have been at great risk of being identified.

The Spanish Civil War finished in the spring of 1939 and within a few months the

Second World War had begun. What proportion of the total number of refugees from that

war who crossed the Spanish border were Jews will never be known for certain. Sir Samuel

Hoare, British Ambassador in Madrid, reported in 1940 that the camp at Miranda del Ebro,

built originally to accommodate 700, „was holding 3,000 - a veritable Noah‟s Ark of every

species of refugee‟.22 Of those who came by ship from Southern France, Italy or North

Africa, legally or illegally landing in Ibiza and Formentera, the total is, likewise

irrecoverable.

21See Gloria Mound, “Apellidos ibecencos de origen judío” (series), Ultima Hora, 2nd August - 22nd

November 1986. 22Wasserstein, Britain and the Jews of Europe, p. 140.

- 8 -

This was a period of severe economic problems and increased isolation for the

islanders. There was a chronic shortage of all types of fuel, something that brought the

Spanish national airline to a virtual standstill.23 This had implications for air intelligence in

the area. The only other countries with Spanish routes were Germany and Italy - a state of

affairs that continued until quite late in the War. It is recorded that it was a German plane, on

7 November 1942, flying 80 miles south of Ibiza at 04.40 hours which first sighted the Allied

convoy steaming towards Oran. The sighting was not initially reported until remarked upon

in a signal picked up by the Italian navy some three and half hours later.24

Allied diplomats based in Madrid between 1939 and 1945 were themselves without a

speedy method of exit, and this led them eventually to give the Spanish Government its

sorely needed aviation fuel. But once the Allied landings started in North Africa a stern

proviso by the donors banned any Balearic Island flights, as they would be over the path of

Allied troop movements. The angry Nazis made the empty threat to occupy the American

and British Consulates in Palma in retaliation for the closing of the airports.25

HOLOCAUST REFUGEES IN IBIZA

One of the earliest Jewish refugees to step ashore in Ibiza was the writer and artist, Will

Faber. Born in Saarbrucken in 1901, he and his wife Emma (née Kaiser) reached the island

in 1934, having first spent time in Barcelona. This couple (who, it is reported tried initially

to hide their Jewish identity) were until Faber‟s death in 1987 among the leading lights of the

vibrant Ibicenco intellectual scene.26

It seems the philosopher and literary critic Walter Benjamin was an even earlier

arrival, but here was a man who whilst fiercely left wing, was no less openly intensive about

23See Hayes, Journey to Spain , pp. 119-49. 24David Kahn, Hitler’s Spies (New York: Macmillan, 1978), p. 477. 25Kahn, Hitler’s Spies, ibid. 26Miquel Pescè Vich, Diccionari Biográfic de les Pitiuses, (Eivissa: Ibosim, 1986), I, 31.

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his Jewishness. 27 Born in 1892, he disagreed so forcibly with German policy in the First

World War that he decamped until 1920. He began working with Berthold Brecht in 1929,

but with the upsurge of Nazism departed from Berlin for a brief visit to Ibiza on June 25th

1932, returning there again from February to October 1933. Benjamin himself has recorded

that he found the island enchanting. It seems both incredible and sad that a man of such

intelligence, being already acquainted with the island‟s almost primitive isolation at that

period, should have made so little provision for a longer sojourn. His eventual flight there

was in haste and fear. This lack of pre-planning affected him badly and certainly made his

stay, devoid of the cultural environment that he had left behind, more difficult. Walter

Benjamin lived initially in the unhappy household of two friends (who were also possibly

Jewish) Hans Jacob Noeggerath and his wife.28 Later Benjamin found himself forced to

move. The more active cultural scene in Ibiza town was beyond his means, so he decamped

to a rural fonda, paying a peseta a day.29 He lived there in severe financial straits,

undernourished, constantly receiving belated news of his family‟s sufferings in Germany,

where a number of them had been arrested.30 He also experienced visa problems with the

German Consul in Palma, being marked for his Jewishness and politics. He wrote to

Gershom Scholem at the time that in cases such as his own the Consul was keeping the

passports and giving excuses not to return them. Without earnings, very sick from a leg

injury that would not heal because of lack of money for medical attention, to say nothing of

his visa problems, Walter Benjamin made the fateful decision that France would be a better

place, opting to join his friend Brecht in Paris.

27Encyclopaedia Judaica, IV, 530-31; José María Valverde, “Fascinación de Walter Benjamin”, Anuario Ibiza

y Formentera, 1989 (Eivissa: Ibosim, 1989), 131-40. 28According to Pescè Vich Noeggerath died as a very young man in Ibiza in 1935 after a number of years

researching the customs of the islanders (Diccionari Biográfic, II, 134). He is buried in San Antonio. 29Gershom Scholem, Walter Benjamin - Story of a Friendship, trans. Harry Zohn (Philadelphia: Jewish

Publications Society of America, 1981), pp. 80, 181-84, 189, 196; Correspondance of Walter Benjamin and

Gershom Scholem, 1932-1940, edited by Gershom Scholem (New York: Schocken, 1989), pp. xxxvii, 12, 40,

60, 94, 183. 30His brother George died in Mauthausen in 1942 (International Biographical Dictionary of Central European

Emigrés 1933-1945 (New Providence: Saur, 1985)p. 80); for the terrible conditions there see Encyclopaedia

Judaica, II, 1136. In 1941, ten thousand Spanish Republicans (including Jews from the Pitiuses) arrived there,

after being handed over by the Vichy government in France. One year later only 1500 remained alive. See also

documentation in Leo Baeck Library, New York.

