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The Jews of Ibiza and Formentera, During the Holocaust Period
There is clear evidence that the Pitiuses Islands (Ibiza and Formentera) have from the
earliest times, been regarded as an ideal bolthole in times of danger elsewhere; hence the
exceptional ethnological background of the Ibecencos.1 The Islands seem to have been an
inspiration and delight to those of Teutonic origin. With the exception of books published in
Spanish or Catalan, there are more descriptive travel works about them in the German
language than any other.2 Therefore it is hardly surprising that the Germans became the most
numerous of visitors as easier travelling conditions prevailed and the Islands slowly lost their
earlier reputation of being un-welcoming to outsiders.
The historian Martin Gilbert has observed that at the termination of the First World
War, Spain was the only country in Europe not affording equal civil rights to its Jews.3 The
First Republic in 1868 did introduce the precept of religious tolerance but it took almost a
century more before the Fuero de los españoles (1966) gave Spanish Jews the right to
maintain houses of worship and institutions. The repeal of the 1492 Edict of Expulsion
followed in 1968. During the interim, the only specific Jewish legislation was a decree in
December 19244 which granted the right of world Sephardim to claim Spanish nationality.
This Act was aimed mainly at those then residing in Salonica and Egypt, but was to save
many Jews when, a few years later, such documentation was useful as a legal basis for
extending Spanish Consular protection in Nazi occupied Europe.
It was not the Spanish Goverment's desire for the majority of these people to return to
Spain permanently. The Nazis kept a most watchful eye on these Jews, and made every
effort to claim them as part of the „Final Solution‟.5 Nevertheless, between 1933-1936 Spain
became a haven for an estimated 3,000 Jewish refugees, the majority of whom left after the
1Gloria Mound, "Multi-Raciality of the Balearic Isles", Spanish Studies, Special 50th Anniversary Civil War
Issue 8,(1986) 31-46. 2Antonio Costa i Ramon, Fitxes de bibliografía Pitiusa (Eivissa: Consell Insular d”Eivissa i Formentera, 1986). 3Martin Gilbert, Jewish History Atlas (London: Weidenfeld, 1981), p. 68. 4Encyclopaedia Judaica, 16 vols (Jerusalem: Keter, 1971-72),XV, 243-5. 5Bernard Wasserstein, Britain and the Jews of Europe 1939-1945 (Oxford: Institute of Jewish Affairs,
1979)236-37.
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Nationalist victory in 1939. Again, after the fall of France, Spain served as a transit to the
high seas for over 20,000 Jews by 1942. Some, lacking funds or papers to carry them on to
Portugal, were imprisoned at Miranda de Ebro, whilst others were sent back over the border,
often with catastrophic results.
These are of course only the registered figures; many arrived by illegal routes,
including the ones used by escaping Allied prisoners of war. Later in the Second World War,
a further 5,600 Jewish refugees came to Spain on short stay papers. Most were destitute and
had great problems in surviving. In the final stages of the Holocaust Spain made a more
positive rescue gesture in Hungary, when she gave out 2,750 protection certificates to non-
Spanish citizens.6
CONNECTIONS WITH MAJORCA 1930-1960
From the inception of the German National Socialist Party's rise to power and
subsequent activity in Spain, Majorca, the controlling Balearic Isle, was earmarked by the
Nazis as a fertile area from which to propagate their doctrines. The most telling
encouragement for this must have been the lengthy history of Jewish persecution in Majorca.
The year 1435 had seen the official cessation of the Jewish Community and the forced
conversion of all remaining Jews. But the general population, feeling that the conversions
amongst this group (henceforth known as Chuetas) had not been totally sincere, had
successfully implemented 500 years of religious discrimination, persecution, and segregation.
As late as the 1960s, no Majorcan priest would officiate at a marriage of a Chueta with a non-
Chueta. Therefore, this section of the Majorcan population in the 1930s was not only Jewish
under the Mosaic Law, it was seen as an ideal, easily definable target, against which the
Nazis, coming to Spain could proceed, comfortable in the knowledge that a large percentage
of Majorcans would be most receptive to Nazi indoctrination and ideology. It should be kept
in mind that Franco was himself Governor of the Balearics for two years prior to 1935. There
6Wasserstein, Britain and the Jews of Europe, p. 140.
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he gained local support, as well as furthering contacts, culminating in promises of German
and Italian assistance for the forthcoming planned uprising.
Thus the basic work of Nazi agents in Majorca in the 1930s was to encourage young
ambitious officials with pro-Nazi leanings. Very active in this respect was the Iberian-
German-American Institute in Hamburg, and the Fichte League. One interesting piece of
correspondence at this period relating to progress in setting up a Spanish Nazi network, is
from Herr Rosenberg, of the German Foreign Political Office: „The best imaginable news
comes from Majorca. There too, feverish work is being done.‟7 One of the main Nazi
manipulators was Baron Von Behr, a former adjutant to the master spy Von Papen, and an
intimate of Goering. He also had an English wife.
On 25 August 1936, Mussolini gave an audience to Edmondo Rossi, one of his
earliest military supporters. Il Duce commanded:
Tomorrow you will leave for Palma... Count Ciano will give you a detailed
disposition. I am counting on you. The work you are undertaking is of
capital importance for the triumph of Latin and Christian civilization,
menanced by the international rabble at Moscow's orders that wants to
Bolshevize the people of the Mediterranean basin.
Mussolini had chosen his man well. Rossi rapidly make his mark. Ordering all church bells
to be rung, he rode down Palma's main streets on a horse. The British Vice Consul reported
back that Majorca was about to become an Italian Protectorate.8 A number of opponents of
Fascism mysteriously disappeared, or were found dead in peculiar circumstances. So positive
was the Fascist influence that nearly all the prime administrative positions in Majorca (and to
a lesser extent in the smaller Isles) were in their hands by the outbreak of hostilities.
Contracts relating to security and fortifications were given to German Nazi companies. Arms
had been smuggled in on the potato boats. Behr came out into the open officially after 20
July 1936, working with Count Rossi who finally took over control completely in the
Balearics, dismissing the Military Governor. The Fascists relied on the German Consul,
7Emile Burns, The Nazi Conspiracy in Spain (London: Gollancz, 1937), pp. 8, 30, 53, 207-8, 213, 224. 8J. Coverdale, Italian Intervention in the Spanish Civil War (Princeton: U.P., 1975), pp. 127-40, 245-7.
