Exhibition Persecuted and Saved, Shalom Sefarad & Discover Sefarad

Persecuted and Saved is an exhibition promoted by the Diputación de Lleida, whose curator is the historian Josep Calvet. The exhibition reveals the secrets of the escape of some 15,000 Jews through the mountains that connect France and Spain. The exhibition begins by explaining the two key events that marked the persecution of Jews in Nazi Germany: the Nuremberg laws of 1935 that deprived the Jews of German citizenship and the Night of the Broken Crystals of November 1938, when they were sabotaged shops and synagogues, leaving a trail of 2,000 dead. The following year, with the beginning of the Second World War and the expansion of Nazism in Europe, Spain, along with Portugal and Switzerland, neutral countries, became the main destinations of the Jews who decided to flee before being killed. Through the biographies of several families the exhibition explains how they managed to flee after heroically crossing, under the cold, snow and Nazi surveillance, the difficult roads of the Pyrenees and from Spain to seek refuge, preferably in America and in the then British protectorate of Palestine. Shalom Sefarad presents - through photos, stories, and songs - the legacy of Jewish immigrants who arrived in Seattle, Washington a century ago from the Ottoman Empire to build new lives for their families. Discover Sefarad is a photo exhibit that takes you on a tour to 18 Spanish cities that preserve an outstanding Jewish essence. Presented by Marta Puig, Manager Director of the Network of Spanish Jewish Quarters. Conference: Spain a country of refuge from those persecuted by Nazism during World War II by Josep Calvet. During the Second World War some 80,000 people sought refuge in Spain fleeing the war and the persecution to which they were subjected by Nazism. French youths who wanted to join the Allied army in North Africa, Jews who wanted to take refuge away from barbarism, preferably in America and Palestine, and pilots of the Allied army who wanted to rejoin the fighting after being shot down on the battlefront, they crossed the Pyrenees clandestinely. The conference will detail how these epic and heroic actions occurred and what was the position of the Spanish government before the arrival of the refugees. In Spanish with English subtitles. Dr. Josep Calvet earned his Ph. D. In history from the University of Lleida. He has published several books on the arrival of refugees in Spain during World War II and the government’s role in this. His best-known works are Las montañas de la libertad (2010), Huyendo del Holocausto (2014) and Barcelona, refugi de jueus (1933-1958) (2015). Calvet also coordinated the establishment of the museum El Camino de la Libertad in the old prison of Sort, where hundreds of Jews fleeing persecution were jailed, and the project Persecuted and Saved, which aims to discover former escape routes.