Refugee women during the Second World War

The Sort women’s prison played its biggest role from 1939 onwards, after the outbreak of the Second World War. Between 1939 and 1944, thousands of people crossed the Pyrenees from France in the direction of the Iberian Peninsula, fleeing Nazi persecution or to join the Allied forces in North Africa or England. It is estimated that 60,000 were arrested for illegally crossing the border. These prisoners were initially held at judicial party prisons before being transferred to an internment centre based on their age or nationality.

Most of those detained were French men wanting to join the army that General De Gaulle had organised in North Africa to fight against the Axis troops, as well as young men fleeing Compulsory Work Service (STO), which was the forced deportation of French workers of military age to Germany starting from spring 1943. The second group in terms of numerical importance was Jewish people fleeing Nazi persecution in Germany and the occupied countries. Allied aviation pilots who had been shot down on the war front made up another large contingent and, to a lesser extent, there were demobilised soldiers from Nazi-occupied countries (Poland, Belgium and the Netherlands), as well as politicians from these countries who were trying to set up governments in exile from Great Britain (Poland) or from their colonies (Belgium).

Josep Calvet’s previous research has shown that some 2,660 foreigners, of at least 25 different nationalities, who had been detained by the Civil Guard at the Val d’Aran and the Pallars Sobirà border crossings, passed through Sort prison. The most numerous contingents arrived in Alòs D’Isil and Tavascan through the mountain roads that connect Pallars Sobirà with the French department of Ariège and to a lesser extent to Alins coming from the Principality of Andorra. These detainees were accused of clandestine border crossing and in some cases of currency smuggling. They were consequently taken to a prison as government detainees at the disposition of the Civil Governor of the province of Lleida.

Among those imprisoned in Sort were 161 women, who were held in the small room in Plaça Sant Eloi. These women were almost all of Jewish origin and came from Germany, Austria and Nazi-occupied countries (Poland, Germany, Austria, Belgium, Holland, France…). They would arrive in Spain with their husbands and children seeking refuge before moving on to America usually (South America and the United States) or to the then British Mandate for Palestine. It should be noted that some gave false names and nationalities in order to hide their Jewish identity, fearing that the Spanish authorities would deport them to French territory.

The treatment of refugees who were transferred to Sort varied from time to time, particularly with regard to Jewish families. Their protection and welfare was at the hands of consular representatives in Barcelona who, as a general rule, did not have an active attitude in looking after prisoners and ensuring they had adequate food during the time they were held at Sort. Nor did they often make effective arrangements to prevent them from being transferred to other prisons in Lleida, Barcelona or the Miranda de Ebro concentration camp (Burgos).

The conditions at Sort prison were very pitiful and they were given meagre amounts of food to sustain them. The food given to foreigners held at the prisons was provided by the Town Council, which had assigned a two-peseta aid for each detainee taken from different town funds. At other times, such as at the beginning of 1943, the council hired a cook who made a ranch for the prisoners. However, as some of those imprisoned had money or even clothing or various utensils to exchange, many were able to make up for the measly provisions. Likewise, the residents of Plaça Sant Eloi pitched in to help the prisoners and were also willing, despite the hardship of the times, to help those most in need.

As for the women’s prison specifically, this did not even provide the most minimum living conditions: it had no ventilation, no running water or a place to do the necessities and wash. The reports that the Sort Town Council sent to the Civil Governor of the province of Lleida in 1944 are quite eloquent. In a document dated 4 February of that year, the Town Council lists a series of data on the characteristics and ownership of the women’s prison:

Building owner: Mr. Agustin Muxi Monroset. Rooms or departments: One room.
Cells: None.
Approximate inmate capacity: Two.
Ventilation, patios: The room is ventilated by a window. There is no patio. Cooking service: Done the same way as with men, bringing hot food from the inn or by a person in charge.
Toilets and sinks: None. Building security: Poor. Accommodates extension: No.

A new report dated 19 April offers a more detailed description of the women’s prison:

MUNICIPAL PARTY WOMEN’S PRISON
Municipality: Sort. Judicial Party: Sort Nature: Constructable urban property.
Surface measurement: 14 square metres. Location: Plaza de San Eloy number 6.
Borders: On the right, with Antonio Tarragona. On the left and back with Antonio Senallé.
Purpose of the building within the realm of penitentiary services: Municipal party women’s prison
Building owner: Mr. Agustín Muxí Monroset. Rooms or departments: One room.
Cells: None.
Approximate inmate capacity: Two.
Ventilation, patios: The room is ventilated by a window. There is no patio. Toilets and sinks: None.
Accommodates extension: No.

