The Most Evil Men in History is a full-length documentary that takes you on an in-depth journey through the bowels of hell, revealing the truth - plain and painful as it ever was about our past, looking at the most horrific evils ever committed by some of the most infamous historical figures for various reasons, including despotism, cannibalism, genocide, and too many atrocities to imagine. They are considered some of history's most vile and appalling figures.
From the 1st century AD to the present day, evil is a fact of life. We can see it not only in the reigns of Joseph Stalin and Adolf Hitler but also in everyday crimes like rape and assault, quite apart from the millions of lives brutalized by political or religious oppression, poverty, disease, and starvation.
One factor unites all these infamous figures and the evil acts they committed: they all had unlimited power over the people whose lives they controlled. Their reigns of terror cover a time span of nearly 2,000 years, from the rule of Caligula over the Roman Empire starting in 37 AD to the mass killings of educated Cambodians under Pol Pot during the 1980s. Motivated by power, religion, political belief, or by sadism and lust - sometimes by insanity - they have become bywords for terror.
The most evil men featured in this film:
Grigori Rasputin: The mad monk who brought down a dynasty
Francisco Pizarro: Conqueror of the Incas
Torquemada: The Spanish Inquisitor
From the 1st century AD to the present day, evil is a fact of life. We can see it not only in the reigns of Joseph Stalin and Adolf Hitler but also in everyday crimes like rape and assault, quite apart from the millions of lives brutalized by political or religious oppression, poverty, disease, and starvation.
One factor unites all these infamous figures and the evil acts they committed: they all had unlimited power over the people whose lives they controlled. Their reigns of terror cover a time span of nearly 2,000 years, from the rule of Caligula over the Roman Empire starting in 37 AD to the mass killings of educated Cambodians under Pol Pot during the 1980s. Motivated by power, religion, political belief, or by sadism and lust - sometimes by insanity - they have become bywords for terror.
The most evil men featured in this film:
Grigori Rasputin: The mad monk who brought down a dynasty
Francisco Pizarro: Conqueror of the Incas
Torquemada: The Spanish Inquisitor
Category
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TVTranscript
00:00:00In 1916, the bloated, castrated body of a man was dragged from the freezing waters of the
00:00:14Niva River in St. Petersburg. Almost beyond recognition, it was later identified as that
00:00:20of the most notorious monk in history. He's a superhuman force of evil at the heart of the
00:00:28monarchy. Hundreds of thousands of people died because of the incompetence of the government
00:00:33of the ministry, and that ministry influenced by Rasputin. It's widely believed in the upper
00:00:39reaches of society that this man is really the source of all of Russia's problems.
00:00:47To his enemies, Grigory Rasputin was the incarnation of evil. He destroyed anyone who dared to cross
00:00:54his path to power. Implicated in murder, corruption, and the eventual destruction and execution
00:01:01of the Romanov royal family, Rasputin was instrumental in wiping out the 300-year-old dynasty and changing
00:01:09the history of Russia forever.
00:01:16In a remote village in deepest Siberia, everyone knew Grigory Afimovich. As a teenager, his shameless exploits had earned
00:01:25him a reputation as a thief, a drunkard, and a womanizer.
00:01:32His name comes from the Russian word Rasputin, which means dissolute. So he obviously spent many of his childhood years getting drunk and getting up to no good.
00:01:40By the time he was in his teenage, he was a sort of tear away. I mean, there was a sort of gang of toughs in the village, and he was the leader. So much so that they would be paid by the priest to stay away from Sunday worship, for example, because they were so disruptive.
00:01:55Unwelcome in the Orthodox Church, Rasputin began to search for an alternative path to God.
00:02:14Evidently, he showed tremendous interest and curiosity and a deep sense of spirituality which others witnessed. So he was on the way to becoming an important figure in the religious scene of Russia at the time.
00:02:35Rasputin was never ordained priest, and he didn't become a monk, although on occasion he claimed to or pretended to be that.
