Who saved the second largest number of Jews in WW2?

1st place by a massive margin, far more than all the rest put together, was the Catholic Church under Pius XII.  Historians believe around 850,000 were saved by Catholic institutions.

2nd place will come as a surprise to most: it was General Franco's Spain.  Franco is of course a bogeyman on the secular left.  The left are sore losers and hold the cultural high ground at the moment: government, academia and the media.  Franco is a bogeyman merely because he beat them, so the following facts remain largely untold.  If it does come up, the secular left will do its best to play it down by attributing some implausible, sordid motive to Franco.  In reality, one needs to look no further than the fact that Franco's own ancestors were Marranos (Spanish Jews who converted to Christianity to avoid expulsion).

Franco's Spain saved more Jews from the concentration camps than any other country.  The consensus of historians is that Spain saved between 20,000 and 35,000 Jews by letting refugees pass through the country.  Plus another 5,000 Jews were saved by Spanish diplomats abroad.  Franco refused to hand over Spanish or foreign Jews to the Nazis and he allowed Jews and others with Portuguese visas to transit Spain.  Despite his aversion to Zionism and "Judeo"-Freemasonry, Franco clearly did not share the rabid anti-Semitic ideology of the Nazis.

Early in WW2, a contingent of Spanish doctors travelling in Poland were informed of the Nazi extermination plans by Governor-General Hans Frank, who was under the misimpression that they would share his views about the matter; when they came home, they passed the story to Admiral Luís Carrero Blanco, who informed Franco. Another piece of this jigsaw could have been Admiral Canaris, the head of German Military Intelligence. Canaris had been appalled by the Nazi's brutality he had witnessed in Poland and he had worked with Franco during the Spanish Civil War, and the two men had become friends.

In the first years of the war, the Jews were mainly from Western Europe, fleeing deportation to concentration camps from occupied France, but there were also Jews from Eastern Europe. Throughout World War II, Spanish diplomats of the Franco government extended their protection to Eastern European Jews, especially in Hungary.  Jews claiming Spanish ancestry were provided with Spanish documentation without being required to prove their case and either left for Spain or survived the war with the help of their new legal status in occupied countries.

Diplomats discussed the possibility of Spain as a route to a containment camp for Jewish refugees near Casablanca but it came to naught because of the lack of Free French and British support. Nonetheless, control of the Spanish border under France was relaxed, and thousands of Jews managed to cross into Spain (many by smugglers' routes).  Almost all of them survived the war.  The American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee operated openly in Barcelona.

Shortly afterwards, Spain began giving citizenship to Sephardic Jews in Greece, Hungary, Bulgaria, and Romania; many Ashkenazic Jews also managed to be included, as did some non-Jews. The Spanish head of mission in Budapest, Ángel Sanz Briz, saved thousands of Ashkenazim in Hungary by granting them Spanish citizenship, placing them in safe houses and teaching them minimal Spanish so they could pretend to be Sephardim, at least to someone who did not know Spanish.  Toward the war's end, Sanz Briz had to flee Budapest, leaving these Jews open to arrest and deportation.  An Italian diplomat, Giorgio Perlasca, who was himself living under Spanish protection, used forged documents to persuade the Hungarian authorities that he was the new Spanish Ambassador, and continued Spanish protection of Hungarian Jews until the Red Army arrived.

I believe, but cannot trace the source of this story, that there was an agreement with the Nazi for Spanish diplomats to issue just 200 papers.  These papers were numbered consecutively, and Briz and Perlasca got round this hurdle by issuing the numbers randomly, and simply never issuing the number 200 - and by this simple ruse were able to save thousands.

Franco's Benevolence to the Jews Continued Long After the End of WW2

In 1967, after Egypt had been pulverized in the Six Day War by Israel, Egypt turned in vengeance on its Jewish community, throwing at least 425 Jewish men into jail. Other Arab countries also began terrorizing their Jews.

The 75 year old General Franco sent instructions to his diplomats in Egypt, Lebanon, Libya, Tunisia and Morocco to help all Jews, whether Sephardic or otherwise, and to provide Egyptian Jews with documents to leave.  Following these instructions, the Spanish ambassador in Cairo, Angel Sagaz, helped over 615 families escape over the next two years, even transferring some of their jewellery (which Egypt forbade them to take with them) out of the country in Spanish diplomatic bags.