Despite these subpar conditions, foreign women were held at the prison until at least the end of 1942. This was recalled by Henri Birnbaum (Berlin, 1921–Barcelona, 2004), who arrived in Sort on 26 November 1942 as part of a convoy of a hundred people detained in Pallars Sobirà after crossing the French border. He had to spend the night on his feet due to lack of space at the men’s prison, “I still remember that the Sort prison was a square room, without windows, with a few toilets or rather a place where we did our needs in front of everyone” while “the women who were in my group were not locked in this prison and spent the night in a tiny space located next to the prison” ⁴⁴.

The first women fleeing the Second World War to enter Sort prison were Dutchwoman Bloome Weening and her daughters Helene and Lizzy. Her husband Salomon went to the men’s prison. The Weening family lived in Antwerp from where they escaped in 1940 to seek refuge in Montréjeau (Haute-Garonne, France). In May 1942 they were taken to Aulus-les-Bains (Ariège), where the Vichy government concentrated around 600 Jews in a progression regime. On 13 November, two days after the occupation of Vichy France by the Nazi army, they escaped in the direction of Spain.

On 16 November, the Weenings arrived in Sort. From Sort they were able to go to Vigo from where they arrived at the intermediation of the Dutch Embassy and left for Jamaica on 19 January 1943. Subsequently, they went to Canada where Salomon enlisted in the Dutch troops of the Canadian army and was sent to England to fight in Europe as a sergeant. In January 1945 he was wounded and was left disabled after being operated on. At the end of the Second World War, the family settled in New York (United States).

On 9 December, Laure Henle and her 8-month-old son Claude were admitted. Hans Henle, Laure’s husband and Claude’s father, was imprisoned in the men’s prison. The family had been arrested in Tavascan where they had arrived from Aulus-les-Bains after going to great lengths to complete the journey with the help of Jeanne Rogalle, a young woman from Aulus-les-Bains who took them to the border between Spain and France. Meta Weiler, Laure’s mother, was also in the group and had an accident during the descent to Tavascan. Rescued by the Civil Guard, she arrived in Sort two days later. The Henles came from Belgium and had taken refuge in the south of France, fleeing Nazi persecution. Claude was born in Saint-Gaudens (Haute-Garonne). Hans was transferred to the Miranda de Ebro concentration camp while the two women and the child were able to go to Madrid.

In March 1944, a few months after Hans was released, the family embarked from Lisbon with the Serpa Pinto steamer, which took them to Philadelphia (United States) and subsequently headed to Canada, where they had obtained entry visas. The Henles settled in Canada permanently. Claude is currently a happy retiree residing in the city of Montréal. In 2002, sixty years on, Henle returned to Aulus-les-Bains to meet up with Jeanne Rogalle, the person who had saved his family. Jeanne Rogalle (Aulus-les-Bains, 1921-2015) was awarded the title of Righteous Among the Nations by the Israeli government, an honorific for non-Jews who helped Jewish people escape the Holocaust. The French government awarded her one of its highest distinctions, the Legion of Honour.

On the same day the Henles were imprisoned, Henna Moskowitz (1909), from Poland, was also admitted. She had been arrested in Tavascan along with her husband Szija (1903). On the 14th they left Sort and Szija was interned in the Miranda de Ebro concentration camp while Henna was sent to Madrid. After Szija’s release, the couple managed to leave for England in February 1943.

Austrian sisters Sara (1903) and Nechama Melzer (1923) arrived at the Sort women’s prison on 11 December 1942, after having been arrested in Tavascan. Years earlier, they had fled the growing anti-Semitism in Austria after the country was annexed by Nazi Germany in 1938. They took refuge in Brussels where they worked as secretaries and translators. After the occupation of Belgium by the Nazi army, they fled to France, settling in the department of Haute-Garonne.

There they were arrested and taken to the Gurs prison camp. They then lived in Luchon, Salies-du-Salat and Bruguières (Haute-Garonne) until they were assigned to a guarded residence in the small village of Aulus-les-Bains in April 1942. After a raid by the gendarmerie at the end of August 1942, they hid in a cabin in the forest, before fleeing towards Pallars Sobirà on 10 December of that year with the help of a guide. A few hours after their departure, they were arrested by the Tavascan Civil Guard and taken to Sort. Upon leaving Sort they went to Madrid, staying at the Hotel Mora located on Paseo del Prado until 25 January 1944, when they embarked on the Nyassa steamer to the British Mandate for Palestine.

