Xabier Irujo - Book Presentation
Gernika - The Market Day Massacre by Xabier Irujo
 
Saturday, August 26th, 2017  3:00pm
 Basque Cultural Center - 599 Railroad Ave, South San Francisco , CA 94080
 
The BEO and Basque Cultural Center present a book presentation and book signing by the director of the William A. Douglass Center for Basque Studies at the University of Nevada, Reno, Dr. Xabier Irujo.  80 years ago this year, the Basque town of Gernika was bombed by Germain and Italian air forces during the Spanish Civil War and Dr. Irujo's book, Gernika - The Market Day Massacre takes a fresh look at this historic event.

The book presentation will kick off the Basque Cultural Center's August festival.

On April 26, 1937, a massive aerial attack by German and Italian forces reduced the Basque city of Gernika to rubble and left more than sixteen hundred people dead. Although the assault was initiated as part of a terror bombing campaign by Francoists against Basque Republican forces during the Spanish Civil War, its main intent was to test the effectiveness of the rising German Luftwaffe’s new equipment and strategies.

To produce this detailed analysis of the political and military background of the attack and its subsequent international impact, Xabier Irujo examined archives and official government documents in several countries and conducted numerous interviews with Basques who survived. His account of the assault itself, based on eyewitness reports from both victims and attackers, vividly recalls the horror of that first example of the blitz bombing that served the Germans during the first years of World War II. He reveals the U.S. and British governments’ reaction to the bombing and also discusses efforts to prosecute the perpetrators for war crimes. Irujo relates the ways in which the massacre has been remembered and commemorated in Gernika and throughout the worldwide Basque diaspora.
 
Xabier Irujo is the director of the William A. Douglass Center for Basque Studies at the University of Nevada at Reno.  He is the author of ten books and numerous sholarly articles, mostly focusing on aspects of genocide.