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The outbreak of the Second World War meant that, as a German living in France, he

suffered a short French internment. Upon the onslaught on the French capital, he fled in the

company of others to the south of France. Thanks to a friend, Fredrich Pollock, he received a

U.S. emergency visa, but this was not adequate in such times. He crossed over illegally into

Spain at Port Bou, without the vital official French Emigration/Transit certificates. Almost

certainly there would have been trouble boarding a train to the faraway Portuguese ports,

even if he had not been detected by the police. In his perilous situation Walter Benjamin may

possibly have contemplated making for Ibiza, where he still had friends. His presence aboard

a small vessel sailing from Barcelona or some other Catalan port might not have raised too

many questions. But all hopes for the future seemed aborted when the police chief

announced his intention to send him back over the French border the next day. Walter

Benjamin committed suicide on the 27 September 1940 at Port Bou where he now lies

buried. Today his writings, including those executed in the Balearics are more highly thought

of than ever.

Arriving in Ibiza under similar conditions was the Munich-born architect Erwin

Bronner (Heilbronner) who initially stayed only three years in Ibiza, until 1937, when the

political situation made residence there impossible. He departed with his wife Giselda to

Hollywood, where he, too, worked with Brecht, becoming an America citizen. However,

with the upsurge of McCarthyism he returned to his beloved Ibiza in 1959. Erwin Bronner‟s

main desire was to paint, but he became involved in the reconstruction of Ibicenco buildings.

There has been nobody since who matched his ability to make the unique Ibicenco traditional

style comfortable for modern living. For the remaining eleven years of his life Erwin

Bronner applied the architectural visions that he had carried with him in the years abroad to

the adaptation of the old typical Ibicenco house to meet modern needs. Without doubt times

were hard then for him, but to this day people mention with amazement that Erwin Bronner

designed the Ibiza house of Schilliger, the ex-Nazi fighter ace. In his architectural

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endeavours Bronner had another talented Jewish colleague in similar circumstances, Raoul

Hausmann. Both these men were to receive the highest Spanish honours in later years.31

Of the Jewish expatriates who reached Ibiza in the years immediately after the Second

World War, most were writers and artists. One who is still fondly remembered is the

Bohemian Ernest Ehrenfelt (born in Berlin in 1910), a survivor of the concentration camps

who arrived in Ibiza in 1953. When he died in 1978 he willed the value of his considerable

estate to the orphans of Ibiza. Two other arrivals at this period were the famous Israeli artist

Simona Baram, and his equally gifted wife Bella Brisel. Upon their discovery of the Pitiuses

Islands, Baram insisted that it was only in Formentera that he could work, notwithstanding

that his themes were nearly always of his people and of Israel.32 He had volunteered for the

British Army in World War Two and had put that experience to good use in 1947 as an active

member of the Israeli underground, awaiting the emergence of the state‟s independence.

Between such military commitments the interim years were spent teaching and studying art

and agriculture.

The Barams stayed initially without visas (Israel at that time not having any

diplomatic links with Spain). It was Vicente Escandell, chief of the Secret Police, who

helped them. Baram became exceptionally beloved by the countryfolk. In those days the tiny

eight by three miles island was far more barren. Baram with his Israeli agricultural

experience pondered the problems of the island‟s farmers: the shortage of water and shade,

and the sudden high winds. The blessings of trees in Israel convinced Baram of the need for

similar measures, but the local folk were exceptionally sceptical from previous failures with

Spanish horticultural strains. On visits to Israel Baram brought back no less than 3,000

seedlings, mainly eucalyptus, many of which he lovingly tended himself. Today their

flourishing boughs can be seen all over the island, whilst in the isolated Baram homestead

there are still the most exquisite mosaics, mostly on Jewish themes.

31See the entry in International Bibliographical Dictionary, p. 80; also Gloria Mound, “Ibiza Architecture...

Art of the Cube”, Balearic Living /Casas Vidas, 12, April/May 1988, 26-33. 32See Who’s Who in World Jewry, ed. I.J.C. Karpman, (New York: Pitman, 1972), pp. 55,133

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Baram died suddenly in August 1980 and his embalmed body was given the first

officially permitted Jewish burial on the Island for 500 years. Senator Abel Matutes imparted

to me how very proud he had been to carry out all the necessary formalities that were still

required in the days of Franco. The funeral cortege for Baram de los Arbols, as he was

affectionately known, stretched for three miles. In such instances the Jewish refugees not

only took help from the Ibicencos, but contributed in their turn to improving the quality of

life in the Islands. Two years later Bela took Baram‟s body for re-burial on the Mount of

Olives, dying herself by Suicide in Jerusalem only a few days afterwards.

