Serpo
10th May 2013, 11:25 AM
"Warehouse of Women": Catholic Nuns encarcerate 4,000 women in Spain [Death and Disappearances Exposed]
8:42 AM 666 - Venezuela
Saturraran, Spain.- Between 1938 and 1944 the old spa of Saturraran was transformed into a women's prison by the Francoist regime. Within its walls around 4,000 women were detained. 120 inmates passed away and 57 boys and girls. Testimonials attest to the theft of children.
It is impossible to set a specific date. The majority of the people, who provided testimonies have already passed away, they spoke of a fateful sunset of the year 1944. In the official records, however, there is no trace of that afternoon's barbarism. Dozens of children between the ages of three and five were taken away from the arms of their mothers with the use of force, imprisoned in the prison Saturraran (Basque country), to be sent to an uncertain destiny aboard a train.
The historian Ricard Vinyes recounts the facts in his play Political Prisoners. "Officials and religious women who ordered the prisoners to hand over their children without prior notice. Apparently there was a considerable uproar, beatings and punishments. Teresa Martin was four years old and only remembers to have always been by her mother’s side: ' always or in the arms of my mother or holding my mother’s hand. They only separated us once, but that time it was forever’”
Around 4,000 women were detained, between 1938 and 1944, in the Saturraran prison, a former 19th-century Spa in the Bay of Biscay. With just a mat to sleep, in the best years of the prison, and a toilet for every 250 inmates, around 1600 women came to live together in the same temporary space. The researcher and journalist María González Gorosarri, author of the book Don't you weep, what you have to do is not forget calculates that each woman had around 45 cm of the floor to sleep on.
The central prison of Saturraran consisted of a complex of several buildings belonging to the Church that distinguished the prisoners as mothers, elderly and young people. About 25 mercy nuns, a priest, a prison officer and around 50 soldiers guarded women prisoners, "points public Gonzalez Gorosarri, who adds that the most distinctive place in the prison was the “punishment cell". "This cell was at the height of the river passing behind the building previously known as Barrenengua. As a result, I always had a span of water on the ground reaching nearly a meter when the tide rose".
During the six years in which the prison continued to function, 120 women and 57 children died within its walls. Hunger and the lack of hygiene was part of the daily life of women prisoners. The testimonies collected by the researcher described how nuns stole the food from the women and children to sell it in the commissary of prison or in illegal markets and confiscated the food sent by the families of the women. "For this reason, the Mother Superior Sister María Aranzazu Vélez de Mendizabal, known among the prisoners as the white Panther, was subsequently removed", adds González Gorosarri.
In the prison, the political prisoners (ties with parties or unions allied to the Republic) and the common prisoners (mostly prostitutes or abortionists) piled up without distinction. "The political male prisoners were separated from the common prisoners. However, the regime denied women their status as active political subjects and thus, they were imprisoned together with the common prisoners", the researcher explains.
Where are my children?
The play of Gonzalez Gorosarri collects the testimony of Balbina Lasheras Amézaga, who was known in the prison of Saturraran as 'small' or “young one”, since she was one of the youngest in the prison. Balbina was arrested on June 21, 1937, when the Falangist forces entered Bilbao, her city of birth. At that time she was 16 years old and was skipping rope with her friends. She was accused of having betrayed a Falangist neighbor who lived in a nearby Villa. She remained imprisoned for 5 years, 4 months and 10 days.
After two brief stays in different jails in the Basque country, Balbina was transferred to Saturraran. "We were very very cold. We had a river underneath and there was much moisture. Many women died of typhus. Don Luis Arriola, who was the physician of Ondarroa at that time, was also the doctor of Saturraran. He gave us one vaccine against typhus. The vaccine said that the injection had to be taken in three doses. Do you know what he did? He gave us the whole vaccine at once! Good thing all of us young women could remain standing to care for all those women who were on the ground. They could not get up because of the fever they had", Balbina recalls.