00:02:42Rasputin discovered a heretical cult, who believed that only after a man had sinned greatly could he truly be repentant and pleasing to God.
00:02:52He's really the member of a sect, of which there were many in Russia.
00:02:58Rasputin's sect, probably the Khlisti, as they are known, we translate that as the flagellants, the idea that they whipped themselves into a state of ecstatic frenzy,
00:03:10where they had religious visions. And they, like many sects, believed that Christ was embodied in ordinary peasant people.
00:03:18The Khlisti rituals consisted of meeting in secret places, forest blades perhaps, or cellars, where they would whip and dance and twirl and stamp and chant themselves into a state of ecstasy, into a frenzy.
00:03:34In Russian it's called radienie. They would then engage in group sex, in orgies. And the purpose of this was both to indulge in the sin of the flesh, in order then to be purified, to repent, and to abstain once again.
00:03:51Despite Rasputin's involvement in the cult, he married a local girl and started a family.
00:03:57But he was not destined to play the doting father for long.
00:04:01He seems to have seen a light and went on a pilgrimage, so he claims, which probably means that he spent some years wandering around Russia and picking up the reputation of some sort of mystical type.
00:04:19From the very beginning, it was clear that Rasputin was different from other boys.
00:04:25He showed, from an early age, that he had something like second sight.
00:04:29He had these very hypnotic, powerful eyes, which seemed to sort of be the centre of his personality.
00:04:36Assuming the role of holy man and healer, Rasputin set about corrupting countless God-fearing peasant women.
00:04:45He could argue, you know, if you want to come to Christ, you want to come to God, then you have to sin first.
00:04:53And I can be the medium through which you can sin.
00:04:57And it's documented that many women fell for this line.
00:05:01His technique was quite straightforward and uncomplicated.
00:05:04He would simply tear open the girl's blouse.
00:05:07It's a very crude and primitive male chauvinism that he practised.
00:05:13Before long, this potent and dangerous combination would lead Rasputin to the royal capital of St. Petersburg.
00:05:23St. Petersburg 1900 is a very vibrant cosmopolitan place.
00:05:27Orthodox members of the aristocracy are beginning to flirt with ideas of theosophy, with Ouija boards and seances.
00:05:36Rumours begin to circulate in the early 1900s of this guy Rasputin, who has curious healing powers.
00:05:46In 1903, Rasputin arrived in St. Petersburg with an appearance far from regal.
00:05:52He was a shaggy figure with a sable coat thrown over peasant boots and a blouse.
00:05:58He smelled a bit like a goat, apparently.
00:06:01He had long, rather greasy black hair, a thick black beard, which people said was covered in last week's dinner.
00:06:09He parted his hair in the middle and combed it kind of over his forehead, because apparently he had a bump on his forehead he wanted to hide.
00:06:16Other people would say it was like a horn he was trying to hide when they want to compare him with the devil.
00:06:21He was pretty repulsive looking.
00:06:24Even his eyes held no warm religious feeling, and were often described as the eyes of a maniac.
00:06:33In the first few years of the 20th century, Russia was suffering massive domestic disorder, as well as the constant threat of foreign invasion.
00:06:44The rich sought amusement, and the church needed a boost.
00:06:48So the church was looking for genuinely spiritual types from the common people.
00:06:53And likewise, the monarchy was similarly looking for people like Rasputin, who could give it some sort of divine authority.
00:07:03His reputation as a preacher had preceded him.
00:07:06And he had an entree into high circles within the church, and from there into the aristocracy and the royal family.
00:07:15Tsar Nicholas II and Empress Alexandra lived a life of opulence and luxury, in extraordinary palaces, furnished with gold, and anything their hearts desired.
00:07:30The one dark cloud was that the heir to the throne, Alexei, suffered from haemophilia, an agonizing blood disorder thought incurable.
00:07:41The empress was desperate for someone to heal her son, the Tsarevich, Alexei, because she had brought haemophilia into the Romanov family, through her own family of Hessa.
00:07:54She saw her son's illness, the first male heir to be born, as a punishment from God.