Another family fleeing from Nazi persecution were the Hanauers from Lingen in

Lower Saxony, who arrived in 1934. They consisted of two middle-aged bachelors, Hugo

and Alfred, accompanied by their five spinster sisters, remnants of an even larger family of

eleven children.33 From 1936 extreme right-wing influences ruled the Spanish Catholic

church. Excepting Spanish Morocco, attendance at Mass was compulsory. Prior to Easter

1937 a decree was issued in Palma that all parishioners in the Balearics had to fill in forms

stating where, when, and how they had fulfilled their Easter religious obligations. The fear

that was suddenly rampant can be shown by the fact that such measures one year before had

only produced a 14% compliance, yet in 1937 it was nearly 100%.34 The Ibiza Town mayor,

Ferrer, who was himself of an ancient Ibicenco Jewish family, felt that a formal mass family

baptism would be prudent for the Hanauers as without such religious documents licences to

function commercially were refused. (It was the same Mayor Ferrer who a few years later

was to stand up to the Gestapo, and in his mayoral capacity refuse to sign papers for the

expulsion of refugees from the Island, or to identify those of Jewish ancestry.) The mayor of

San Antonio, and Ibiza‟s own deputy mayor, Vicente Escandell Planells (1865-1941), father

of the future chief of the Secret Police, stood as godfathers at the baptism of Hugo and Alfred

33Ministry of Justice Archives, Jersualem. 34See Jackson, The Spanish Republic and The Civil War, p. 422; also Bernanos, A Diary of

y Times, pp. 141-43.

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Hanauer.35 The Hanauers had opened a restaurant, Alfredo‟s, in Ibiza Town, which is there

to this day, but the family continued to feel threatened. Strong anti-Semitic influences

abounded, especially from Palma.36 So the Hanauers were forced to sell, believing, as the

Gestapo presence became more marked, that their lack of residence permits made deportation

certain. In the last years of his life Hugo was to write to the Israeli Embassy in Germany of

those terrible times, and how he himself was taken to the concentration camp in Formentera

at the instigation of the German Consul. Finally after a few months, with help from

influential friends like the Matutes and Escandells who gave the family accommodation, he

was freed and taken to where the remainder of the family were managing to hide.37

It is only in the past few years becoming known to what extent the Escandells,

typically for Ibicencos, went against the edicts of Palma and Madrid: helping the many

stateless refugees to continue residing on the islands; issuing papers when it was in their

power to do so; on other occasions finding get-away vessels and local hide-aways. It is not

known if father and son ever divulged to the refugees their Jewish lineage. The police chief‟s

wife, Juanita (herself from the Madrid marrano family of Montero) and their only child Lena

proudly bore the knowledge. They told me that Vicente (a member of the Ibicenco Jewish

group that met each Saturday afternoon in Ibiza town)38 become overwhelmed with the plight

of the Jews when, prior to being made the local police chief, he had worked on the trains at

the Franco-Spanish frontier, experiencing at first hand the plight of fleeing refugees.39 Later,

as police inspector in Madrid, he was privy to papers emanating from the American, British,

and German Embassies. In this context, the remarks made by the British Ambassador, Sir

35Vicente Escandell‟s Jewishness is confirmed by Israel Cohen, Travels in Jewry (London: Methuen, 1952), pp.

347-49. Dr. Cohen, vice-President of the Board of Deputies of British Jews, was told of the secret Judaism of

the then head of the Ibiza secret police during a visit to the Jewish community of Barcelona in that year. 36For relevant experiences of Walter Benjamin and Hugo Hanauer see their published correspondence and

private papers in, e.g. Ministry of Justice Archives, Jerusalem; Gershon Scholen Library, University of

Jerusalem; Leo Baeck Library, New York. 37Ministry of Justice Archives, Jerusalem. 38Cohen, Travels in Jewry (above, n. 35). 39See Wasserstein, Britain and the Jews of Europe, pp. 140, 176, 184-85, 194-97; also Encyclopaedia Judaica,

XV, 243-47. Cf., too, the story of Walter Benjamin‟s last days.

- 14 -

Samuel Hoare in a letter sent to Eleanor Rathbone M.P. in May 1943 seem particularly

relevant:

The problem of refugees in Spain is inextricably connected with the

problem of escaping prisoners of war, and with the secret activities of this

mission. The Gestapo is around us at every turn, complicating and

attempting to frustrate our efforts, and the Spanish government, even when

they wish to show good will, are terrified of the German Army on the

Pyrennees‟ frontier.40

Hugo Hanauer‟s papers in the Jerusalem Archives confirm that some Jews escaped by

boat to Gibraltar, but his family decided to accept their stalwart friends‟ offer and go into

hiding in a remote finca belonging to the Escandells. Towards the end of the War the