THE MEME

A meme is defined as a cultural assumption that is transmitted by repetition and that replicates in a manner analogous to the biological transmission of genes - or perhaps a better analogy would be that it replicates like a virus. The meme to be successful must sink into the sub-conscious of a people, and this is mainly achieved by aggressive repetition. The poet John Oxenham wrote, "The high soul climbs the high way, the low soul groups the low, and in between on the misty flats the rest drift to and fro." The thought processes of the masses groping about on the misty flats today are almost entirely governed by memes.

An example of one very enduring meme is that Christ and His apostles were poor. Where did that meme come from? - out of the left of course. Christ and His step father were skilled tradesman, why would they be poor? As for the Apostles, St Peter had his own family fishing business that was so successful it could afford hired labour - so why do we assume he was poor? As for St Joseph, do we really believe that God would choose a man to take care of the Christ Child and His Holy Mother who was incompetent at doing so? Money is the receipt that society gives to its members for contributing, if the Holy Family were poor it is because they were not contributing - is it possible for a Catholic to really believe that? When Mary Magdalene poured expensive oil over Christ, Judas protested and suggested that it ought to have been sold and the money given to the poor. Christ responded, "You have the poor among you always, so you can do good to them when you will; I am not always among you." Would that response have made sense if Christ perceived Himself as poor? At His Crucifixion the Roman Soldiery considered His cloak to be of such good quality that it would be a crime to damage it, so they cast lots for it - would that make sense if Christ was wearing the rags of the poor?

Some memes are mercifully short lived or geographically restricted. The meme that Jews were some sort of inferior race that was a threat to civilisation was a meme very successfully propagated by the German Nazis, but it mercifully ran out of most of its steam with the military defeat of its propagators.

The meme that the French Revolution was the result of a brave and noble peasantry rising up against a cruel aristocracy has been far more enduring. The truth, as opposed to the meme, is that the French Revolution was the process by which those who enjoyed economic power extended their grip on political power, and the poor were the biggest losers. A similar meme that is still with us is the one that tells us that General Franco was some sort of evil right-wing dictator. The truth is that General Franco was only persuaded to draw his sword reluctantly in defence of the innocent after the Spanish Communists (financed and radicalised by Moscow) had slaughtered over nine thousand innocent unarmed priests (plus bishops, nuns, laymen and even junior seminarians) and burned innumerable Catholic institutions to the ground. Had it not been the hard left that Franco defeated, he would have been universally regarded as a hero of the common man. He also had the misfortune of opposing Moscow (and defeating its machinations vis-a-vis Spain) at a time when Stalin and Churchill were allies.

There are a couple of enduring memes around the American slave trade. One meme heavily implicates the Catholic kings and queens of Europe, especially the Spanish and Portuguese thrones in the slave trade, completely ignoring the historical fact that most of the movers and shakers in the new world slave trade were Masons, the arch-enemies of Catholicism, and for that matter the arch-enemies of monarchy - they cut off the head of the French King remember. Another meme around the same issue is that this was one of the worst examples of slavery in the history of the human race, blithely ignoring the facts that the Arabs of North Africa have practised slavery on a vast scale for over fourteen centuries, and still practice it to this day.

Another enduring meme is the one that tells us that the Northern Ireland troubles are the result of Catholic and Protestants hating one another. Ignoring completely the fact that the dispute has little or nothing to do with religion and that one of the early leaders of the IRA was a Protestant and the current leaders are Communists. As I say, because the meme resides in the subconscious, facts have little power to weaken or dent it; the meme moves, exists and has its being in some spire outside and beyond the real world.

A more recent meme is the one that tells us that unborn children are, well, not unborn children. That is one meme that is showing signs of beginning to run out of steam, but it still has legs and unfortunately some considerable way to go.

Another recent meme that has been surprisingly successful is the global warming meme, which has more recently morphed into the climate change meme. Memes just like viruses will sometimes mutate to protect themselves. Because the meme largely exists in the subconscious, those infected often reveal the meme by self-contradiction, which can be amusing for those not infected by it. Recently for example ITV wheeled out their science correspondent to inform us that there was a consensus in the scientific community that the recent flooding in the West Country and elsewhere was caused by global warming. They then switched to their field correspondent wading down a flooded river, who one can only assume had not read the script, because he eagerly pointed out a marker on the river bank that was at least two meters above the level of the current swollen river, and informed us that this was where the river came to in the 1960 floods. If this was not funny enough, he then pointed out a further marker a couple of meters higher even than the first one, and informed us that this was where the river rose to in the 1929 floods. Most viewers would I suspect not have noticed how hilarious all this was, because, as I say, a successful meme resides in the subconscious and is therefore safely beyond the reach of rational thought. Readers should note that when the media say things like this is the worst flood since 1960, they are actually saying this flood is not as bad as the 1960 flood. We have since learned that some of the experts behind this meme had a few weeks earlier sent a memo to local authorities in the area warning them to prepare for an exceptionally dry winter! Note: the dates given above are arbitrary - I don't remember the exact dates referred to.