Mathilde Arendt-Arnetti (1904) and her 3-year-old daughter Danielle, German, were admitted on 11 December after having been arrested the day before in Tavascan. Her husband, Edgard (1902), was imprisoned in the men’s prison. Edgard had previously been interned in the French concentration camp at Gurs. The family had also been residing in Aulus-les-Bains. Upon leaving Sort, Edgard was transferred to the Miranda de Ebro concentration camp, while his wife and daughter remained in Madrid under the care of the Jewish charity American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee until May 1943, when they left for Portugal and from there to the United States, where they settled definitively. Polish sisters Itta (1922) and Dora (1924) Strykowska also came from Aulus-les-Bains. After leaving Sort they went to Madrid. It is unclear when they left Spain.

On 19 December, Elisa Bovy and her daughter Jeanne Petré, who were from Belgium, entered the prison. The family – the two women, plus Florent, the father, and René, the second son – had fled Belgium on 10 May 1940 after the German occupation of the country and settled in Bagneres de Luchon (Haute-Garonne). Although they were not Jewish, on 11 November 1942, coinciding with the German occupation of free France, they decided to cross to Spain through the Eth Portilhon mountain pass. They were arrested in Bossost and taken to the police barracks in Les to be handed over to the Germans at the Pònt de Rei border post. Luckily, the German military did not understand Spanish, and the commissioner did not know German either, so they were returned to Les, where they lived in a hostel for a few weeks thanks to a small supply of gold pieces which they had been living off for two years in France. After leaving Sort, they went to Madrid and later to Portugal, from where they managed to reach the Belgian Congo. At the end of the war, they returned to Belgium. Elisa died in 19855 while Jeanne, an art historian and archaeologist, died in 1960 in a car accident.

Perla Kapelman entered Sort on 23 December 1942. Born on 20 May 1922 in Poland, her parents emigrated to France, settling in Paris. Her father was Moroccan, and they lived on Rue Meaux in the 19th arrondissement of the French capital. At the outbreak of the Second World War, the father enlisted as a volunteer with the French army. After the capitulation and signing of the Franco-German armistice, the family was trapped in Paris. On 16 and 17 July 1942, the biggest raid and mass arrest of Jews ever in France took place, known as the Vélodrome d’Hiver Roundup. It was called this because many of those arrested were initially detained at the velodrome located in the fifteenth arrondissement of Paris. In total, 12,884 Jews, 4,051 children, 5,802 women and 3,031 men were arrested. The conditions of this round-up were particularly severe as families were separated, many of whom were never reunited again. After the arrest, the prisoners were taken to camps in Drancy, Beaune-la-Rolande and Pithiviers, before being deported to extermination camps in Eastern Europe.

On the night of July 15-16, Perla slept at a neighbour’s house and was thus able to escape the raid. Upon returning home, she found her apartment empty and that all her relatives had been arrested. A few days later, Perla escaped from Paris by crossing the free zone, which was then under the administration of the government headed by Marshal Petain. In November 1942, after the occupation of free France by the German army, she decided to flee France. With a Belgian friend and with the help of a guide, she crossed the Pyrenees arriving in the Val d’Aran. There she was arrested and imprisoned in Vielha and a few days later sent to Sort, where she arrived on December 23 spending the night in the women’s prison. The next day she was driven to Lleida and then to Barcelona. Once in the Mediterranean city, she was kept under the protection of the American Joint, until on 18 January 1944 she became part of the first expedition of Jewish refugees to cross the Mediterranean from the Iberian Peninsula to the British Mandate for Palestine. After eight days of crossing, she reached the port of Haifa.

Helene Luftig, born in Grybow (Poland) in 1922, also arrived in Sort along with Perla Kapelman. Her family was living in Antwerp (Belgium) when the Second World War broke out. There they ran two leather shops. Months later, they settled in France. The father was arrested and died as he was deported to Auschwitz extermination camp. Helene decided to flee to Spain. She did so from Luchon, accompanied by a group of allied airmen. Arrested in Bossost, she passed through Vielha prison and was later transferred to Sort. From Sort she was sent to Lleida and then to Barcelona, where she lived under the care of the American Joint. Months later she returned to Val d’Aran to marry Josep Nart Subirà (Vielha, 1906-1991), a jailer at Vielha prison whom she had met during her stay in the Aranese prison. The news of the marriage crossed the borders of the Aran and was even heard of at Sort, as remembered years later by Ms. Paquita Farré Betriu of Hotel Pessets. It seems that Helene worked with Nart as an interpreter between him and the foreigners imprisoned in Vielha at that time. Helene left the Val d’Aran and in 1946 returned to Belgium for some time. She then lived in Israel before settling permanently in Barcelona until her death in 2010.

