by Paul Preston
The clear implications of the encounter between Contreras/Vidali and Castro Delgado are that elements of both the Fifth Regiment and the NKVD were involved in what happened to the prisoners in November. In the report by Gorev mentioned earlier, he wrote appreciatively of the ‘neighbours’ (a reference to the NKVD station in Madrid) ‘headed by Comrade Orlov who did much to prevent an uprising from within’. A possible break-out of the detained military officers, ‘an uprising from within’, is exactly what the prisoner evacuation was about. Gorev’s report thus suggests that Orlov was involved in the elimination of prisoners, albeit not in the initial decision-making process.40
In a revealing interview in 1986, two years before his death, Grigulevich stated that, in Madrid, he had worked under the orders of Santiago Carrillo heading a special squad (the Brigada Especial) of Socialist militants in the Dirección General de Seguridad dedicated to ‘dirty’ operations.41 This elite security detachment would be expanded into three special squads in December 1936 when Carrillo was replaced by Cazorla. The initial squad was formed by Grigulevich from what he called ‘trusted elements’ recruited from members of the Juventudes Socialistas Unificadas who had been part of the unit responsible for the security of the Soviet Embassy in Madrid. It was formally commanded by the Socialist policeman David Vázquez Baldominos.
Grigulevich had arrived in Spain in late September and worked for Contreras for some weeks before beginning to collaborate with Carrillo in late October or early November. Carrillo, Cazorla and the unit’s members knew Grigulevich as ‘José Escoy’, although he was known to others as ‘José Ocampo’. This unit was run out of the Dirección General de Seguridad. Grigulevich’s assertion is sustained by the record in the Francoist archive, the Causa General, of the post-war interrogations of JSU members of what came to be the three Brigadas Especiales. In the published résumé of the Causa General proceedings, there is a statement that ‘Representatives of the [NKVD], calling themselves comrades Coto, Pancho and Leo, backed up by an individual who used the name José Ocampo and several female interpreters, all installed in the Hotel Gaylord, in Calle Alfonso XI … were directing the activities of the Marxist police of Madrid.’42
When questioned after the war, Tomás Durán González, one of the members of the first special squad, provided descriptions which, while not entirely accurate, make it possible to identify these figures. ‘Coto’, he said, advised on questions of interrogation and investigation. Durán believed him to be the head of the Soviet Technical Investigation Group. He described ‘Coto’ as being about thirty-five years old, tall, with dark hair sharply parted, cleanly shaven and always dressed in civilian clothes. ‘Coto’ was rarely in Madrid because he was based in Barcelona. Accordingly, ‘Coto’ can be identified with certainty as the thirty-seven-year-old Naum Isakovich Eitingon (Leonid Aleksandrovich Kotov), who was the rezident in the NKVD sub-station in the Soviet Consulate in Barcelona.
‘Pancho’ was an NKVD agent described by Durán as being ‘about forty-five years old, tall, corpulent, with a red face and wavy blond hair with some streaks of grey combed back’. He also took part in the interrogation and torture of prisoners. This would suggest that ‘Pancho’ was Senior Major of State Security Grigory Sergeievich Syroyezhkin. The description given by Durán fits photographs of Syroyezhkin. In a separate declaration, the later head of the principal Brigada Especial, Fernando Valentí Fernández, referred to ‘Pancho’ as ‘Pancho Bollasqui’. The ill-remembered Russian surname might have referred to Lev Vasilevsky, Syroyezhkin’s deputy and regular companion, since Valentí would often have seen them together.