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Dede, who carefully investigated the background of all Balearic residents, especially German
non-Party members married to non-Germans, or persons connected with Freemasonry, which
had adherents on all all the Islands.9 Rossi himself, whose real name was Arconovaldo
Bonaccorsi, was a despicable red-bearded womanizer, proud of boasting „that he needed at
least a woman a day‟. His self-styled „Crusades‟ meant rampaging everywhere, sporting his
black shirt decorated with a large white cross. Usually driving around in a racing car, when
there was not even fuel for the starving fishermen to take their boats out, Rossi rarely left a
village or township before dead bodies lay on the ground. Within days of the Italians' arrival
in the Pitiuses, 400 residents whom they saw as Republican sympathizers were rounded up
and shot.10
It was justifiably reckoned by the Fascists that 20% of Majorcans had a high
proportion of Jewish blood in their veins, whilst a further 2% were Chuetas, easily definable
by their seventeen family names. Certainly this group had secret Jewish practices and contact
with outside co-religionists.11 Such data became sinister in 1942 when the Nazis demanded
the latest census lists. Rossi installed local concentration camps for anybody who even
slightly displayed opposition. The remnants of one of the most brutal of such camps can still
be seen in Formentera.12 This isle became the final outpost of Pitiuses‟ opposition to Franco,
the participants mainly consisting of Ibicenco Jews and Freemasons. All suffered most
severely, many with death, for their allegiance to anti-fascism.13
Altogether 50,000 Italian troops came to Spain.14 Majorca became a major
Nationalist naval and military base, used extensively for the then new-style high-level
9Mariano Planells, "La masonería en las Pitiusas", Anuario Ibiza y Formentera, 1987 (Eivissa: Ibosim, 1987);
Ferrari Biloch, "Masonería en las Baleares", Diario de Mallorca ,1936. 10Gabriel Jackson, The Spanish Republic and The Civil War 1931-1939, 3rd edition (Princeton: U.P., 1972),
pp. 303-304. 11See Baruch Braustein, Chuetas of Majorca (Columbia: U.P., 1936); Angela Selke, Conversos of Majorca
(Jerusalem: Magnes Press, 1986); Ezriel Carlebach, Exotisch Juden (Berlin: Heine Bund & Welt-Verlag 1932);
Joachim Prinz, The Secret Jews (London: Vallentine, 1973), p. 168. 12Ministry of Justice Archives, Jerusalem. 13See Alumnes de COU de l‟IB Santa María d‟Eivissa, La Guerra Civil a Eivissa i Formentera ,Collecciò Nit
de Sant Joan (Eivissa; Instituto d‟Estudis Eivissencs, 1985); José Juis Gordillo Courcieres, Formentera: historia
de una isla (Valencia: Albatros,1981), pp. 279-94. 14Jackson: The Spanish Republic and The Civil War.
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bombing night attacks. Barcelona, Alicante, and Valencia, were the victims of the Palma
based Fascist aviators, testing out their weapons and methods for what was to follow in
World War Two15.
Georges Bernanos, a local Catholic writer of French origin, wrote in A Diary of My
Times, that between September 1936 and March 1937 3,000 Majorcans died. The Italian
Consul reported (26 March 1937) his calculation that of that total 1,750 were citizens of
Palma. The Consul summarized:
In the Balearic Islands, on the Red side and the Nationalist, all concept of
the value of human life has been lost. In the Nationalists‟ favour there is
the fact that their executions in August and September were a reaction to
the massacres begun by the other side in Ibiza and Formentera, and
Minorca, directed by the necessity of preventing the subversive elements
from joining up with the Red Militia that have disembarked at Porto Cristo
[on the north coast of Majorca].
I have no specific information that any Jewish members of the International Brigade
ever reached Ibiza. However, from the well-documented book, British Volunteers for Liberty
1936-39, by Bill Alexander,16 the following should be noted.
Nat Cohen, and Sam Masters, two Stepney Jewish Communist garment
workers, were cycling to Barcelona to attend a Workers‟ Olympiad,
arranged as a defiant gesture against the racial tone of the about to start
Berlin Olympics. Arriving at the Spanish border as the Franco-inspired
rebellion was announced, they helped to form a militia, and set sail with
their bicycles for the defence of Majorca.
It is at least possible that Bill Alexander‟s reference to „Majorca‟ belongs to that regrettable,
but persistent loose usage of that term which has throughout the centuries clouded historical
facts in this part of the Mediterranean. At the start of the Civil War, the island of Majorca,
not surprisingly, came out in support of Franco. In Ibiza and Formentera the military did
likewise, but by contrast with Majorca, did not have the support of the majority of Ibicencos,
who gave the heartiest of support to the 4,000 Republican troops sent to the Pitiuses to
15Claude E. Bowers, My Mission to Spain: Watching the Rehearsal for World War Two (New York: Golanz,
1954), p. 375; Carlton Hayes, Journey to Spain (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1945). 16Bill Alexander, British Volunteers for Liberty 1936-39 (London: Lawrence and Wishart, 1982), p. 51.
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restore law and order. According to Elliot Paul these troops were later bolstered by „400 FAI
and Communist Volunteers from other countries‟17. Both these combatant groups were
among the troops used in the later ill-fated expedition to reclaim the island of Majorca for the
Republicans, on which we have notice of Cohen and Masters once more. So it would seem
very probable that Masters and Cohen did indeed come to the smaller Balearics first before
embarking for Majorca at the time of the Porto Cristo landings.18
That episode was to prove a fatal one for the course of the war in the Islands. Mis-
interpretation as to the strength of the bridgehead at Porto Cristo caused a change of strategy
which in retrospect both Majorcans and Republicans were to regret. The former were afraid
that the Bayo contingent from Ibiza, which landed on August 16th, with its strong communist
back-up would stay and bring this style of left-wing government to the Islands, something the
ever commercially minded Majorcans feared. Franco‟s Nationalist rebels panicked,
mistakenly believing that Bayo was in great strength and declared that they could not retain
the Island after being bombed by the Republicans from the mainland. Whereupon one of the
most eminent Majorcans, the banker Juan March (who all his life dallied with opposing sides
for his own gain), took action, in concert with his two sons, making a request that later they
were bitterly to regret. They asked the Italians to send a „military advisor‟. Initially six sea
planes were sent on August 19th, after the Italian Consul Abraham Facchi had demanded and
received a deposit of 3 million lire.19 Then there were misgivings, some, perhaps, harking
back to the family‟s Jewish lineage. Juan March Junior declared that he was not a Falangist,
and did not want that party to dominate Majorcan life. But it was too late. By September
11th Rossi could boast that the Falange now reigned supreme.20
In later years, according to Claude Bowers, American Ambassador to Spain from
1933 to 1939 and his Second World War successor Carlton Hayes, Franco was expected to
17Elliot Paul, Life and Death of a Spanish Town (New York: Random House, 1937), p. 385. Minorca remained
in Republican hands until almost the end of the Civil War. 18Alexander British Volunteers for Liberty states that both men fought with Spanish units after the retreat from
Majorca. Masters died at Brunete in July 1937; Cohen returned to the U.K with a leg-wound. 19See Robert W. Kern, ed., Historical Dicionary of Modern Spain 1700-1988 (New York: Greenwood, 1990),
pp. 320-21. 20See the Italian Foreign Ministry file in Politica. Min.Spagna, Rome. .