00:08:04In November 1906, Rasputin was summoned to the royal palace at Tsarskosello, to see if his mystical ability to heal could help.
00:08:13It seems that he was able to stop the bleeding of Tsarevich on occasion, whether this was by hypnotism or by simply his presence, which seemed to have a calming effect,
00:08:24or whether it was because he comforted the mother, who was hysterical.
00:08:28With the illness of Alexei becoming progressively worse, the empress was convinced that only a miracle could save her son.
00:08:35An incident in 1912 really sort of fixed his position there.
00:08:41The empress was out riding with Alexis, and he had some sort of fall, and the internal bleeding began.
00:08:48In her desperation, the empress telegrams Rasputin, who's at home in his village in western Siberia.
00:08:56And by return, he sends a telegram back saying, God has heard your prayers and seen your tears.
00:09:02The little one will not die. Tell the doctors not to bother him too much.
00:09:08Miracle of miracles, the next morning he recovers, the bleeding stops.
00:09:13That sealed it for her. Alexandra, a miracle had occurred.
00:09:18And from that point on, Rasputin's comings and goings at the court became more frequent.
00:09:25This finally secured Rasputin's position in the royal palace, and his place in Russian history forever.
00:09:36With his position in the palace secure, and the assurance of the empress's protection,
00:09:41Rasputin set about abusing every rule in the holy book.
00:09:47He was a dual character if ever there was one.
00:09:50He could go straight from the Tsarevich's bedside, where he was praying fervently for his recovery, to the brothel down the road.
00:10:01He would boast about his mystical powers as much about his powers as a lover.
00:10:08So, in a sense, you know, his two careers were going apart in parallel.
00:10:16It's like a pop star suddenly being a star overnight and didn't know what to do with their money or their fame and their power, in a sense.
00:10:24And he had this wonderful power now.
00:10:27For the ladies of the aristocracy, there was undoubtedly an element of piquancy in this grubby man.
00:10:33This sort of peasant type, wandering around the palatial apartments of the aristocracy, was obviously an object of fascination.
00:10:42When socializing with the aristocracy, Rasputin would take immense pleasure in insulting his social superiors.
00:10:50There'd be a sexual edge to his humiliations.
00:10:53He would dip his scrubby little finger in a pot of jam and make one of these princesses lick it clean.
00:11:01She takes it from him. She does do what he says. She obeys him.
00:11:06No woman was safe from his advances.
00:11:11The recently widowed Kionia Belyatska turned to Rasputin for spiritual guidance.
00:11:17She recalled their fateful meeting in her diary.
00:11:21He instructed me to prepare myself as a woman and began to do what a husband alone is permitted to do.
00:11:30He forced me, caressed me. He then did all he wanted to the end.
00:11:36I felt dirty, impure, for he clearly felt it necessary to subject me to perpetual testing.
00:11:47Untarnished by his lewd actions, Rasputin split his time between the palatial apartments of the well-to-do and the royal chamber of the Empress herself.
00:11:57So from about 1912, he's a frequent fixture in the private apartments of the Empress, where he acts in a sense as her confidante, her confessor.
00:12:10She obviously took great comfort in his presence, not least because of his calming influence on the boy.
00:12:18Rasputin was well aware that as long as the Prince was alive, he had run of the royal house.
00:12:24The Empress's trust was paramount to Rasputin's quest for fame and power.
00:12:29Those who were in government positions didn't want the Empress to hear that they were fighting Rasputin.
00:12:36Anybody who didn't like Rasputin lost their job.
00:12:39The seats of government were filling up with fortune hunters and incompetents, many of whom were happy to pay large amounts to Rasputin for the position.
00:12:50The best way to describe him is as a fixer.
00:12:53He had acquired so much influence at court that he could really almost do anything.
00:13:00He could make a bishop. He could unmake a bishop.
00:13:05He could ensure that somebody was advanced in a ministry.
00:13:09He even made prime ministers and unmade them.
