Snow Catalan Pallejà . Spanish politician and activist. Survivor of the Nazi concentration camp of Ravensbrück .
Summary
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- 1Datos
- 2 In the French resistance
- 3 The Slacker Command
- 4 Liberation
- 5 Recognitions
- 6 books
- 7 sources
Data
Daughter of a peasant family from the Priorat region.
“He was a peasant, and the town’s barber, and whatever was needed. But he was also a militant of the Catalan Unified Socialist Party (PSUC) who always told Neus seven words that she, unfortunately, had to remember all the time.” throughout his life on numerous occasions: ‘Never look down on anyone.
Teresa del Hoyo, general secretary of the Amical de Ravensbrück
- At the age of 15, he joined the PSUC.
- She went on her own to Barcelona to become a nurse, studies, which she could not finish due to the outbreak of the Civil War.
- 1937. She became what was then called a ‘blood nurse’ and was assigned by the party to the Las Acacias neighborhood to take care of the orphans and children of combatants and prisoners of the Republic, the children of Negrín.
- 1939. When Franco’s troops were entering Barcelona, and everyone was fleeing, Neus said that she would not leave without the 182 children she had in her care. She handed them over to the French authorities, who distributed them among families of nationals and Belgians.
In the French resistance
He avoided the refugee camps for exiles and traveled to Tournac. There she fell in love with the Occitan Albert Roger. The relationship lasted a year.
- He had French nationality and dedicated himself to acting as a liaison, centralizing the reception and transmission of messages, passing weapons and documentation or giving shelter to political refugees.
- 1943. It is said that the Sarlat pharmacist alerted the Germans to their activity
- She was sentenced to life imprisonment and sent to Limoges prison.
- 1944, February 3; while in Compiègne, she saw Albert for the last time when the ‘death train’ arrived that was going to take her to Germany, to the largest extermination camp for women: the Ravensbrück camp .
The Command of the Gandulas
Sent to Holleischen, a Siemens company complex for the manufacture of weapons, a new resistance task began: that of the sabotage of Nazi weapons through the so-called ‘Commando de las Gandulas’.
{System:Quote|”The name was given by the field authorities who thought they were vague; that the work did not come out because they did not work. But nothing could be further from the truth. The women organized themselves to boycott the bullets by putting dead flies into them or spit.” It is said that they disabled 10 million shells and damaged several machines. Teresa doesn’t believe it. “Not even they know; it is impossible to know how many”}}.
Release
- 1945, April 30. Ravensbrück was liberated by the red army.
- Albert Roger left the Bergen-Belsen camp, but was in such poor condition that he died a week later.
- In France, Neus entered a spa thanks to the mediation of a niece of Charles De Gaullewho dedicated herself to helping Spanish deportees. There he met his second companion in life and struggle: Félix Sancho.
Acknowledgments
- Generalitat Gold Medal. Tribute, by extension, to all the people who suffered the consequences of the war, the Franco dictatorship and internment in prison and extermination camps.
- Declared 2015 ‘Year of Neus Català’. Coordinated by the Catalan Women’s Institute and supported by a large group of Spanish organizations.
Books
- 2000. From resistance to deportation . Result of the compilation of the names of all the Spanish women who, like her, had suffered the evil of deportation. “With five companions, from memory, she gathered names. Then she went looking for them to ask for their testimony.”
- 2012. Ashes in the sky . Co-authorship with the writer Carme Martí.