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show appreciation. His pro-German Foreign Minister and brother-in-law, Suñer, pressed him
to enter the War. Franco retorted that his price was French Morocco, to which it is said
Hitler remarked that France, even under Axis domination, would never stand for it. There
was further badgering by the Italian Ambassador, Paulucci, to the effect that Franco should
show more positive gratitude for Civil War support. Requests went out to permit the
Balearics to become an official Axis base. It has to be recognized that Franco showed
courage in his refusal.
It is to the Ibencencos‟ eternal credit that when the Nazis constantly enquired in Ibiza
as to whom was of Jewish stock, the information was repeatedly refused. This was
confirmed to me by a leading Ibizan citizen, Señor Antonio Matutes, brother of Foreign
Secretary Abel Matutes. Both descendants of the famous Jewish family of Motut that
practised Judaism in Ibiza until the Civil War. Antonio‟s father was, I understand, actually
present at some of these meetings with the German S.S. The Germans, of course, had a far
more difficult task to discern the Jews in Ibiza and Formentera, because in these two islands
there was no distinctly Chueta grouping as in Majorca. Neither was there any public archival
documentation of local names of Jewish origin until my own researches some half a century
later.21 Nevertheless, some Chuetas from Majorca did have businesses in Ibiza in the 1930s
and must have been at great risk of being identified.
The Spanish Civil War finished in the spring of 1939 and within a few months the
Second World War had begun. What proportion of the total number of refugees from that
war who crossed the Spanish border were Jews will never be known for certain. Sir Samuel
Hoare, British Ambassador in Madrid, reported in 1940 that the camp at Miranda del Ebro,
built originally to accommodate 700, „was holding 3,000 - a veritable Noah‟s Ark of every
species of refugee‟.22 Of those who came by ship from Southern France, Italy or North
Africa, legally or illegally landing in Ibiza and Formentera, the total is, likewise
irrecoverable.
21See Gloria Mound, “Apellidos ibecencos de origen judío” (series), Ultima Hora, 2nd August - 22nd
November 1986. 22Wasserstein, Britain and the Jews of Europe, p. 140.
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This was a period of severe economic problems and increased isolation for the
islanders. There was a chronic shortage of all types of fuel, something that brought the
Spanish national airline to a virtual standstill.23 This had implications for air intelligence in
the area. The only other countries with Spanish routes were Germany and Italy - a state of
affairs that continued until quite late in the War. It is recorded that it was a German plane, on
7 November 1942, flying 80 miles south of Ibiza at 04.40 hours which first sighted the Allied
convoy steaming towards Oran. The sighting was not initially reported until remarked upon
in a signal picked up by the Italian navy some three and half hours later.24
Allied diplomats based in Madrid between 1939 and 1945 were themselves without a
speedy method of exit, and this led them eventually to give the Spanish Government its
sorely needed aviation fuel. But once the Allied landings started in North Africa a stern
proviso by the donors banned any Balearic Island flights, as they would be over the path of
Allied troop movements. The angry Nazis made the empty threat to occupy the American
and British Consulates in Palma in retaliation for the closing of the airports.25
HOLOCAUST REFUGEES IN IBIZA
One of the earliest Jewish refugees to step ashore in Ibiza was the writer and artist, Will
Faber. Born in Saarbrucken in 1901, he and his wife Emma (née Kaiser) reached the island
in 1934, having first spent time in Barcelona. This couple (who, it is reported tried initially
to hide their Jewish identity) were until Faber‟s death in 1987 among the leading lights of the
vibrant Ibicenco intellectual scene.26
It seems the philosopher and literary critic Walter Benjamin was an even earlier
arrival, but here was a man who whilst fiercely left wing, was no less openly intensive about
23See Hayes, Journey to Spain , pp. 119-49. 24David Kahn, Hitler’s Spies (New York: Macmillan, 1978), p. 477. 25Kahn, Hitler’s Spies, ibid. 26Miquel Pescè Vich, Diccionari Biográfic de les Pitiuses, (Eivissa: Ibosim, 1986), I, 31.
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his Jewishness. 27 Born in 1892, he disagreed so forcibly with German policy in the First
World War that he decamped until 1920. He began working with Berthold Brecht in 1929,
but with the upsurge of Nazism departed from Berlin for a brief visit to Ibiza on June 25th
1932, returning there again from February to October 1933. Benjamin himself has recorded
that he found the island enchanting. It seems both incredible and sad that a man of such
intelligence, being already acquainted with the island‟s almost primitive isolation at that
period, should have made so little provision for a longer sojourn. His eventual flight there
was in haste and fear. This lack of pre-planning affected him badly and certainly made his
stay, devoid of the cultural environment that he had left behind, more difficult. Walter
Benjamin lived initially in the unhappy household of two friends (who were also possibly
Jewish) Hans Jacob Noeggerath and his wife.28 Later Benjamin found himself forced to
move. The more active cultural scene in Ibiza town was beyond his means, so he decamped
to a rural fonda, paying a peseta a day.29 He lived there in severe financial straits,
undernourished, constantly receiving belated news of his family‟s sufferings in Germany,
where a number of them had been arrested.30 He also experienced visa problems with the
German Consul in Palma, being marked for his Jewishness and politics. He wrote to
Gershom Scholem at the time that in cases such as his own the Consul was keeping the
passports and giving excuses not to return them. Without earnings, very sick from a leg
injury that would not heal because of lack of money for medical attention, to say nothing of
his visa problems, Walter Benjamin made the fateful decision that France would be a better
place, opting to join his friend Brecht in Paris.
27Encyclopaedia Judaica, IV, 530-31; José María Valverde, “Fascinación de Walter Benjamin”, Anuario Ibiza
y Formentera, 1989 (Eivissa: Ibosim, 1989), 131-40. 28According to Pescè Vich Noeggerath died as a very young man in Ibiza in 1935 after a number of years
researching the customs of the islanders (Diccionari Biográfic, II, 134). He is buried in San Antonio. 29Gershom Scholem, Walter Benjamin - Story of a Friendship, trans. Harry Zohn (Philadelphia: Jewish
Publications Society of America, 1981), pp. 80, 181-84, 189, 196; Correspondance of Walter Benjamin and
Gershom Scholem, 1932-1940, edited by Gershom Scholem (New York: Schocken, 1989), pp. xxxvii, 12, 40,
60, 94, 183. 30His brother George died in Mauthausen in 1942 (International Biographical Dictionary of Central European
Emigrés 1933-1945 (New Providence: Saur, 1985)p. 80); for the terrible conditions there see Encyclopaedia
Judaica, II, 1136. In 1941, ten thousand Spanish Republicans (including Jews from the Pitiuses) arrived there,
after being handed over by the Vichy government in France. One year later only 1500 remained alive. See also
documentation in Leo Baeck Library, New York.