Hanauers re-appeared on the Island. The family were in very straitened circumstances; yet -

apparently aware of the potential of San Antonio as a future tourist centre - they grasped at

the chance for their survival. By now well into middle age, the Hanauers (sisters as well as

brothers) literally took rocks from the seashore and with their bare hands started to build a

bungalow-style hotel, called La Playa. Within a short time it had become a home and a

viable business.41 But to locals it was always Casa Jueus („the Jews‟ House‟) In later years,

as the Hanauers grew too frail to work, long serving employees (judging by their family

names, themselves of Jewish descent) took on the task of nursing them. In the late 1970 the

last survivors sold their hotel for development, and began giving thought to what was going

to happen to their not inconsiderable estate. The family‟s attitude to their conversion is

illustrated by Alfred who, just before his death in 1965, wrote explaining with considerable

bitterness to the Israeli Consul in Germany, how there had been another brother Leopold who

in Frankfurt had married a Christian woman twenty six years younger than himself. Alfred‟s

wish to disinherit his only nephew Rudolph was disregarded when, by 1980 only Hugo and

Elsa remained alive - they were to die within three weeks of each other in 1981 - and

instructions were put in hand between Israel, Germany, and lawyers in Madrid for the

distribution of their estate: the State of Israel was to be the main beneficiary but with a

40Wasserstein, p. 206. 41Ministry of Justice Archives, Jerusalem.

- 15 -

portion for Rudolph. I have confirmation that this was achieved, both from the special legal

department of the Israel Ministry of Justice, set up specifically to deal with such matters, and

locally, from the London-born Jewish artist Sara Nechamkin, an Ibiza resident of some thirty

years‟ standing. In 1980, her taxi-driver husband picked up an airport fare requesting the

residence of Hugo Hanauer. The passenger introduced himself as a French notary who had

been sent on behalf of the Israeli Government to arrange the transfer of 40 million pesetas (at

that period, not far short of a quarter of a million pounds) which a dying German refugee

wished to leave to Israel.

The Hanauers became exceptionally friendly with another family who were in a

similar plight to themselves - the Grunwalds.42 Isadore and Sidonie Grunwald, natives of

Hungary, had first come to Barcelona, in 1914, fleeing from the threat to Paris posed by an

earlier German aggression.43 How or why they were living there at the outbreak of the First

World War is unclear, but family papers show that this was where they married in 1919, and

where their first child Marcel died in infancy. During the Grunwalds‟ sojourn in Barcelona,

the couple opened a successful jewellery business. A daughter, Mercedes, was born in 1917,

followed by a son, Jorge, in 1924. But tragedy struck again. In 1929 Sidonie, who seems to

have been the mainstay of the business, died. Isadore found it impossible to carry on, selling

out in 1932. Seeing the storm clouds gathering in Central Europe, Isadore decided to bring

his two motherless children to Ibiza.

At the commencement of their Balearic sojourn the little family were exceptionally

rich. Isadore (who had a great aptitude for languages and loved to study) deposited all his

money in the local Banco de las Baleares Bank . In 1935 the bank failed and the family

became almost destitute overnight. Taking into account his capabilities and widowed state,

Isadore took a post as an English teacher in the local Catholic seminary. Determined to

integrate his children as much as possible and, perhaps, in view of the local Nazi situation at

42I am indebted to Jorge Grunwald who, together with his wife Fernanda, gave me access to all the family

papers in their possession as well as the benefit of their openmindedness (a rarity when dealing with the islands),

plus their excellent memories. This enabled me to piece together not only the Grunwald unique family history,

but a far fuller picture of conditions in the Balearic Isles from the early thirties onwards. 43Adam Feinstein, “Emerging from the Shadows”, Jewish Chronicle, 11 April 1986.

- 16 -

that period, in well-founded fear for his livelihood, Isadore never alluded to any Jewish

origins in conversations with his children. When in anecdotal mood he would relate that

their grandfather had been a famous man who had sat at the table of royalty, but he never

alluded to that for which he was famous , except to say that Grandpa Grunwald had been

capable of conversing fluently in twelve languages and had died young. After World War

Two Isidore told them that their mother‟s brothers now lived in Manchester U.K. and had

anglicized their name to Miller. Isadore Grunwald‟s past pupils and neighbours have all

informed me that they guessed his lineage, and were frequently afraid for him and his family

who now lived in a tiny dilapidated house up in the old city. Memories of Isadore are of his

being very independent - a man who could relate better to his pupils and few friends than he

did to his young family, born when he was into middle life, the sole responsibility for which

weighed heavily upon him. Later, when Jorge lost an eye, playing around with a soldier‟s

gun, he was sent away to a right-wing church school on the mainland.

By the year following the bank crash the miseries of the Civil War were upon all the

inhabitants of the Baleares. Soon the people of Ibiza were starving. The food shortages were

exacerbated by successive military occupations. The original 4,000 Republican troops sent to

quell the pro-Franco rebellion in the Old City eventually departed for the abortive battle for

Majorca. They left the Island to 400 International FAI Anarchists and Communists. The

Anarchist tendency, dominant among them, did not believe in commissioned officers.

Soldiers made off with whatever goods they could see, leaving worthless receipts as

payment.44 At this stage (13 September 1936) Franco bombed the island with four planes.

