Spanish doctor honoured for saving thousands of European Jews who fled Nazi regime
Spanish doctor honoured for saving thousands of European Jews who fled Nazi regime
Dr Eduardo Martínez Alonso would take care of those fleeing Nazis by sheltering them and falsifying documents
Dr Eduardo Martínez Alonso and family
A Spanish doctor who rescued thousands of European Jews fleeing the Nazi regime
using the British Embassy as a cover may finally have a street named
after him as Madrid council considers who to honour this year.
For many World War Two refugees
fleeing across the Pyrenees and into Spain, the key was to make it to
the tearoom on the ground floor of the building which housed the British
Embassy in Madrid at the time.
From there Dr Eduardo Martínez Alonso would take care of them by sending them on to the safety of Gibraltar or Portugal.
Dr Martínez also devised a route to Portugal from a concentration camp
where Spain's Franco regime kept prisoners near Burgos. He was allowed
in to visit sick British inmates and falsified papers to get hundreds
released.
For years few
people, except a few associates and his wife, knew of his efforts to
save thousands of Eastern European Jews, as well as Britons and others fleeing the Nazis during his lifetime.
Dr Martínez was born in Galicia, northwestern Spain, but his Uruguayan
father spent many years as a diplomat in Britain, meaning his son was
brought up in Glasgow before studying medicine at the University of
Liverpool.
Dr Eduardo Martínez Alonso
By the time World War Two broke out, he was living a comfortable bourgeois existence in Madrid, working as the British Embassy physician among other posts.
During the war, thanks to his cover as a doctor, his language skills and courage, he became the linchpin of British diplomats' efforts to save Hitler's victims.
Those who reached the tearoom were taken to a Madrid apartment or his family home in Galicia by Dr Martínez while a safe journey out of Spain was arranged.
The heroic doctor's daughter, Patricia Martínez de Vicente, said that her father had never talked about his wartime espionage exploits, and only the declassification of documents in 2005 allowed her to access his file.
"When I opened it, I felt a huge knot in my throat. My god, he was a real, full-on spy", Ms Martínez told the newspaper El Mundo in 2010 after she had published a book about the doctor's story, 'La clave Embassy' (Codename Embassy).
Dr Martínez, his daughter said, had signed Britain's Official Secrets Act in 1943 and kept a lid on his role in saving thousands from the Nazis.
The Telegraph
Dr Eduardo Martínez Alonso By the time World War Two broke out, he was living a comfortable bourgeois existence in Madrid, working as the British Embassy physician among other posts.
During the war, thanks to his cover as a doctor, his language skills and courage, he became the linchpin of British diplomats' efforts to save Hitler's victims.
Those who reached the tearoom were taken to a Madrid apartment or his family home in Galicia by Dr Martínez while a safe journey out of Spain was arranged.
The heroic doctor's daughter, Patricia Martínez de Vicente, said that her father had never talked about his wartime espionage exploits, and only the declassification of documents in 2005 allowed her to access his file.
"When I opened it, I felt a huge knot in my throat. My god, he was a real, full-on spy", Ms Martínez told the newspaper El Mundo in 2010 after she had published a book about the doctor's story, 'La clave Embassy' (Codename Embassy).
Dr Martínez, his daughter said, had signed Britain's Official Secrets Act in 1943 and kept a lid on his role in saving thousands from the Nazis.
The Telegraph
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