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Spanish Civil War

1936–1939

I close then with reference to certain of the 20th century’s most authoritarian regimes, but include reference to the opening of records (instruments of terror) as examples of the eventual process of finding Truth and Reconciliation for later generations.  
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From: Ministry Opens Sealed Civil War Archives [2016]

A special commission of Spain’s Defense Ministry has recommended that the government open to researchers the contents of 500 boxes of sealed documents in the General Military Archive in Avila that contain classified information on military activities during and after the Spanish Civil War. Included in the documentation is said to be information on the operation of concentration camps and the forced labour of thousands of prisoners of war and civilians detained by the regime of dictator Francisco Franco in the war’s aftermath. 

The New York Times, 2016
 
SANT CUGAT DEL VALLÈS, Spain — Monday marks 80 years since the uprising led by Gen. Francisco Franco plunged Spain into civil war. But Pere Bartolomé, 93, says he can still remember the day Franco’s soldiers ransacked his village, confiscating family booklets and photos.
Some of those documents were returned to him only this month, after being kept hidden for decades as part of an enormous police archive that Franco used to incriminate his opponents. 

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Historical Commonplace:
Record Keeping and Authoritarian Regimes

From Instruments of Complicity and Torture to Monuments of Endurance and Memory 

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Archive of the KGB

Beginning in 2016, Ukraine made available the Archive of the KGB that operated within its current borders.

Arolsen Archives, Germany

In July of 2019 the Arolsen Archives in Germany made more than 13 million documents detailing the fate of victims of the the Nazi regime available online.  

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