The Basque History of the World - Mark Kurlansky [86]
The Basque refugees in French Basqueland established ties with Europe’s other countryless nations, especially the Welsh, Bretons, and Flemish. Breton nationalists sent their newspapers to St.-Jean-de-Luz. But life changed dramatically with the German invasion of the Lowlands and France.
Fleeing through Nazi-occupied Europe, sometimes wearing a fake mustache or other disguises, Aguirre managed to get to New York, where he established a new headquarters. Monzón escaped on a ship out of Marseilles and arrived in the United States eleven months later.
Thousands of Basques from Spain had been deported to German labor and concentration camps. More than 2,000 Basques, along with captured combatants from the International Brigades, the foreign volunteers who fought for the Second Republic, were in a camp in the neighboring French region of Béarn. Many Basques were also among the estimated 20,000 Republican prisoners in concentration camps, notably Mauthausen in Austria, where thousands were executed. The preoccupation of the Basque government with these prisoners scattered through Europe led to relations with not only international relief organizations but the intelligence services of Britain, France, and the United States.
After an initial hunt for important leaders, the Gestapo searched among Basques principally for leftists, not nationalists. The Nazis had experienced some success in appealing to Flemish and Breton nationalism, claiming that by standing up for European racial purity, Nazism was defending the rights of these ancient peoples. Heinrich Himmler, a particularly virulent racist from a devout Catholic family, had discovered that Basques were devout Catholics who believed they were the original European race.
The Germans offered scholarships to the university in Munich for young Basques wishing to do research on the origins of their race. Ramón Labayen, then a teenager in St.-Jean-de-Luz, remembered a few Basques taking the scholarship. But though the Basques had often responded without scruples to any ruler who promised to recognize their autonomy, this time they were not fooled by these Germans who had been seen in cockpits over Guernica. Basques in France were experiencing German rule. In St.-Jean-de-Luz they saw the town jeweler, a World War I veteran, forced to wear a yellow star, which he defiantly pinned over his Croix de Guerre, France’s highest combat medal. Labayen remembers a Jewish schoolmate whom French gendarmes took out of class and turned over to the Germans. Labayen never saw him again.
THE BASQUES FOUND themselves in a familiar circumstance. Europe was at war, and a crucial border ran through their homeland. The Germans, the French, and the Spanish watched the passes. But the Basques, knowing the footpaths, could approach and descend from the passes without being seen.
If one of the French underground units delivered to the Basques a shot-down flier, a political refugee, or a Jew, Basques could get him across the border.
Across the border was Spain, a nominally neutral country that, in reality, was Hitler’s ally. Most of the cross-Pyrenees refugees who were caught by the Guardia Civil were taken to a camp at Miranda de Ebro on the southern edge of Basqueland. And many of the Basques, if caught, risked being shot.
But for the French underground, a more difficult border than the Pyrenees was between the two zones of France. The Germans had divided France into one zone under direct German occupation and another governed from the resort town of Vichy by a French puppet government under Marshal Philippe Pétain. Starting at Arnéguy—at the entrance to the Roncesvalles pass— the dividing line between these zones split Basse Navarre, headed north, then turned east to the Swiss border. The entire line was watched by German troops. The land west of the Roncesvalles pass, including all of Labourd, was in the German occupied zone, the same zone as Paris