This induced some jubilation amongst the pro-Franco prisoners held in the Ibiza citadel, and

obviously unaware that it was not military targets that were being obliterated, but the lives of

fifty-five Ibicencos. (Forty-two were women or children under ten years old.) The

undisciplined, taunted guards reacted mercilessly, shooting down all the one hundred

prisoners. Before their departure a group rushed the local clinic, took the banker Abel

Matutes, (grandfather of the Foreign Secretary), from his sick bed and shot him too. All

44Paul, Life and Death of a Spanish Town, pp. 335-40.

- 17 -

these events took place a few yards from the Grunwald home. Later there was terrible

retaliation by Rossi, when 400 Republicans were shot down in the same area, amongst them

many local Jews and Freemasons.

Thirty six hours after the air raid the German destroyer Die Falke lay at anchor

alongside the waterfront, offering a last chance for those with foreign passports to leave.

Desperately hungry, Isadore walked with his children to the port and demanded to be taken

before the captain. Welcomed aboard the destroyer, the children were amazed to hear their

father speak German and to see him obviously accepted as a German himself. For the next

twenty five years, Jorge Grunwald believed, on this evidence that he and his family were

Aryans. Like the captain, he was surprised to hear his father refuse rescue. Isadore explained

that he had come on board to beg for food. A sack of flour, vegetables, canned meats, and

butter, were produced. The little family were sent away with the greatest civility. Isadore did

not keep all the food for himself but shared it with neighbours. Word went around about the

teacher of English who had suddenly spoken German and found food. The Ibicencos love to

give nicknames to anybody accepted as one of themselves. From then onwards, Isadore

Grunwald was known as Muller/Butter - (Flour and Butter). Subsequently it was to be his

code-name when he became one of the heads of the underground anti-Nazi groups.45

The Italian occupation began in September 1936. These bullying tyrants stayed the

longest, until the end of the Civil War. In October the Axis formally recognized Franco and

his Falange Party as the Government, beginning the most dangerous period of all for the

Jews.46 Whilst the Italians were quickly ousted at the end of the Civil War, the Gestapo‟s

hold continued. They strutted the streets of the Islands with arrogant demands, confident that

they would soon be the complete rulers of the whole country. The Axis fleets were also

much in evidence in the ports of Palma and Ibiza. Count Ciano wrote in his diary in

September 1937. „We are shifting from the role of torpedo launchers,... which has been

45Ministry of Justice Archives, Jerusalem (Hanover file). 46James Cleugh, The Spanish Fury (London: Harrap, 1962), pp. 99, 142.

- 18 -

allotted to us, to that of Mediterranean policemen‟.47 Much that went on in the Islands has to

be understood as relating to these strategic ambitions.

THE DEUTSCHLAND

At the start of the Spanish Civil War the major European powers adopted a stance of

neutrality. This attitude became farcical as Britain and France and at times Russia too played

into the hands of Germany and Italy to enable the Nationalist forces of Franco ultimately to

gain the upper hand. In April 1937 the Non-Intervention Committee inaugurated a scheme to

implement their ideas on the high seas. The British and French navies would patrol coasts

held by the Nationalists, whilst the Axis powers would patrol the Republican coastal areas as

„neutrals‟.

The Republican Government in Valencia saw no reason to recognize the Committee‟s

somewhat arbitrary arrangements when clearly Italy and Germany were giving aid to Franco‟s

insurrection, warning that they felt free to attack Axis warships if they were within Spanish

territorial waters.48 On 29 May 1937, the battleship Deutschland was at anchor in the

shadow of Ibiza‟s ancient formidable fortress. There are conflicting stories as to what

happened next, but certain facts are clear. Republican planes from Valencia, armed with

bombs, flew overhead. Recent information from the Soviet General Osipenko giving

information as to Russian Jewish participation, lists a General Yarkov Smushkevich, as

senior military Adviser to the Republican Air Force. The controversy is as to whether the

bombs were dropped first or whether the Deutschland opened fire first, but there ensued

extensive damage, and casualties both to the batleship and crew and to the long suffering

Ibicencos.

47See Kahn, Hitler’s Spies, pp. 96-97 for details and support given to the manufacture of torpedos by the

Spanish King Alfonso XIII and the Primo de Rivera dictatorship in the 1920s; also for the industry‟s close links

with the S.S. network, through its head, Canaris, who himself had much practical experience in such matters.

See also P. Broué, The Revolution and Civil War in Spain (London: Faber, 1972), p. 489. 48Jackson, The Spanish Republic and The Civil War, p. 424.

