Gathering the Genetic Testimony of Spain’s Civil War Dead

scientificamerican.com ^ | June 8, 2016 | Lucas Laursen

[Berlin_Freeper]

In a waist-high trench alongside Spain’s national Highway 1, a dozen volunteers wearing rubber gloves brush tan clay from crumbling human bones. Their knees rest on foam cushions, and a white tent shades them from the summer sun. It’s July 2011—a full 75 summers after Spain erupted in the Civil War that put the bones of 59 civilians in the ground here.

A few steps away from the trench, volunteers hold microphones up to the murmuring mouths of elders from the town of Gumiel de Izán, in the north-central region of Castilla y León. The elders, who harbor memories of summary executions at the site, may well be the younger siblings, neighbors, and children of those in the grave. But at the moment of exhumation, nobody knows for sure. Instead, the volunteers document and collect the physical remains, coaxing out and recording imperfect memories that were suppressed during four decades of dictatorship.

Such sites are scattered throughout Spain, from the Canary Islands to La Mancha to the Balearic Islands. Recent estimates suggest that some 2,000 mass graves may hold the remains of up to 150,000 victims of hasty wartime executions.

[Oatka]

I grew up in NYC in the late '40s and remember us kids laughing at some old guy (40ish) who would get drunk and then passionately break out in some strange songs, withe tears running down his face.

I asked my dad, who knew the guy, what his problem was. He said he was an Abraham Lincoln Brigade war veteran.

I thought it was weird that he was so young to be a Civil War veteran. :-)

[euram]

We have mass graves left from our own Civil War. At Shiloh there are, I believe, 2 mass graves holding the remains of Confederate soldiers. These weren’t even allowed to be marked until the 1930’s. There is also the mass grave at Point Lookout POW camp in Maryland, where as many as 14,000 Confederate soldiers and civilians are buried. Another mass grave is located in Chicago where over 4,000 Confederate prisoners from Fort Douglas are buried.

[T-Bone Texan]

The disrespect shown to Confederate war dead is a stain on the honor of the North.