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The outbreak of the Second World War meant that, as a German living in France, he
suffered a short French internment. Upon the onslaught on the French capital, he fled in the
company of others to the south of France. Thanks to a friend, Fredrich Pollock, he received a
U.S. emergency visa, but this was not adequate in such times. He crossed over illegally into
Spain at Port Bou, without the vital official French Emigration/Transit certificates. Almost
certainly there would have been trouble boarding a train to the faraway Portuguese ports,
even if he had not been detected by the police. In his perilous situation Walter Benjamin may
possibly have contemplated making for Ibiza, where he still had friends. His presence aboard
a small vessel sailing from Barcelona or some other Catalan port might not have raised too
many questions. But all hopes for the future seemed aborted when the police chief
announced his intention to send him back over the French border the next day. Walter
Benjamin committed suicide on the 27 September 1940 at Port Bou where he now lies
buried. Today his writings, including those executed in the Balearics are more highly thought
of than ever.
Arriving in Ibiza under similar conditions was the Munich-born architect Erwin
Bronner (Heilbronner) who initially stayed only three years in Ibiza, until 1937, when the
political situation made residence there impossible. He departed with his wife Giselda to
Hollywood, where he, too, worked with Brecht, becoming an America citizen. However,
with the upsurge of McCarthyism he returned to his beloved Ibiza in 1959. Erwin Bronner‟s
main desire was to paint, but he became involved in the reconstruction of Ibicenco buildings.
There has been nobody since who matched his ability to make the unique Ibicenco traditional
style comfortable for modern living. For the remaining eleven years of his life Erwin
Bronner applied the architectural visions that he had carried with him in the years abroad to
the adaptation of the old typical Ibicenco house to meet modern needs. Without doubt times
were hard then for him, but to this day people mention with amazement that Erwin Bronner
designed the Ibiza house of Schilliger, the ex-Nazi fighter ace. In his architectural
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endeavours Bronner had another talented Jewish colleague in similar circumstances, Raoul
Hausmann. Both these men were to receive the highest Spanish honours in later years.31
Of the Jewish expatriates who reached Ibiza in the years immediately after the Second
World War, most were writers and artists. One who is still fondly remembered is the
Bohemian Ernest Ehrenfelt (born in Berlin in 1910), a survivor of the concentration camps
who arrived in Ibiza in 1953. When he died in 1978 he willed the value of his considerable
estate to the orphans of Ibiza. Two other arrivals at this period were the famous Israeli artist
Simona Baram, and his equally gifted wife Bella Brisel. Upon their discovery of the Pitiuses
Islands, Baram insisted that it was only in Formentera that he could work, notwithstanding
that his themes were nearly always of his people and of Israel.32 He had volunteered for the
British Army in World War Two and had put that experience to good use in 1947 as an active
member of the Israeli underground, awaiting the emergence of the state‟s independence.
Between such military commitments the interim years were spent teaching and studying art
and agriculture.
The Barams stayed initially without visas (Israel at that time not having any
diplomatic links with Spain). It was Vicente Escandell, chief of the Secret Police, who
helped them. Baram became exceptionally beloved by the countryfolk. In those days the tiny
eight by three miles island was far more barren. Baram with his Israeli agricultural
experience pondered the problems of the island‟s farmers: the shortage of water and shade,
and the sudden high winds. The blessings of trees in Israel convinced Baram of the need for
similar measures, but the local folk were exceptionally sceptical from previous failures with
Spanish horticultural strains. On visits to Israel Baram brought back no less than 3,000
seedlings, mainly eucalyptus, many of which he lovingly tended himself. Today their
flourishing boughs can be seen all over the island, whilst in the isolated Baram homestead
there are still the most exquisite mosaics, mostly on Jewish themes.
31See the entry in International Bibliographical Dictionary, p. 80; also Gloria Mound, “Ibiza Architecture...
Art of the Cube”, Balearic Living /Casas Vidas, 12, April/May 1988, 26-33. 32See Who’s Who in World Jewry, ed. I.J.C. Karpman, (New York: Pitman, 1972), pp. 55,133
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Baram died suddenly in August 1980 and his embalmed body was given the first
officially permitted Jewish burial on the Island for 500 years. Senator Abel Matutes imparted
to me how very proud he had been to carry out all the necessary formalities that were still
required in the days of Franco. The funeral cortege for Baram de los Arbols, as he was
affectionately known, stretched for three miles. In such instances the Jewish refugees not
only took help from the Ibicencos, but contributed in their turn to improving the quality of
life in the Islands. Two years later Bela took Baram‟s body for re-burial on the Mount of
Olives, dying herself by Suicide in Jerusalem only a few days afterwards.
Another family fleeing from Nazi persecution were the Hanauers from Lingen in
Lower Saxony, who arrived in 1934. They consisted of two middle-aged bachelors, Hugo
and Alfred, accompanied by their five spinster sisters, remnants of an even larger family of
eleven children.33 From 1936 extreme right-wing influences ruled the Spanish Catholic
church. Excepting Spanish Morocco, attendance at Mass was compulsory. Prior to Easter
1937 a decree was issued in Palma that all parishioners in the Balearics had to fill in forms
stating where, when, and how they had fulfilled their Easter religious obligations. The fear
that was suddenly rampant can be shown by the fact that such measures one year before had
only produced a 14% compliance, yet in 1937 it was nearly 100%.34 The Ibiza Town mayor,
Ferrer, who was himself of an ancient Ibicenco Jewish family, felt that a formal mass family
baptism would be prudent for the Hanauers as without such religious documents licences to
function commercially were refused. (It was the same Mayor Ferrer who a few years later
was to stand up to the Gestapo, and in his mayoral capacity refuse to sign papers for the
expulsion of refugees from the Island, or to identify those of Jewish ancestry.) The mayor of
San Antonio, and Ibiza‟s own deputy mayor, Vicente Escandell Planells (1865-1941), father
of the future chief of the Secret Police, stood as godfathers at the baptism of Hugo and Alfred
33Ministry of Justice Archives, Jersualem. 34See Jackson, The Spanish Republic and The Civil War, p. 422; also Bernanos, A Diary of
y Times, pp. 141-43.
