Families Of Spain's 'Stolen Babies' Seek Answers — And Reunions
Source: NPR
Families Of Spain's 'Stolen Babies' Seek Answers — And Reunions
by Sylvia Poggioli
December 14, 2012 3:18 AM
Allegations of the existence of a secret network of doctors and nuns who stole newborn babies and sold them for adoption are reviving a dark chapter in Spain's recent history.
More than 1,000 people have gone to court hoping to track down sons and daughters or brothers and sisters they were told died in childbirth.
~snip~
The theft of newborns began with the Franco dictatorship in 1939. It came to light three years ago after former Spanish Judge Baltasar Garzon investigated the abduction of children taken forcibly from women imprisoned because they were leftists. He estimated that by 1950, the number of abducted babies had reached 30,000.
Journalist Natalia Junquera says the baby theft was an attempt at social engineering by Antonio Vallejo-Najera, a psychiatrist trained in Germany in the 1930s. Vallejo-Najera considered the mothers to be dangerous because, Junquera says, he thought "those women had inside the seed of Marxism, and if those children remained with their mothers, the Marxism [would] grow in those children."
Read more: http://www.npr.org/2012/12/14/167053609/families-of-spains-stolen-babies-seek-answers-and-reunions
= new reply since forum marked as read