In the mother’s building, different from the one Balbina stayed, Ana Morales was kept. She was 17 years old when they denounced her for being a communist spy. She denied it all. Nevertheless, and in spite of being pregnant, she was imprisoned. In the prison of Ventas (Madrid) she gave birth to her first child. Months later she was transferred to Saturraran prison, together with other 25 mothers and their 25 children.
" 30 liters of milk entered the prison every day. But the milk was for the nuns, it was not for the children or their mothers. To us, sometimes, they gave us a coffee without sugar or anything, because they sold the sugar in the black market (...). One day my son had a strong cold and the ones that were in the Office with the director asked the doctor why he did not prescribed us anything. And he said: 'How do I prescribe them anything if they don't have money to buy it?' "says Morales, who remembers the day that the children older than 3 years old disappeared.
I don't know if it was the nuns or it was the State, but they sent a coach with Saint Teresa nuns who came from the country. They sent us mothers to wash things in the river. Once we returned to the building there was no older children. The bus took all the older children. And, of course, all the mothers reacted hysterically. ' Where are my children? "Who has taken them?’ they repeated".
"None of them would have come out alive”
Rosa Pajuelo is one of the children who lived her early years in prison. Only being two years old, she was transferred with her mother to the Saturraran prison. She was there until she was five, when her mother handed her over to one of the prisoners that were being released to prevent her from being 'requested' by the nuns. "My mother told me that we would sleep together in one room. "The woman beside us had scabies, the other had lice, the other diseases... my mother always put me underneath her", recalls Pajuelo, who points out that she does not remember being hungry because her mother breast-fed her until she was three years old.
In 1944, when World War II ended and amid fears that the victory of the allies put an end to the fascist dictatorship in Spain, the regime decided to close down the prison, or how the Republican woman Tomasa Cuevas defined it: the women’s warehouse. The doctor of the prison, Don Luis Arriola, summed up Ana Morales in just a phrase because they were being liberated from the jail: "You can thank the international situation, if not, none of you would have come out of this prison alive. The one that would have come out would have gone to Germany, but from here, none would have come out alive".
http://www.vaticancrimes.us/2013/05/warehouse-of-women-catholic-nuns.html
8:42 AM 666 - Venezuela
Saturraran, Spain.- Between 1938 and 1944 the old spa of Saturraran was transformed into a women's prison by the Francoist regime. Within its walls around 4,000 women were detained. 120 inmates passed away and 57 boys and girls. Testimonials attest to the theft of children.
It is impossible to set a specific date. The majority of the people, who provided testimonies have already passed away, they spoke of a fateful sunset of the year 1944. In the official records, however, there is no trace of that afternoon's barbarism. Dozens of children between the ages of three and five were taken away from the arms of their mothers with the use of force, imprisoned in the prison Saturraran (Basque country), to be sent to an uncertain destiny aboard a train.
The historian Ricard Vinyes recounts the facts in his play Political Prisoners. "Officials and religious women who ordered the prisoners to hand over their children without prior notice. Apparently there was a considerable uproar, beatings and punishments. Teresa Martin was four years old and only remembers to have always been by her mother’s side: ' always or in the arms of my mother or holding my mother’s hand. They only separated us once, but that time it was forever’”
Around 4,000 women were detained, between 1938 and 1944, in the Saturraran prison, a former 19th-century Spa in the Bay of Biscay. With just a mat to sleep, in the best years of the prison, and a toilet for every 250 inmates, around 1600 women came to live together in the same temporary space. The researcher and journalist María González Gorosarri, author of the book Don't you weep, what you have to do is not forget calculates that each woman had around 45 cm of the floor to sleep on.
The central prison of Saturraran consisted of a complex of several buildings belonging to the Church that distinguished the prisoners as mothers, elderly and young people. About 25 mercy nuns, a priest, a prison officer and around 50 soldiers guarded women prisoners, "points public Gonzalez Gorosarri, who adds that the most distinctive place in the prison was the “punishment cell". "This cell was at the height of the river passing behind the building previously known as Barrenengua. As a result, I always had a span of water on the ground reaching nearly a meter when the tide rose".