Also on 23 December, Ukrainian women Ester Goldman (1906) and Irene Goldman (1930) were imprisoned. They were mother and daughter, and the father, Lejzer, was held at the men’s prison. The family lived in France where Lejzer worked as a photographer. From Sort they went to Barcelona under the care of the American Joint until two years later, on 15 March, they were able to emigrate to Canada. They set sail from Lisbon with the ship Serpa Pinto, which took them to Philadelphia, and then settled in Toronto. The Wittekind family (Arthur, Rosa and Edgard) also settled in Canada, who arrived in Sort from the Val d’Aran on the same day, 23 December 1942.

On the same day, Dora Kanner, born in Vienna (Austria) on 25 May 1923, and her seven-month-old son Henri Alex, also arrived in Sort. They’d been driven from Vielha together with her husband Joseph (Czehova, Poland, 1908). Henri Alex had been born in Luchon after his parents had taken refuge in the southern French town. On Christmas Day, the family was driven to Lleida. Joseph was locked up in the prison set up at the Old Seminary. Upon discovering this, Dora went to the Civil Government head office to learn about her husband’s situation. Alberto Poveda, the official in charge of refugee affairs, saw her and years later he recalled the moment he spoke to her, “she arrived poorly dressed, with a baby in her arms, wrapped in a thick wool shawl. (…). She was dejected, not fully understanding what she should do and what her destiny would be.” Joseph was fortunately released, and his family was able to settle in Barcelona until they obtained a visa to travel to Canada in March. They took up residence in Montreal. Henri Alex studied acting and became a well-known actor and director. He starred in films such as Reach For Glory (1962), The Amorous Adventures of Moll Flanders (1965), Crossplot (1969) along with Roger Moore and Connecting Rooms (1970) with Bette Davis and Michael Redgrave. In his last film, Nightfall (1988), he narrates the life of Isaac Asimov. He was also well known for his appearance on the television series The Prisoner. Dora Kanner died in Toronto in 1995 while Henri Alex died in London in 2003.

This situation changed from 1943, when the American Joint Distribution Committee reps in Spain began to deal more efficiently with the Jews who had arrived clandestinely in Catalonia. Under the auspices of the American Joint, Jewish refugees were protected from being interned in the Sort prisons and instead were allowed to stay in a hotel in Sort. In those years, Sort had several hotels and guest houses, all located on Carrer Major. La Fonda Martí Cases, also known as Casa Feliçó, was owned by Martí Cases. La Fonda Burrella, owned by Bonaventura Cotonat until his death, at which point his wife Teresa Blasi Roquet took over. Hostal Toni was owned by Josep Arnau Llisé and the Hotel Pessets was run by Josep Farré Rafel.

There is documentary evidence that Samuel Sequerra, an American Joint representative in Barcelona, liaised with the owners of the Hotel Pessets and the Fonda Martí Casas at least.

In May 1944 there is a record of a young Jewish woman, Fanny Gewürz, staying at the Fonda Martí Cases, who wrote a letter from Sort to her sister in Palestine. The sisters, who were born in the German city of Karlsruhe, had been separated five years earlier in Strasbourg. Rachel got visas to emigrate to the then British Mandate for Palestine, while Fanny hid in different parts of France until she was able to move to Spain. This document – the letter was not delivered to its addressee and was returned to the owners of the inn – has made it possible to piece together Fanny’s escape from France with an expedition of 62 people and at the same time put together the history of the Gewürz family through Poland, Germany, France, Spain and Israel.

After the Second World War, the prison continued to operate as it had been, holding prisoners for small property crimes, which were motivated by the economic difficulties and shortcomings of the first years of Francoism.

In 1952, the budget for maintaining the prisons of Sort was 15,232.71 pesetas, which were borne by all the municipalities of the judicial party from urban, rustic and industrial tax contributions. For example, Sort contributed 950 pesetas, Alins 840 pesetas, Torre de Capdella 800 pesetas and Llavorsí 740 pesetas. Losada, the agutzil, made 1,500 pesetas plus an extra pay of 200 pesetas on 18 July and 25 December. The rent paid to the Town Council amounted to 365 pesetas while Agustí Muxí was paid 70 pesetas for the women’s prison building.

In 1966, the judicial party of Sort was abolished, leading to the immediate closure of the two prisons. The men’s prison was transferred to municipal ownership and used as a warehouse, while the women’s prison was returned to its owner.