The Spanish Government intends setting up a special commission of intellectuals to go out to the Balkan countries to visit all the Sephardic Jewish Communities there, as an expression of Spanish friendship and goodwill to the descendants of the Spanish Jews who were expelled from Spain under the Inquisition in 1492, the Minister of Education, Dr. Fernando de los Rios, announced amid great applause, in addressing a Conference of Sephardic Jews held here yesterday and to-day at the Students’ Home.
Dr. de los Rios has been foremost among the Ministers in the Government of the new Spanish Republic in making known to the Sephardi Jews of the world the desire of the new Spain to atone to them for the sufferings imposed on their ancestors under the Inquisition and by the expulsion of 1492. As Minister of Justice. it was he who announced in parliament the formal revocation of the expulsion edict of 1492. The Republic be said, wants to make full reparation to the Jews for the historic injustice committed against them during the persecutions of the inquisition and by the edict of expulsion of 1492.
In December, Dr. de los Rios addressed the Sephardic Jews of Tetuan during an official visit-which he paid to Morocco, urging them to forget the past and expressing the regret of the Spanish Government for the injustice of the expulsion of 1492 and its hope that the Sephardic Jews would join in the common work of developing Spanish civilisation. On his return to Spain in January he published a statement in which he said that the Spanish Government should promote the work of the Sephardic Alliance to bring the Sephardic Jews back into the sphere of Spanish culture.
The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