- 19 -

Germany decided to make a swift reprisal and glean all possible profit from the

incident. Two days later the city of Almería was bombarded by the battleship Admiral

Schneer aided by two destroyers. Many believed that this admitted retaliation was only a

prelude to World War. A prompt and violent Republican answer, with Western democratic

support, was expected at any moment. The Republican Minister of Defence, Prieto, favoured

bombing the German Mediterranean fleet as the only hope of saving the Republic. (Certainly

had such events transpired World War Two would have had a completely different scenario,

and many European Jews would have been saved) But the Germans and Italians stormed out

of the Non-Intervention Committee meeting and nothing further was done. Count Ciano

gleefully recorded in his diary: „Four Russian or Red ships sunk, one Greek captured. One

Spanish bombed and damaged, forced to seek refuge in French Port. OBJECT: blockade of

the Republicans. The full Franco-Russo-British Orchestra. The theme: Piracy in the

Mediterranean. GUILTY: The Fascists.‟49

The New York Herald Tribune gave the casualties in Ibiza following from the

Deutschland incident as 24 dead and 72 injured. Thus the totally inadequate and already

overstretched medical facilities of Ibiza were again in a sorry state and every able-bodied

person was roped in to assist. The injured German sailors were brought off the ship to the

tiny Red Cross clinic, but nobody there spoke German. Suddenly, Isadore Grunwald‟s

previous prowess with the language was remembered and he was sent for. Jorge Grunwald

recalls the period with the greatest clarity. His father, for the first time, left the children, not

returning for three days. When he came, he carried a sailor‟s hat-band, a high-ranking Iron

Cross, and a commendation from the captain of the Deutschland. The children showed, as

was natural, a desire to play with the two former items, but Isadore was adamant in refusal,

and they witnessed what was to them then totally inexpliable: Isadore proceeded to destroy

the sailor‟s hat-band and the Iron Cross depositing the remains, with considerable difficulty,

down the family‟s very primitive toilet. But when it came to the commendation, this Isadore

put away most carefully. The knowledge that his father was so well considered by the

49The Private Diaries of Count Giano ( , 1947).

- 20 -

Germans was in the next few years to be a source of great pride to Jorge, who never reached a

close rapport with his father. Isadore continued to the end of his days in Ibiza, teaching at the

seminary. His constant friend and confidant was the Pitiuses‟ main historian and priest,

whom we know today to have been the secret ministering Rabbi to the Jews there; Isadoro

Macabich Llobet.

The elder Grunwald child, Mercedes, became very wild, unmanageable, at times

unbalanced.. At his boarding school Jorge showed great aptitude for electronics, and this was

nurtured. At a young age he designed the sound system for Ibiza‟s first international airport.

In 1947, he left Ibiza, taking up an appointment in a similar capacity at American bases on

the Spanish mainland. Whilst working there in 1960 (by which time he had been married for

ten years) Jorge received news that his father was desperately ill. Isadore died on 15 March

1960. Jorge arrived too late, to find that the seminary had already completed all the funeral

arrangements. (The islanders bury within twenty four hours, as is the Jewish custom.)

Isadore‟s resting place is at the cemetery at Figueretas outside Ibiza Town. After the funeral

Jorge went through his father‟s papers. His main concern was to find the commendation

from the captain of the Deutschland, but it was no longer there. Instead to his amazement

there were papers granting Isadore Grunwald full Spanish citizenship, a feat achieved trhough

the good offices of the local Police Chief, Vicente Escandell. But it was the closer inspection

of his father‟s papers that brought Jorge Grunwald his most terrible trauma. There was an

assortment of old certificates and photos, many from over half a century previously, relating

to his parents, and what indisputably seemed to be his grandparents. Photos included one of

a man who looked like a robed Rabbi and another of a London tombstone, with the clearest

engraved inscription. On the reverse side of the photo was a very personal message to his

father. More in horror than amazement he saw that his parental grandfather had been no less

than Moritz Grunwald, Chief Rabbi of Bulgaria, who had died in London in 1895, aged 42.

The Rabbi had left a widow and five young children, the eldest of whom, it now seemed, had

been Jorge‟s father. Suddenly Isadore‟s guarded remarks about a famous grandfather, so

often heard in childhood, made horrifying sense, but it was a situation with which Jorge was

- 21 -

totally unable to come to terms for a number of years. To Jorge‟s surprise his wife, Fernanda

López, showed no upset. She saw it as being her opportunity to confess that maternally she

too was of Madrid marrano parentage. Her Republican family had come to Ibiza during the

Civil War, whilst her own father had been imprisoned. Presumably this is but a further

instance of how the local church authorities in Ibiza protected Jewish families, whether local

or incoming. Paradoxically, from its sheltering wing, Isadore Grunwald found it possible to

desist from conversion.