Durán remembered the man known to him only as ‘Leo’ as being responsible for the internal security of the Russian Embassy. He was ‘tall, slender, about twenty-eight years old, dark’. If Durán’s testimony is accurate, he was probably referring to Lev Sokolov, who was indeed in charge of security at the Embassy. ‘José Ocampo’ (Grigulevich) was described as being about thirty-five years old, with a noticeable Argentinian accent, five feet six inches tall, chunky in build, with a pale complexion, bloodshot eyes and dark wavy hair. He disappeared from Spain after the assassination of Andreu Nin in June 1937.43
The NKVD’s role in the creation and functioning of the Brigada Especial was confirmed by José Cazorla to his post-war interrogators. He told them that Lev Gaikis, the political counsellor at the Russian Embassy, had introduced him to a Russian whom he had called ‘Alexander’. ‘Alexander’, who offered him help and advice, was almost certainly Orlov, the acting head of the NKVD station. Cazorla also admitted that he and Vázquez Baldominos collaborated closely with ‘José Ocampo’ (Grigulevich), to whom he had also been introduced by Gaikis. ‘Ocampo’ and ‘Alexander’, whom Cazorla now knew as ‘Leo’ (Lev Nikolsky/Orlov), provided technical advice on what he called counter-espionage matters – in other words, the campaign against the fifth column. ‘Pancho’ (Syroyezhkin) was also in regular contact with both Cazorla and Vázquez Baldominos.44 Orlov’s main task at this moment was the defence of the Soviet Embassy, and he enjoyed considerable operational discretion. There can be little or no doubt that he would have seen the prisoners as a threat and could have ordered Grigulevich to help Carrillo and Cazorla in resolving the problem via their evacuation and execution.
In the summer of 1937, Orlov told the Republican premier Juan Negrín that ‘his service’ worked in co-operation with the Republican security apparatus.45 Moreover, a report written by the Republican police in October 1937 referred to the frequent visits made to Carrillo’s office by Russian technicians specializing in security and counter-espionage matters. The report also stated that these technicians had offered their ‘enthusiastic collaboration to the highest authority in public order in Madrid’, which could have been a reference to Miaja or to Carrillo. If the former, it would mean that Carrillo’s activities were covered by Miaja’s approval, although his collaboration with the Russians would have happened anyway given the Soviet links with the Communist Party. The report went on to state that Carrillo had directed these technicians to ‘the head and the officers of the Brigada Especial’, which had to mean David Vázquez Baldominos. This was confirmed by Vázquez Baldominos’s successor, Fernando Valentí, to his Francoist interrogators. By following the advice of these experienced technicians, the Brigada achieved maximum efficacy in a new area of police activity made necessary by wartime circumstances. The report stated that ‘the collaboration of said technicians was ever more intense until a total mutual understanding between the Spanish and Russian security services was reached’.46 Grigulevich later described himself as ‘the right hand of Carrillo’ in the Public Order Council.47 According to the records of the NKVD’s successor organization, the KGB or Committee for State Security, their friendship was so close that years later Carrillo chose Grigulevich to be his son’s secular ‘godfather’.48
It is clear that Miaja, Rojo, Gorev and the senior leadership of the Communist Party were all anxious to see the prisoner question resolved with the greatest urgency. They certainly approved of prisoner evacuations but not necessarily of executions, although it is possible that they approved of them too. What is likely is that, in the meetings immediately following the creation of the Junta de Defensa, they delegated responsibility to the two-man leadership of the PCE. They, who certainly did approve of the execution of prisoners, passed organizational responsibility to Carrillo, Cazorla and Serrano Poncela. To implement their instructions, the trio could draw on members of the JSU who were given posts in the Public Order Delegation headed by Serrano Poncela, which then ran the Dirección General de Seguridad for Madrid. They could also count on assistance from Contreras/Vidali and the Fifth Regiment and from Grigulevich and the Brigada Especial. However, they could do nothing against the will of the anarchist movement which controlled the roads out of Madrid. Given that the anarchists had already seized and murdered prisoners, it was not likely that they would offer insuperable opposition to the Communists. Indeed, the formal agreement of seni
or elements of the CNT militias was soon forthcoming.