During the six years in which the prison continued to function, 120 women and 57 children died within its walls. Hunger and the lack of hygiene was part of the daily life of women prisoners. The testimonies collected by the researcher described how nuns stole the food from the women and children to sell it in the commissary of prison or in illegal markets and confiscated the food sent by the families of the women. "For this reason, the Mother Superior Sister María Aranzazu Vélez de Mendizabal, known among the prisoners as the white Panther, was subsequently removed", adds González Gorosarri.
In the prison, the political prisoners (ties with parties or unions allied to the Republic) and the common prisoners (mostly prostitutes or abortionists) piled up without distinction. "The political male prisoners were separated from the common prisoners. However, the regime denied women their status as active political subjects and thus, they were imprisoned together with the common prisoners", the researcher explains.
Where are my children?
The play of Gonzalez Gorosarri collects the testimony of Balbina Lasheras Amézaga, who was known in the prison of Saturraran as 'small' or “young one”, since she was one of the youngest in the prison. Balbina was arrested on June 21, 1937, when the Falangist forces entered Bilbao, her city of birth. At that time she was 16 years old and was skipping rope with her friends. She was accused of having betrayed a Falangist neighbor who lived in a nearby Villa. She remained imprisoned for 5 years, 4 months and 10 days.
After two brief stays in different jails in the Basque country, Balbina was transferred to Saturraran. "We were very very cold. We had a river underneath and there was much moisture. Many women died of typhus. Don Luis Arriola, who was the physician of Ondarroa at that time, was also the doctor of Saturraran. He gave us one vaccine against typhus. The vaccine said that the injection had to be taken in three doses. Do you know what he did? He gave us the whole vaccine at once! Good thing all of us young women could remain standing to care for all those women who were on the ground. They could not get up because of the fever they had", Balbina recalls.
In the mother’s building, different from the one Balbina stayed, Ana Morales was kept. She was 17 years old when they denounced her for being a communist spy. She denied it all. Nevertheless, and in spite of being pregnant, she was imprisoned. In the prison of Ventas (Madrid) she gave birth to her first child. Months later she was transferred to Saturraran prison, together with other 25 mothers and their 25 children.
" 30 liters of milk entered the prison every day. But the milk was for the nuns, it was not for the children or their mothers. To us, sometimes, they gave us a coffee without sugar or anything, because they sold the sugar in the black market (...). One day my son had a strong cold and the ones that were in the Office with the director asked the doctor why he did not prescribed us anything. And he said: 'How do I prescribe them anything if they don't have money to buy it?' "says Morales, who remembers the day that the children older than 3 years old disappeared.
I don't know if it was the nuns or it was the State, but they sent a coach with Saint Teresa nuns who came from the country. They sent us mothers to wash things in the river. Once we returned to the building there was no older children. The bus took all the older children. And, of course, all the mothers reacted hysterically. ' Where are my children? "Who has taken them?’ they repeated".
"None of them would have come out alive”
Rosa Pajuelo is one of the children who lived her early years in prison. Only being two years old, she was transferred with her mother to the Saturraran prison. She was there until she was five, when her mother handed her over to one of the prisoners that were being released to prevent her from being 'requested' by the nuns. "My mother told me that we would sleep together in one room. "The woman beside us had scabies, the other had lice, the other diseases... my mother always put me underneath her", recalls Pajuelo, who points out that she does not remember being hungry because her mother breast-fed her until she was three years old.
In 1944, when World War II ended and amid fears that the victory of the allies put an end to the fascist dictatorship in Spain, the regime decided to close down the prison, or how the Republican woman Tomasa Cuevas defined it: the women’s warehouse. The doctor of the prison, Don Luis Arriola, summed up Ana Morales in just a phrase because they were being liberated from the jail: "You can thank the international situation, if not, none of you would have come out of this prison alive. The one that would have come out would have gone to Germany, but from here, none would have come out alive".
http://www.vaticancrimes.us/2013/05/warehouse-of-women-catholic-nuns.html