These guides included shepherds, professional smugglers, forestry workers, hunters of isards (the Pyrenean chamois) and frontier farming families.īut from the 11th of November 1942, the date on which the Germans occupied the free zone following the Allied invasion of North Africa on the 8th of November, the Nazi noose tightened and surveillance increased dramatically. During the early years of the war the occupying forces had left control of the free zone to the government of Vichy, which meant that for a certain time many routes were made more accessible by the variety of people who were willing to lead evaders across the Pyrenees. Later, although General Franco was an ally of Hitler and imprisoned all new invaders in extremely bad conditions for periods of between two to six months (depending on age, nationality and status), he later freed his captives under various economic conditions arranged in secret with the opposing Allied powers. At the beginning of this exodus, all those who were captured by Spanish frontier guards were unfortunately returned to France, interned by the Vichy regime and subsequently handed over to the German authorities. Their common denominator was the vital need to get away from the unbearable oppression in France and reach Spain by crossing the Pyrenees. Among the escaping civilians were victims of discrimination of all kinds, foreigners, Jews, resistants and anyone who had been denounced for one reason or another. After the German offensive in May 1940 and the division of France into two parts - an occupied zone in the North and a free zone in the South - many civilians and military servicemen fleeing from a world of persecution, imprisonment and death now unleashed by the Nazi brutality, sought refuge where they could in the free southern zone which remained a symbol of hope.Īmong the military personnel were escaped prisoners of war, recently enlisted men, army cadets and shot-down airmen, all driven by the same desire to rejoin the Allied forces and continue the fight.
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