The inaugural session of the Junta began at 6.00 p.m. on 7 November 1936. It was addressed by the newly appointed President, General Miaja, who explained the perilous situation, with the remaining forces short of arms, their morale shattered by constant retreats. There was little in the way of reserves and the Ministry of War was in a state of near collapse.49 Before the meeting, at around 5.30 p.m., Carrillo, coming out of Miaja’s office in the Ministry of War, met a representative of the International Red Cross, Dr Georges Henny, with Felix Schlayer, the Norwegian Consul. Carrillo invited them to meet him in his office immediately after the plenary session. Before returning for that encounter, Schlayer and the Red Cross delegate went to the Cárcel Modelo, where they learned that several hundred prisoners had been taken away. On coming back to the Ministry of War, they were greeted amiably by Carrillo, who assured them of his determination to protect the prisoners and put a stop to the murders. When they told him what they had learned at the Cárcel Modelo, he denied knowledge of any evacuations. Schlayer reflected later that, even if this were true, it raises the question why Carrillo and Miaja, once having been informed by him of the evacuations, did nothing to prevent the others that continued that evening and on successive days.50
Later in the same evening, there was a meeting held between unnamed representatives of the Juventudes Socialistas Unificadas who controlled the newly created Public Order Council, and members of the local federation of the CNT. They discussed what to do with the prisoners. Liaison between the two was necessary, despite mutual hostility, since the Communists held sway inside Madrid, controlling the police, the prisons and the files on prisoners, while the anarchists, through their militias, controlled the roads out of the city. The next morning, at a meeting of the CNT’s national committee, a detailed report was given on the agreements made at the previous evening’s CNT–JSU encounter. The only record of that meeting is the account given in the minutes of the report by Amor Nuño Pérez, the Councillor for War Industries in the Junta de Defensa. Those minutes did not include the names of the other participants at the CNT–JSU meeting. It is reasonable to suppose that, since the meeting took place immediately after the plenary session of the Junta de Defensa, the CNT was represented by some or all of its nominees on the Junta – Amor Nuño, his deputy Enrique García Pérez, Mariano García Carrascales, the Councillor for Information, and his deputy Antonio Oñate, both from the Juventudes Libertarias. It is equally reasonable to suppose that the JSU representatives included at least two of the following: Santiago Carrillo, José Cazorla and Segundo Serrano Poncela. The gravity of the matter under discussion and the practical agreements reached could hardly have permitted them to be represented by more junior members of the JSU. If Carrillo was not there, it is inconceivable that he, as both Public Order Councillor and secretary general of the JSU, was not fully apprised of the meeting, whoever represented the JSU.
Gregorio Gallego, who was present at the CNT meeting, later described Amor Nuño, whom he knew well: ‘Amor Nuño, generally speaking, was emotional and temperamental and not much given to thinking. When he did think, which was rare, he didn’t trust his own judgement.’ Elsewhere, Gallego wrote: ‘Amor Nuño, as jumpy as a squirrel, was incapable of being still anywhere. He always wanted to be in on everything without ever committing himself to anything.’51
Nuño reported that the CNT and JSU representatives, on the evening of 7 November, had decided that the prisoners should be classified into three groups. The fate of the first, consisting of ‘fascists and dangerous elements’, was to be ‘Immediate execution’, ‘with responsibility to be hidden’ – the responsibility being of those who took the decision and of those who implemented it. The second group, of prisoners considered to be supporters of the military uprising but, because of age or profession, less dangerous, were to be evacuated to Chinchilla, near Albacete. The third, those least politically committed, were to be released ‘with all possible guarantees, as proof to the Embassies of our humanitarianism’. This last comment suggests that whoever represented the JSU at the meeting knew about and mentioned the earlier encounter between Carrillo and Schlayer.52
The first consignment of prisoners had already left Madrid early in the morning of 7 November, presumably in accordance with the instructions for evacuation issued by Pedro Checa in response to Koltsov/Miguel Martínez. Thus some prisoners were removed and killed before the formal agreement with the CNT made later that evening. There is no record of any difficulty of their getting through the anarchist militias on the roads out, and that is not surprising since there were CNT–FAI representatives on Serrano Poncela’s Public Order Delegation. Nevertheless, the agreement guaranteed that further convoys would face no problems at the anarchist checkpoints on the roads out of the capital and could also rely on substantial assistance in the gory business of executing the prisoners. The strongest CNT controls were posted on the roads out to Valencia and Aragon which the convoys would take. Large flotillas of double-decker buses and many smaller vehicles could not get out of Madrid without the approval, co-operation or connivance of the CNT patrols. Since Carrillo, Cazorla and Serrano Poncela knew this only too well, it is not plausible that they would have ordered evacuation convoys without first securing the agreement of the CNT–FAI. This undermines Carrillo’s later assertions that the convoys were hijacked by anarchists. The grain of truth in those claims resides in the certainty that the anarchists took some part in the actual killing.