The most recent meme successfully propagated by the left, and most memes come out of the left, is the one that homosexuality is innate, like being left handed or blue eyed. This meme is now firmly lodged in the sub-conscious of possibly a majority of the folk that make up the North Atlantic civilisations, notwithstanding the fact that there is not a single shred of scientific evidence to support it, indeed the promoters of this meme don't even pretend to advance scientific arguments (unless you believe asserting that it is genetic without advancing a scrap of evidence to back your assertion, qualifies as science). This is one meme has been implanted solely by aggressive repetition.

A better and more accurate analogy for homosexuality would almost certainly be smoking. I hasten to add that I am not suggesting that sodomy and smoking are morally equivalent, merely that the two addictions are strikingly similar in their origins and progress. Smoking could be described as a disgusting unhealthy addiction usually acquired in one's early teens, which like all addictions is extremely difficult to break. Some, like the members of ASH and the sodomite collective, militantly embrace their addictions, and champion it as some sort of noble right. Others seek to break their addiction; some of whom will succeed but many sadly will fail. And many of those who do succeed, unhappily, subsequently relapse. Another fact that fits the smoking analogy perfectly is that one is usually first introduced to it by an older boy.

As I say, most memes exist within the secular asylum and come out of the left. The Church before Vatican ll was a meme free zone. Since Vatican ll and its rapprochement with the world, the meme has sadly seeped into the Catholic blood stream. For example, the notion that a large body of Catholics, the SSPX, who embrace every last iota of the Catholic faith without mental quibble, who acknowledge the Pope as head of the Church and pray for him daily, and whose bishops are not excommunicated now (if they ever were) are nevertheless, on the basis of legal quibbles, outside the Church. Whereas those innumerable modernist bishops and clerics who ignore Rome, Catholic tradition and the dogmas of the faith (and their contracepting flocks) are nevertheless, by some bizarre double standard, in full communion - in full communion with what precisely one might reasonably ask.

Another meme is the notion that the Novus Ordo, a post-Conciliar rite of Mass fabricated by a committee under the direction of a Freemason, with input from six heresiarchs, is "ordinary", whereas a rite of Mass that has been celebrated in its essentials for 2000 years, indeed in many features even extending back into the Jewish church, and which has been celebrated by all our saints and martyrs, is "extraordinary". Those well-meaning traditionalists who repeat these silly labels are actually helping reinforce the meme and giving it substance.

How do we tell a meme from a fact? Well one clue is that the meme is usually maintained by intolerance, aggression and anger. If one is promoting truth, anger has no place or indeed reason to exist. A simple illustration: if I'm teaching a child that two plus two equals four, I might take four oranges and separate them into two sets of two, put them together again and invite the child to count them. However, if I want to teach the child that two plus two equals five there is no way I can calmly demonstrate it; I am forced to resort to aggressive repetition. And if the child resists my attempt at brain washing, I will naturally very quickly become frustrated and angry.

If you want to see a meme in action, join a prayer vigil outside an abortion clinic; you will be very lucky to get through an hour without witnessing at least one instance of irrational, and seemingly bizarre, anger feeding of a meme. Those seething with meme inspired rage will make completely irrational statements: in 2013 for example, while quietly praying my Rosary outside an abortion facility with my wife, I was accused of single handily blocking a five meter wide pavement, asked whether I was aware that there was a war in Syria and accused of being a f*****g bigot for embracing a weeping young woman - in addition, a significant number of completely incoherent comments were shouted in my general direction. Another clue that you are dealing with someone infected by a meme is that those infected seldom hang around. Their normal modus operandi is to shout some irrelevant comment in your direction and then immediate step on the gas to put distance between themselves and you. It is as if they are terrified that you may actually be inconsiderate enough to seek to engage them in rational debate.