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Hanauer.35 The Hanauers had opened a restaurant, Alfredo‟s, in Ibiza Town, which is there
to this day, but the family continued to feel threatened. Strong anti-Semitic influences
abounded, especially from Palma.36 So the Hanauers were forced to sell, believing, as the
Gestapo presence became more marked, that their lack of residence permits made deportation
certain. In the last years of his life Hugo was to write to the Israeli Embassy in Germany of
those terrible times, and how he himself was taken to the concentration camp in Formentera
at the instigation of the German Consul. Finally after a few months, with help from
influential friends like the Matutes and Escandells who gave the family accommodation, he
was freed and taken to where the remainder of the family were managing to hide.37
It is only in the past few years becoming known to what extent the Escandells,
typically for Ibicencos, went against the edicts of Palma and Madrid: helping the many
stateless refugees to continue residing on the islands; issuing papers when it was in their
power to do so; on other occasions finding get-away vessels and local hide-aways. It is not
known if father and son ever divulged to the refugees their Jewish lineage. The police chief‟s
wife, Juanita (herself from the Madrid marrano family of Montero) and their only child Lena
proudly bore the knowledge. They told me that Vicente (a member of the Ibicenco Jewish
group that met each Saturday afternoon in Ibiza town)38 become overwhelmed with the plight
of the Jews when, prior to being made the local police chief, he had worked on the trains at
the Franco-Spanish frontier, experiencing at first hand the plight of fleeing refugees.39 Later,
as police inspector in Madrid, he was privy to papers emanating from the American, British,
and German Embassies. In this context, the remarks made by the British Ambassador, Sir
35Vicente Escandell‟s Jewishness is confirmed by Israel Cohen, Travels in Jewry (London: Methuen, 1952), pp.
347-49. Dr. Cohen, vice-President of the Board of Deputies of British Jews, was told of the secret Judaism of
the then head of the Ibiza secret police during a visit to the Jewish community of Barcelona in that year. 36For relevant experiences of Walter Benjamin and Hugo Hanauer see their published correspondence and
private papers in, e.g. Ministry of Justice Archives, Jerusalem; Gershon Scholen Library, University of
Jerusalem; Leo Baeck Library, New York. 37Ministry of Justice Archives, Jerusalem. 38Cohen, Travels in Jewry (above, n. 35). 39See Wasserstein, Britain and the Jews of Europe, pp. 140, 176, 184-85, 194-97; also Encyclopaedia Judaica,
XV, 243-47. Cf., too, the story of Walter Benjamin‟s last days.
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Samuel Hoare in a letter sent to Eleanor Rathbone M.P. in May 1943 seem particularly
relevant:
The problem of refugees in Spain is inextricably connected with the
problem of escaping prisoners of war, and with the secret activities of this
mission. The Gestapo is around us at every turn, complicating and
attempting to frustrate our efforts, and the Spanish government, even when
they wish to show good will, are terrified of the German Army on the
Pyrennees‟ frontier.40
Hugo Hanauer‟s papers in the Jerusalem Archives confirm that some Jews escaped by
boat to Gibraltar, but his family decided to accept their stalwart friends‟ offer and go into
hiding in a remote finca belonging to the Escandells. Towards the end of the War the
Hanauers re-appeared on the Island. The family were in very straitened circumstances; yet -
apparently aware of the potential of San Antonio as a future tourist centre - they grasped at
the chance for their survival. By now well into middle age, the Hanauers (sisters as well as
brothers) literally took rocks from the seashore and with their bare hands started to build a
bungalow-style hotel, called La Playa. Within a short time it had become a home and a
viable business.41 But to locals it was always Casa Jueus („the Jews‟ House‟) In later years,
as the Hanauers grew too frail to work, long serving employees (judging by their family
names, themselves of Jewish descent) took on the task of nursing them. In the late 1970 the
last survivors sold their hotel for development, and began giving thought to what was going
to happen to their not inconsiderable estate. The family‟s attitude to their conversion is
illustrated by Alfred who, just before his death in 1965, wrote explaining with considerable
bitterness to the Israeli Consul in Germany, how there had been another brother Leopold who
in Frankfurt had married a Christian woman twenty six years younger than himself. Alfred‟s
wish to disinherit his only nephew Rudolph was disregarded when, by 1980 only Hugo and
Elsa remained alive - they were to die within three weeks of each other in 1981 - and
instructions were put in hand between Israel, Germany, and lawyers in Madrid for the
distribution of their estate: the State of Israel was to be the main beneficiary but with a
40Wasserstein, p. 206. 41Ministry of Justice Archives, Jerusalem.
- 15 -
portion for Rudolph. I have confirmation that this was achieved, both from the special legal
department of the Israel Ministry of Justice, set up specifically to deal with such matters, and
locally, from the London-born Jewish artist Sara Nechamkin, an Ibiza resident of some thirty
years‟ standing. In 1980, her taxi-driver husband picked up an airport fare requesting the
residence of Hugo Hanauer. The passenger introduced himself as a French notary who had
been sent on behalf of the Israeli Government to arrange the transfer of 40 million pesetas (at
that period, not far short of a quarter of a million pounds) which a dying German refugee
wished to leave to Israel.
The Hanauers became exceptionally friendly with another family who were in a
similar plight to themselves - the Grunwalds.42 Isadore and Sidonie Grunwald, natives of
Hungary, had first come to Barcelona, in 1914, fleeing from the threat to Paris posed by an
earlier German aggression.43 How or why they were living there at the outbreak of the First
World War is unclear, but family papers show that this was where they married in 1919, and
where their first child Marcel died in infancy. During the Grunwalds‟ sojourn in Barcelona,
the couple opened a successful jewellery business. A daughter, Mercedes, was born in 1917,
followed by a son, Jorge, in 1924. But tragedy struck again. In 1929 Sidonie, who seems to
have been the mainstay of the business, died. Isadore found it impossible to carry on, selling
out in 1932. Seeing the storm clouds gathering in Central Europe, Isadore decided to bring
his two motherless children to Ibiza.
At the commencement of their Balearic sojourn the little family were exceptionally
rich. Isadore (who had a great aptitude for languages and loved to study) deposited all his
money in the local Banco de las Baleares Bank . In 1935 the bank failed and the family
became almost destitute overnight. Taking into account his capabilities and widowed state,
Isadore took a post as an English teacher in the local Catholic seminary. Determined to
integrate his children as much as possible and, perhaps, in view of the local Nazi situation at
42I am indebted to Jorge Grunwald who, together with his wife Fernanda, gave me access to all the family
papers in their possession as well as the benefit of their openmindedness (a rarity when dealing with the islands),
plus their excellent memories. This enabled me to piece together not only the Grunwald unique family history,
but a far fuller picture of conditions in the Balearic Isles from the early thirties onwards. 43Adam Feinstein, “Emerging from the Shadows”, Jewish Chronicle, 11 April 1986.
- 16 -
that period, in well-founded fear for his livelihood, Isadore never alluded to any Jewish
origins in conversations with his children. When in anecdotal mood he would relate that
their grandfather had been a famous man who had sat at the table of royalty, but he never
alluded to that for which he was famous , except to say that Grandpa Grunwald had been
capable of conversing fluently in twelve languages and had died young. After World War
Two Isidore told them that their mother‟s brothers now lived in Manchester U.K. and had
anglicized their name to Miller. Isadore Grunwald‟s past pupils and neighbours have all
informed me that they guessed his lineage, and were frequently afraid for him and his family
who now lived in a tiny dilapidated house up in the old city. Memories of Isadore are of his
being very independent - a man who could relate better to his pupils and few friends than he
did to his young family, born when he was into middle life, the sole responsibility for which
weighed heavily upon him. Later, when Jorge lost an eye, playing around with a soldier‟s
gun, he was sent away to a right-wing church school on the mainland.