The consequences of the first decisions taken by Carrillo and his collaborators were dramatic. On the morning of 7 November, there was a saca at San Antón and, in the afternoon, a larger one at the Cárcel Modelo. At some point that morning, policemen from the Dirección General de Seguridad and members of the rearguard militias MVR appeared at the Cárcel Modelo with the orders signed by Manuel Muñoz for the evacuation of prisoners. They were led by the Inspector General of the MVR, Federico Manzano Govantes.53
This is confirmed by the important testimony of Felix Schlayer. When he visited the Cárcel Modelo on 6 November, with a view to preventing possible evacuations, he saw nothing. However, the next morning, when he returned, he did see a large number of buses outside and was told that they were for the evacuation of military officers towards Valencia.54 This coincides with the graphic description given by Caamaño Cobanela, an inmate in the Cárcel Modelo, of the prisoners being lined up for evacuation in the early hours of the morning of 7 November. Cobanela is unequivocal that, having been taken from their cells, the prisoners were left waiting with their belongings in the patio but, after two hours, were returned to their cells.
Later in the afternoon, according to the detailed descriptions left by three prisoners, large numbers were led from their cells in the Cárcel Modelo. Two men (those sent by Pedro Checa?) with numerous yellowing file-cards from the prison registry were accompanied by militiamen. They called out names through a loud-hailer and ordered the men to take all their belongings and wait below. Those named were a mixture of army officers, priests and civilians, young and old, with no apparent pattern. They speculated anxiously whether they would be transferred to other prisons outside Madrid or be killed. They were tied together in groups and forced to leave all their bags and cases behind. Moreover, they were searched and any remaining watches, money or valuables taken from them.55 They were loaded on to double-decker buses. Convoys consisting of the buses escorted by cars and trucks carrying militiamen shuttled back and forth over the next two days.
Their official destinations were prisons well behind the lines, in Alcalá de Henares, Chinchilla and Valencia. However, only about three hundred arrived. Eleven miles from Madrid, on the road to Alcalá de Henares, at the small village of Paracuellos del Jarama, the first batch, from San Antón, were violently forced off the buses. At the base of the small hill on which the village stood, they were lined up by the militiamen, verbally abused and then shot. In the evening of the same day, the second batch, from the
Cárcel Modelo, suffered the same fate. A further consignment of prisoners arrived on the morning of 8 November. The Mayor was forced to round up the able-bodied inhabitants of the village (there were only 1,600 in total) to dig huge ditches for the approximately eight hundred bodies which had been left to rot. When Paracuellos could cope with no more, subsequent convoys made for the nearby village of Torrejón de Ardoz, where a disused irrigation channel was used for the approximately four hundred victims.56 There have been numerous assertions that ditches had already been dug.57 On 8 November, there were more sacas from the Cárcel Modelo. By then, news had already reached the prisoners of the first murders in Paracuellos del Jarama and Torrejón de Ardoz.
It is certain that, from approximately 8.00 on the morning of Saturday 7 November onwards, 175 prisoners were taken from San Antón and, later in the afternoon of the same day, more than nine hundred from the Cárcel Modelo. A further 185 to 200 were brought from the Cárcel de Porlier in the Barrio de Salamanca. Another 190 to 200 were taken from the Cárcel de Ventas. On that day, 1,450–1,545 prisoners were removed from Madrid’s four jails. Thereafter, there were sacas, on 7, 8, 9, 18, 24, 25, 26, 27, 28, 29 and 30 November and 1 and 3 December. The Cárcel Modelo was the prison with the highest number of victims – 970 – but suffered sacas only on the first three days. By 16 November, the Francoists were so close that the Carcel Model had to be evacuated and was used as headquarters for the Durruti Column and the International Brigades despite heavy bomb damage. The prisoners were taken to the other Madrid jails, Porlier, Ventas and San Antón, and to Alcalá de Henares. Porlier saw sacas on 7, 8, 9, 18, 24, 25 and 26 November and 1 and 3 December. Of these, a total of 405 were murdered in Paracuellos or Torrejón. Sacas from San Antón on 7, 22, 28, 29 and 30 November saw a total of four hundred prisoners murdered in Paracuellos or Torrejón. Five other expeditions of prisoners from San Antón, two on 7 November and three more on 27, 28 and 29 November, arrived safely in Alcalá de Henares. From the prison at Ventas, sacas on 27, 29, 30 November and 1 and 3 December ended with about two hundred murders at Paracuellos or Torrejón. The total numbers killed over the four weeks following the creation of the Junta de Defensa cannot be calculated with total precision, but there is little doubt that it was somewhere between 2,200 and 2,500.58
