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You are here: Home Life in Lifestyle The forgotten exiles: Spain's 'War kids'

14/11/2005The forgotten exiles: Spain's 'War kids'

As children they were forced to leave Spain after the Civil War because their parents were Republicans. We report on how the so-called 'War kids' want their struggle to be remembered.

Two 'war kids' who were evacuated from Spain during Civil War

Though their childhood is far in the past, the elderly "war kids" who fled Spain for Britain, Russia, Cuba and other Latin American nations in the 1930s when their country was embroiled in civil war are taking steps to ensure that their story is not forgotten.

There's a saying that only the things that are forgotten truly die, and the war kids know that.

Although they are now old and scattered all over the world, they want their story of exile and civil war to endure.

The Spanish government this year said they can claim pensions which were previously denied them.

For some, this cash – however overdue –has been more than welcome, particularly those who ended up in Cuba.

Although fewer of the exiled children came to Cuba than to other countries, now more than 100 have requested the benefits approved by Madrid, which amount to about EUR 6,136 (USD 7,200) a year.

Their search for documents to back up their requests has caused them to relive their story.

Each of their lives in exile from their native Spain has been different, but there is one group among them - those called the "Hispano-Soviets" by the Cuban government - who have shared a large part of their collective life on the Communist island.

Most of the Hispano-Soviets were evacuated from Spanish ports in 1937, in the middle of the 1936-39 Civil War, destined to be housed in orphanages in the Soviet Union.

The defeat of the Republicans in Spain ended the children's hopes of returning to their families, and World War Two destroyed many of their remaining illusions about the former Soviet Union.

The wars cut their childhoods and adolescences short, but the bloody and devastating conflicts could not take their futures from them, futures which arose out of the alliance between the Cuban Revolution and the Soviet regime.

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