Amongst the more modern items among Jorge‟s father‟s papers there was an

assortment of photos and letters from his mother‟s) family, David (Otto) Miller of 27,

Victoria Road, Whally Range, Manchester. It would seem from the correspondence that it

had been from this source that Isadore had kept in touch, and received news of Sidonie

Grunwald‟s other brothers, William and Heindrich. Sadly it took so long for Jorge to come

to terms with his new identity that by the time he did so, the Manchester family had moved

away.50 Looking back today on his attitudes and actions of 1960 causes Jorge considerable

stress. His one aim in life as he nears retirement is to find his family. He is a local Professor

of Electronics. Jorge and Fernanda became one of the leading members of the Jewish

Cultural Group which I helped to found. Fernanda does her utmost to keep Jewish fesitvals,

wears a Magan David around her neck, but sadly concurs that her children and grandchildren

have been told too little, too late about their Jewish antecedents. The only daughter has

married into one of the old Jewish families of Ibiza, whilst the eldest son held a high position

in Spain‟s national airline in the Canaries,but was cut down with a fatal illness in the late

80s.. The youngest son is in the Spanish Navy.51

For the years following 1945, we have many reports of Jewish arrivals in the Islands

in the aftermath of wartime horrors.52 But Jews of Balearic origin who stayed on in the

50The Photo Archive Department, Beth Hatefutsoth, Tel Aviv hold copies of these photographs and papers, in

addition to 300 others relating to the Jews of Ibiza and Formentera. 51He is also the author of a book of short stories: Jorge Grunwald, Cuentos (Ibiza: 1984); the volume also

contains a brief history of Ibiza Airport. 52See M. Planells, Tanit y las Niñas de Purpurina (Palma: 1981); Secretos de Ibiza (Barcelona: 1982); La

senda de los elefantes(Palina: 1980); Anuario Ibiza y Formentera, 1982, 1986, 1987 and 1989. There are

reports that illegal immigrant ships (e.g. Aliyah Bet) bound for Israel called at the Islands for supplies and were

most kindly received.

- 22 -

Islands after the Civil War kept less and less Jewish practices and outwardly showed an

affinity to Catholicism not seen in all the earlier centuries. It was extremly difficult in the

Franco years to survive without Baptism papers. With the long term rigorous imprisonment

and deaths of the Pitiuses‟ mainly anti-clerical Freemasons there was much fear and little

social co-existence between the newcomers, and the Jewish families, except guardedly

amongst the cafe society of writers and artists.53

Ibiza and Formentera were never forgiven by Franco for their opposition to him. In

consequence, when money became available for electricity, roads, schools, drainage etc., the

Pitiuses took the remotest of back seats. Improvement was only seen when the young and

capable Abel Matutes, after being Mayor of Ibiza, took his seat in the Cortes in the 1970s.

Therefore, when people arrived in a poverty stricken backwater with ideas and money for

investment it can readily be understood that few questions were asked and that they were

welcomed with open arms. Soon after the Second World War many such investors arrived

purporting to be Holocaust survivors, but who it was afterwards established were, in fact,

Nazis scurrying away with their ill-gotten loot. Having enormous wealth and influence in

Madrid and Palma, they rapidly commercialised themselves. It was only their bodyguards

and fortified estates that made the Ibicencos realise the true situation. Much to the shame of

the Islanders this state of affairs has not to this day been entirely eradicated. A few of these

Nazis met mysterious and violent ends. In 1986 I was introduced to a young German Jewish

lawyer from Hamburg who, I was reliably informed, continues to come weekly to the Islands

to take instructions from his clients, all Nazis, or their descendants, who still hold properties

in Germany!

Of all the refugees who arrived in the Pitiuses, it is without doubt the Hungarian

brothers Herman and William Fisch who made the most money. They arrived in the early

years after the war, via Cairo, Rome and Madrid, having escaped from Hungary thanks to

visas given out by the Spanish Embassy in Budapest. This intervention was at the instigation

53See Gloria Mound, “The Jewish Remnants of Ibiza and Formenera”, Transactions of the 10th World Congress

of Jewish Studies (Jerusalem, 1989); also Jackson, The Spanish Republic and The Civil War, p. 510.

- 23 -

of the U.S. Government.54 The Hungarian escape contacts gave them an introduction to

Jordana, the Spanish Foreign Minister. Here were sharp, clever seasoned entrepreneurs. The

brothers were among the first to see the potential in building self-catering holiday villages.

As part of a consortium, they invested in a tract of land outside Santa Eulalia, Siesta, owned

by Felix Morand, also of Hungarian birth. Houses were erected in the Ibicenco style, but to a

far higher standard than seen locally hitherto. Business boomed giving sorely needed local

employment. The Siesta manager was another Hungarian, Otto Strassberg (a first cousin of

the famous American actor Lee Strassberg). Otto and his wife also owed their escape to the

Spanish Embassy in Budapest.55

The background of the marriage-day of Herman and Agnes Fisch is of interest. The

wedding took place in Rome, as the war was drawing to a close. Meanwhile, in an Austrian

detention camp, two middle-aged inmates, awaiting their exit papers, met and chatted. They

both confessed to each other that on this particular day they were especially glum. Strangely

the two men had similar reasons. Both had offspring getting married in Italy, and the exit

papers had not arrived for them to attend. Suddenly the two men saw the unique similarity.

Their respective children were about to marry each other!