By the year following the bank crash the miseries of the Civil War were upon all the
inhabitants of the Baleares. Soon the people of Ibiza were starving. The food shortages were
exacerbated by successive military occupations. The original 4,000 Republican troops sent to
quell the pro-Franco rebellion in the Old City eventually departed for the abortive battle for
Majorca. They left the Island to 400 International FAI Anarchists and Communists. The
Anarchist tendency, dominant among them, did not believe in commissioned officers.
Soldiers made off with whatever goods they could see, leaving worthless receipts as
payment.44 At this stage (13 September 1936) Franco bombed the island with four planes.
This induced some jubilation amongst the pro-Franco prisoners held in the Ibiza citadel, and
obviously unaware that it was not military targets that were being obliterated, but the lives of
fifty-five Ibicencos. (Forty-two were women or children under ten years old.) The
undisciplined, taunted guards reacted mercilessly, shooting down all the one hundred
prisoners. Before their departure a group rushed the local clinic, took the banker Abel
Matutes, (grandfather of the Foreign Secretary), from his sick bed and shot him too. All
44Paul, Life and Death of a Spanish Town, pp. 335-40.
- 17 -
these events took place a few yards from the Grunwald home. Later there was terrible
retaliation by Rossi, when 400 Republicans were shot down in the same area, amongst them
many local Jews and Freemasons.
Thirty six hours after the air raid the German destroyer Die Falke lay at anchor
alongside the waterfront, offering a last chance for those with foreign passports to leave.
Desperately hungry, Isadore walked with his children to the port and demanded to be taken
before the captain. Welcomed aboard the destroyer, the children were amazed to hear their
father speak German and to see him obviously accepted as a German himself. For the next
twenty five years, Jorge Grunwald believed, on this evidence that he and his family were
Aryans. Like the captain, he was surprised to hear his father refuse rescue. Isadore explained
that he had come on board to beg for food. A sack of flour, vegetables, canned meats, and
butter, were produced. The little family were sent away with the greatest civility. Isadore did
not keep all the food for himself but shared it with neighbours. Word went around about the
teacher of English who had suddenly spoken German and found food. The Ibicencos love to
give nicknames to anybody accepted as one of themselves. From then onwards, Isadore
Grunwald was known as Muller/Butter - (Flour and Butter). Subsequently it was to be his
code-name when he became one of the heads of the underground anti-Nazi groups.45
The Italian occupation began in September 1936. These bullying tyrants stayed the
longest, until the end of the Civil War. In October the Axis formally recognized Franco and
his Falange Party as the Government, beginning the most dangerous period of all for the
Jews.46 Whilst the Italians were quickly ousted at the end of the Civil War, the Gestapo‟s
hold continued. They strutted the streets of the Islands with arrogant demands, confident that
they would soon be the complete rulers of the whole country. The Axis fleets were also
much in evidence in the ports of Palma and Ibiza. Count Ciano wrote in his diary in
September 1937. „We are shifting from the role of torpedo launchers,... which has been
45Ministry of Justice Archives, Jerusalem (Hanover file). 46James Cleugh, The Spanish Fury (London: Harrap, 1962), pp. 99, 142.
- 18 -
allotted to us, to that of Mediterranean policemen‟.47 Much that went on in the Islands has to
be understood as relating to these strategic ambitions.
THE DEUTSCHLAND
At the start of the Spanish Civil War the major European powers adopted a stance of
neutrality. This attitude became farcical as Britain and France and at times Russia too played
into the hands of Germany and Italy to enable the Nationalist forces of Franco ultimately to
gain the upper hand. In April 1937 the Non-Intervention Committee inaugurated a scheme to
implement their ideas on the high seas. The British and French navies would patrol coasts
held by the Nationalists, whilst the Axis powers would patrol the Republican coastal areas as
„neutrals‟.
The Republican Government in Valencia saw no reason to recognize the Committee‟s
somewhat arbitrary arrangements when clearly Italy and Germany were giving aid to Franco‟s
insurrection, warning that they felt free to attack Axis warships if they were within Spanish
territorial waters.48 On 29 May 1937, the battleship Deutschland was at anchor in the
shadow of Ibiza‟s ancient formidable fortress. There are conflicting stories as to what
happened next, but certain facts are clear. Republican planes from Valencia, armed with
bombs, flew overhead. Recent information from the Soviet General Osipenko giving
information as to Russian Jewish participation, lists a General Yarkov Smushkevich, as
senior military Adviser to the Republican Air Force. The controversy is as to whether the
bombs were dropped first or whether the Deutschland opened fire first, but there ensued
extensive damage, and casualties both to the batleship and crew and to the long suffering
Ibicencos.
47See Kahn, Hitler’s Spies, pp. 96-97 for details and support given to the manufacture of torpedos by the
Spanish King Alfonso XIII and the Primo de Rivera dictatorship in the 1920s; also for the industry‟s close links
with the S.S. network, through its head, Canaris, who himself had much practical experience in such matters.
See also P. Broué, The Revolution and Civil War in Spain (London: Faber, 1972), p. 489. 48Jackson, The Spanish Republic and The Civil War, p. 424.
- 19 -
Germany decided to make a swift reprisal and glean all possible profit from the
incident. Two days later the city of Almería was bombarded by the battleship Admiral
Schneer aided by two destroyers. Many believed that this admitted retaliation was only a
prelude to World War. A prompt and violent Republican answer, with Western democratic
support, was expected at any moment. The Republican Minister of Defence, Prieto, favoured
bombing the German Mediterranean fleet as the only hope of saving the Republic. (Certainly
had such events transpired World War Two would have had a completely different scenario,
and many European Jews would have been saved) But the Germans and Italians stormed out
of the Non-Intervention Committee meeting and nothing further was done. Count Ciano
gleefully recorded in his diary: „Four Russian or Red ships sunk, one Greek captured. One
Spanish bombed and damaged, forced to seek refuge in French Port. OBJECT: blockade of
the Republicans. The full Franco-Russo-British Orchestra. The theme: Piracy in the
Mediterranean. GUILTY: The Fascists.‟49
The New York Herald Tribune gave the casualties in Ibiza following from the
Deutschland incident as 24 dead and 72 injured. Thus the totally inadequate and already
overstretched medical facilities of Ibiza were again in a sorry state and every able-bodied
person was roped in to assist. The injured German sailors were brought off the ship to the
tiny Red Cross clinic, but nobody there spoke German. Suddenly, Isadore Grunwald‟s
previous prowess with the language was remembered and he was sent for. Jorge Grunwald
recalls the period with the greatest clarity. His father, for the first time, left the children, not
returning for three days. When he came, he carried a sailor‟s hat-band, a high-ranking Iron
Cross, and a commendation from the captain of the Deutschland. The children showed, as
was natural, a desire to play with the two former items, but Isadore was adamant in refusal,
and they witnessed what was to them then totally inexpliable: Isadore proceeded to destroy
the sailor‟s hat-band and the Iron Cross depositing the remains, with considerable difficulty,
down the family‟s very primitive toilet. But when it came to the commendation, this Isadore
put away most carefully. The knowledge that his father was so well considered by the
49The Private Diaries of Count Giano ( , 1947).