Agnes Fisch, while in no way a practising Jewess, was an eager informant on the

conditions of Jewish life in post-war Ibiza. An anecdote from her family‟s early days there

illustrates the dangers which still obtained in the early post-war years. Herself very blonde in

colouring, she was sitting outside a café in Ibiza‟s main paseo, and talking in German with a

friend, when a young man joined in their conversation. Before long, he was explaining to

them what his business in Ibiza was: he had come there to resuscitate the Nazi Party. Agnes‟

reaction was to inform him that she was Jewish and (as an instinctive follow-up) to pour her

drink over his head. However, since the café immediately adjoining was known to be Nazi-

owned, she felt it prudent to leave the now murderously hostile young man to his own

devices. A further chance encounter with him on a lonely beach a few days later caused her

54See Holocaust and Genocide Studies, III, I (1988); Tsvi Erez, Hungary - Six Days in 1944 (Kibbutz Dvir,

Israel: ); Wasserstein, Britain and the Jews of Europe; Emmet John Hughes, Report from Spain (New York:

Kennikat Press, ), pp. 257-58. 55See Encyclopaedia Judaica, XV, 245.

- 24 -

real alarm, but luckily he failed to recognize her. Herman Fisch died in 1983. It was his

express wish that he be given a Jewish burial at the side of the 14th-century citadel church of

Santa Eulalia. Many is the visitor who gazes in surprise at the redbrick tombstone with its

Magen David.

The Fisch brothers‟ partner in developing the Siesta tract of land was another Jew of

similar background: Felix Morand, born in Innsbruck in 1915 but reared in Hungary. By the

early 1930s he was living in the United States. Felix had an exceptional command of many

languages plus a positive talent in the use of stenography. These attributes came to the

attention of the American High Command when he joined the Army, and he was appointed

aide-de-camp to General Eisenhower, eventually ending up in Algiers with the 1942 Allied

landings. From this posting he heard about the beautiful island of Ibiza, and by some means

(quite illegally at that time) made his way across the 120 odd miles of sea to see for himself.

Land was literally going for a song and he bought. In 1953 he returned with his non-Jewish

wife Alfreda. They, like the Fisch family, made Ibiza their home, building a beautiful

personal residence, (today a hotel for homosexuals) on the banks of the Río de Santa Eulalia,

in the shadow of the Roman bridge that spans the only river in all the Balearic Islands. Their

three children all grew up to be exceptionally keen on knowing more about their Jewish roots

and Judaism. One son worked for a year on an Israeli kibbutz.

The two main places of pre-war Jewish worship in the Islands, the crypt of the San

Cristóbal Convent56 and Can Marroig on Formentera have both fallen into a state of serious

disrepair. The crypt of San Cristóbal was eventually covered over when the new chapel was

built in 1970, but if ever restoration funds are forthcoming, then entrance will be possible

from the side with the deep incline which backs on to the ancient Calle Mayor. This would

once again uncover the ancient Jewish meeting place seen by Mr. Gross in 1930. The room

itself is believed to be still intact. As part of the E.C.-sponsored resotration of the city of

56An account of this was given in Gloria Mound, “The Jewish Connections of Prinz Luis Salvador of Hapsburg

and the Convento of San Cristóbal, Ibiza” (paper delivered to the Fifth British Seminar of Judeo Spanish

Studies, Westfield College, London, 1986).

- 25 -

Ibiza plaques and signposts drawing attention to the significance of this site have been

promised.57

With regard to Can Marroig, the situation (as of 1991) is deplorable. Here is possibly

the only building built specially as a synagogue in Spain between 1492 and 1936 and used for

services until the Civil War (as witnessed in 1934 by L.G. Bowman, the then recently retired

headmaster of the Jews‟ Free School, London). That Jewish practices were regularly

observed in this exceptionally remote spot was admitted to me by the remnants of the family

that owned the estate for generations until 1940, as well as by the Matutes family and

children of local officials who had connived at the secret services. Today the rapidly

decaying Can Marroig building lies abandoned. Before I gave up residence on the Islands,

however, I was assured by its present owners that the Synagogue would not be destroyed,

whatever other projects might be in view. The owners now are the Matutes family interest

and in this, as in so much else that happens in the Pitiuses, the last word must rest with them.

Indeed, they might, appropriately, be given the last word in this present study.

On one occasion when Abel Matutes was interviewed he was pressed as to why the

area had for the past twenty years received a reputation for being so much more permissive

than the rest of Spain. As a former mayor and councillor for tourism he was accused of

promoting this tendency. Matutes replied in a rather unexpected way: „I disagree, and would

prefer to put what you mention down to historical development.‟ In the course of more than

2,000 years of recorded history Ibiza has experienced various invasions and cultures -

Carthaginians, Romans, Byzantines, Arabs - and there has always been a distinct Jewish

flavour to Ibiza too. The people of Ibiza and Formentera respected all the cultures, but only

absorbed those influences that they considered worthwhile.58

57See Encyclopaedia Judaica Year Book 1986-87 (Get same form of reference as short title throughout.), p.

256; also Gloria Mound, “Hitherto Unknown Jews of Ibiza and Formentera”, Fourth British Seminar of Judeo-

Spanish Studies: Abstracts of Papers, ed. N.G. Round (Glasgow: University of Glasgow Department of

Hispanic Studies, 1984). 58See Ibiza, Formentera, 1984-85 (Hamburg: Manthey, 1984).