- 20 -
Germans was in the next few years to be a source of great pride to Jorge, who never reached a
close rapport with his father. Isadore continued to the end of his days in Ibiza, teaching at the
seminary. His constant friend and confidant was the Pitiuses‟ main historian and priest,
whom we know today to have been the secret ministering Rabbi to the Jews there; Isadoro
Macabich Llobet.
The elder Grunwald child, Mercedes, became very wild, unmanageable, at times
unbalanced.. At his boarding school Jorge showed great aptitude for electronics, and this was
nurtured. At a young age he designed the sound system for Ibiza‟s first international airport.
In 1947, he left Ibiza, taking up an appointment in a similar capacity at American bases on
the Spanish mainland. Whilst working there in 1960 (by which time he had been married for
ten years) Jorge received news that his father was desperately ill. Isadore died on 15 March
1960. Jorge arrived too late, to find that the seminary had already completed all the funeral
arrangements. (The islanders bury within twenty four hours, as is the Jewish custom.)
Isadore‟s resting place is at the cemetery at Figueretas outside Ibiza Town. After the funeral
Jorge went through his father‟s papers. His main concern was to find the commendation
from the captain of the Deutschland, but it was no longer there. Instead to his amazement
there were papers granting Isadore Grunwald full Spanish citizenship, a feat achieved trhough
the good offices of the local Police Chief, Vicente Escandell. But it was the closer inspection
of his father‟s papers that brought Jorge Grunwald his most terrible trauma. There was an
assortment of old certificates and photos, many from over half a century previously, relating
to his parents, and what indisputably seemed to be his grandparents. Photos included one of
a man who looked like a robed Rabbi and another of a London tombstone, with the clearest
engraved inscription. On the reverse side of the photo was a very personal message to his
father. More in horror than amazement he saw that his parental grandfather had been no less
than Moritz Grunwald, Chief Rabbi of Bulgaria, who had died in London in 1895, aged 42.
The Rabbi had left a widow and five young children, the eldest of whom, it now seemed, had
been Jorge‟s father. Suddenly Isadore‟s guarded remarks about a famous grandfather, so
often heard in childhood, made horrifying sense, but it was a situation with which Jorge was
- 21 -
totally unable to come to terms for a number of years. To Jorge‟s surprise his wife, Fernanda
López, showed no upset. She saw it as being her opportunity to confess that maternally she
too was of Madrid marrano parentage. Her Republican family had come to Ibiza during the
Civil War, whilst her own father had been imprisoned. Presumably this is but a further
instance of how the local church authorities in Ibiza protected Jewish families, whether local
or incoming. Paradoxically, from its sheltering wing, Isadore Grunwald found it possible to
desist from conversion.
Amongst the more modern items among Jorge‟s father‟s papers there was an
assortment of photos and letters from his mother‟s) family, David (Otto) Miller of 27,
Victoria Road, Whally Range, Manchester. It would seem from the correspondence that it
had been from this source that Isadore had kept in touch, and received news of Sidonie
Grunwald‟s other brothers, William and Heindrich. Sadly it took so long for Jorge to come
to terms with his new identity that by the time he did so, the Manchester family had moved
away.50 Looking back today on his attitudes and actions of 1960 causes Jorge considerable
stress. His one aim in life as he nears retirement is to find his family. He is a local Professor
of Electronics. Jorge and Fernanda became one of the leading members of the Jewish
Cultural Group which I helped to found. Fernanda does her utmost to keep Jewish fesitvals,
wears a Magan David around her neck, but sadly concurs that her children and grandchildren
have been told too little, too late about their Jewish antecedents. The only daughter has
married into one of the old Jewish families of Ibiza, whilst the eldest son held a high position
in Spain‟s national airline in the Canaries,but was cut down with a fatal illness in the late
80s.. The youngest son is in the Spanish Navy.51
For the years following 1945, we have many reports of Jewish arrivals in the Islands
in the aftermath of wartime horrors.52 But Jews of Balearic origin who stayed on in the
50The Photo Archive Department, Beth Hatefutsoth, Tel Aviv hold copies of these photographs and papers, in
addition to 300 others relating to the Jews of Ibiza and Formentera. 51He is also the author of a book of short stories: Jorge Grunwald, Cuentos (Ibiza: 1984); the volume also
contains a brief history of Ibiza Airport. 52See M. Planells, Tanit y las Niñas de Purpurina (Palma: 1981); Secretos de Ibiza (Barcelona: 1982); La
senda de los elefantes(Palina: 1980); Anuario Ibiza y Formentera, 1982, 1986, 1987 and 1989. There are
reports that illegal immigrant ships (e.g. Aliyah Bet) bound for Israel called at the Islands for supplies and were
most kindly received.
- 22 -
Islands after the Civil War kept less and less Jewish practices and outwardly showed an
affinity to Catholicism not seen in all the earlier centuries. It was extremly difficult in the
Franco years to survive without Baptism papers. With the long term rigorous imprisonment
and deaths of the Pitiuses‟ mainly anti-clerical Freemasons there was much fear and little
social co-existence between the newcomers, and the Jewish families, except guardedly
amongst the cafe society of writers and artists.53
Ibiza and Formentera were never forgiven by Franco for their opposition to him. In
consequence, when money became available for electricity, roads, schools, drainage etc., the
Pitiuses took the remotest of back seats. Improvement was only seen when the young and
capable Abel Matutes, after being Mayor of Ibiza, took his seat in the Cortes in the 1970s.
Therefore, when people arrived in a poverty stricken backwater with ideas and money for
investment it can readily be understood that few questions were asked and that they were
welcomed with open arms. Soon after the Second World War many such investors arrived
purporting to be Holocaust survivors, but who it was afterwards established were, in fact,
Nazis scurrying away with their ill-gotten loot. Having enormous wealth and influence in
Madrid and Palma, they rapidly commercialised themselves. It was only their bodyguards
and fortified estates that made the Ibicencos realise the true situation. Much to the shame of
the Islanders this state of affairs has not to this day been entirely eradicated. A few of these
Nazis met mysterious and violent ends. In 1986 I was introduced to a young German Jewish
lawyer from Hamburg who, I was reliably informed, continues to come weekly to the Islands
to take instructions from his clients, all Nazis, or their descendants, who still hold properties
in Germany!
Of all the refugees who arrived in the Pitiuses, it is without doubt the Hungarian
brothers Herman and William Fisch who made the most money. They arrived in the early
years after the war, via Cairo, Rome and Madrid, having escaped from Hungary thanks to
visas given out by the Spanish Embassy in Budapest. This intervention was at the instigation
53See Gloria Mound, “The Jewish Remnants of Ibiza and Formenera”, Transactions of the 10th World Congress
of Jewish Studies (Jerusalem, 1989); also Jackson, The Spanish Republic and The Civil War, p. 510.
- 23 -
of the U.S. Government.54 The Hungarian escape contacts gave them an introduction to
Jordana, the Spanish Foreign Minister. Here were sharp, clever seasoned entrepreneurs. The
brothers were among the first to see the potential in building self-catering holiday villages.
As part of a consortium, they invested in a tract of land outside Santa Eulalia, Siesta, owned
by Felix Morand, also of Hungarian birth. Houses were erected in the Ibicenco style, but to a
far higher standard than seen locally hitherto. Business boomed giving sorely needed local
employment. The Siesta manager was another Hungarian, Otto Strassberg (a first cousin of
the famous American actor Lee Strassberg). Otto and his wife also owed their escape to the
Spanish Embassy in Budapest.55
The background of the marriage-day of Herman and Agnes Fisch is of interest. The
wedding took place in Rome, as the war was drawing to a close. Meanwhile, in an Austrian
detention camp, two middle-aged inmates, awaiting their exit papers, met and chatted. They
both confessed to each other that on this particular day they were especially glum. Strangely
the two men had similar reasons. Both had offspring getting married in Italy, and the exit
papers had not arrived for them to attend. Suddenly the two men saw the unique similarity.
Their respective children were about to marry each other!
Agnes Fisch, while in no way a practising Jewess, was an eager informant on the
conditions of Jewish life in post-war Ibiza. An anecdote from her family‟s early days there
illustrates the dangers which still obtained in the early post-war years. Herself very blonde in
colouring, she was sitting outside a café in Ibiza‟s main paseo, and talking in German with a
friend, when a young man joined in their conversation. Before long, he was explaining to
them what his business in Ibiza was: he had come there to resuscitate the Nazi Party. Agnes‟
reaction was to inform him that she was Jewish and (as an instinctive follow-up) to pour her
drink over his head. However, since the café immediately adjoining was known to be Nazi-
owned, she felt it prudent to leave the now murderously hostile young man to his own
devices. A further chance encounter with him on a lonely beach a few days later caused her
54See Holocaust and Genocide Studies, III, I (1988); Tsvi Erez, Hungary - Six Days in 1944 (Kibbutz Dvir,
Israel: ); Wasserstein, Britain and the Jews of Europe; Emmet John Hughes, Report from Spain (New York:
Kennikat Press, ), pp. 257-58. 55See Encyclopaedia Judaica, XV, 245.
- 24 -
real alarm, but luckily he failed to recognize her. Herman Fisch died in 1983. It was his
express wish that he be given a Jewish burial at the side of the 14th-century citadel church of
Santa Eulalia. Many is the visitor who gazes in surprise at the redbrick tombstone with its
Magen David.
The Fisch brothers‟ partner in developing the Siesta tract of land was another Jew of
similar background: Felix Morand, born in Innsbruck in 1915 but reared in Hungary. By the
early 1930s he was living in the United States. Felix had an exceptional command of many
languages plus a positive talent in the use of stenography. These attributes came to the
attention of the American High Command when he joined the Army, and he was appointed
aide-de-camp to General Eisenhower, eventually ending up in Algiers with the 1942 Allied
landings. From this posting he heard about the beautiful island of Ibiza, and by some means
(quite illegally at that time) made his way across the 120 odd miles of sea to see for himself.
Land was literally going for a song and he bought. In 1953 he returned with his non-Jewish
wife Alfreda. They, like the Fisch family, made Ibiza their home, building a beautiful
personal residence, (today a hotel for homosexuals) on the banks of the Río de Santa Eulalia,
in the shadow of the Roman bridge that spans the only river in all the Balearic Islands. Their
three children all grew up to be exceptionally keen on knowing more about their Jewish roots
and Judaism. One son worked for a year on an Israeli kibbutz.
The two main places of pre-war Jewish worship in the Islands, the crypt of the San
Cristóbal Convent56 and Can Marroig on Formentera have both fallen into a state of serious
disrepair. The crypt of San Cristóbal was eventually covered over when the new chapel was
built in 1970, but if ever restoration funds are forthcoming, then entrance will be possible
from the side with the deep incline which backs on to the ancient Calle Mayor. This would
once again uncover the ancient Jewish meeting place seen by Mr. Gross in 1930. The room
itself is believed to be still intact. As part of the E.C.-sponsored resotration of the city of
56An account of this was given in Gloria Mound, “The Jewish Connections of Prinz Luis Salvador of Hapsburg
and the Convento of San Cristóbal, Ibiza” (paper delivered to the Fifth British Seminar of Judeo Spanish
Studies, Westfield College, London, 1986).
- 25 -
Ibiza plaques and signposts drawing attention to the significance of this site have been
promised.57
With regard to Can Marroig, the situation (as of 1991) is deplorable. Here is possibly
the only building built specially as a synagogue in Spain between 1492 and 1936 and used for
services until the Civil War (as witnessed in 1934 by L.G. Bowman, the then recently retired
headmaster of the Jews‟ Free School, London). That Jewish practices were regularly
observed in this exceptionally remote spot was admitted to me by the remnants of the family
that owned the estate for generations until 1940, as well as by the Matutes family and
children of local officials who had connived at the secret services. Today the rapidly
decaying Can Marroig building lies abandoned. Before I gave up residence on the Islands,
however, I was assured by its present owners that the Synagogue would not be destroyed,
whatever other projects might be in view. The owners now are the Matutes family interest
and in this, as in so much else that happens in the Pitiuses, the last word must rest with them.
Indeed, they might, appropriately, be given the last word in this present study.
On one occasion when Abel Matutes was interviewed he was pressed as to why the
area had for the past twenty years received a reputation for being so much more permissive
than the rest of Spain. As a former mayor and councillor for tourism he was accused of
promoting this tendency. Matutes replied in a rather unexpected way: „I disagree, and would
prefer to put what you mention down to historical development.‟ In the course of more than
2,000 years of recorded history Ibiza has experienced various invasions and cultures -
Carthaginians, Romans, Byzantines, Arabs - and there has always been a distinct Jewish
flavour to Ibiza too. The people of Ibiza and Formentera respected all the cultures, but only
absorbed those influences that they considered worthwhile.58
57See Encyclopaedia Judaica Year Book 1986-87 (Get same form of reference as short title throughout.), p.
256; also Gloria Mound, “Hitherto Unknown Jews of Ibiza and Formentera”, Fourth British Seminar of Judeo-
Spanish Studies: Abstracts of Papers, ed. N.G. Round (Glasgow: University of Glasgow Department of
Hispanic Studies, 1984). 58See Ibiza, Formentera, 1984-85 (Hamburg: Manthey, 1984).
Recommended