00:13:15Russia's last chance at honest government was the Prime Minister Peter Stolypin, who was compiling a file of evidence against Rasputin.
00:13:24He had to prove to the Tsar and Tsarina that this man was evil.
00:13:29He collected this huge file of all these scandals that was going on.
00:13:33The file proved that Rasputin was debauched, that he could make Mama, who was Tsarina, and Papa, the Tsar, do what he wanted them to do, that he could manipulate them.
00:13:46And the fact that the people thought that Rasputin was having an affair with Alexandra.
00:13:51And he wants Nicholas to believe him, to say, look, here's the evidence. This man has got to go.
00:13:57Nicholas saw the information and he knew it was true.
00:14:02But when he showed it to Alexandra, she claimed it was all lies and that he was being persecuted because he was a saint and all saints are persecuted.
00:14:11Not long after, Stolypin was murdered, shot in the Kiev Opera Theatre whilst attending a royal function with the Tsar.
00:14:20With his number one enemy out of the way, Rasputin's corrupt influence on government was becoming increasingly evident.
00:14:28We had four prime ministers, I think five ministers of the interior, four ministers of agriculture, three ministers of war.
00:14:38Instability was seeping through the slack reins of government and onto the city streets.
00:14:45The St Petersburg papers were bursting with letters from rape victims, crude cartoons and articles rich with scandalous allegations.
00:14:57There's a rumor mill which is taking over and Rasputin is at the center of all this.
00:15:01And there were all sorts of companies producing postcards, stamps, souvenirs.
00:15:07There's one which is a picture of Rasputin standing behind the Empress with one of her breasts in his hand.
00:15:13And it says simply, Samodirzhavyeh, the Russian word for autocracy.
00:15:19So his holding of her breast was a symbol of the autocracy, which was his hold on the whole Russian state.
00:15:28With the very framework of Russian society in disarray, Russia went to war with Germany.
00:15:37The papers were filling up with the names of dead soldiers.
00:15:40Russia is at war. It's going very badly.
00:15:44And the Tsar, in what was to be a fatal error, decides to take over the command of the army, leaves the capital, goes off to the front.
00:15:55And he leaves Alexander in charge of the government.
00:15:59She is to watch over the ministries. That was her job.
00:16:02But she doesn't do this alone. She calls in Rasputin as her advisor.
00:16:06And from this period on, this is when he's at the height of his powers.
00:16:12She just put her faith and trust in this Rasputin and anything he said went.
00:16:19Rasputin's influence was spreading all the way to the front line with devastating consequences.
00:16:26Nicholas, as the commander in chief of the army from 1915, was obliged to take the advice of his senior commanders.
00:16:35And they were very aware of Rasputin's malevolent influence.
00:16:39And in letter after letter to the Tsar, you know, we see this pleading, this nagging, this begging.
00:16:46You must do as this man says or Russia will go under.
00:16:50It will lose the throne.
00:16:52You know, our child will never sit on the throne unless you listen to what Rasputin says.
00:16:58And poor Nicholas, knowing what Rasputin was, trying to ignore her, trying to put this to the side,
00:17:04trying not to answer her.
00:17:05But she is determined.
00:17:07And eventually he gives in almost on everything.
00:17:10By replacing the war minister with Vladimir Sukomlinov, a money grabbing incompetent and close friend,
00:17:17Rasputin signed the death warrants of millions of Russian soldiers.
00:17:22It was a disaster.
00:17:27You had soldiers without rifles.
00:17:29So you had rifles without bullets.
00:17:31In certain circumstances, they had bullets and rifles, but one didn't go with the other.
00:17:35And soldiers were in summer uniform and winter was coming.
00:17:39And you had people freezing to death.
00:17:41They were basically engaging in a 19th century war against a 20th century enemy.
00:17:49They were being slaughtered on the battlefield, absolutely slaughtered.
00:17:53Millions of Russian soldiers were marching towards certain death.
00:17:58As the trenches were filling up with untrained teenagers, generals were taking their own lives.
00:18:04In 1915, the war turns dramatically for the worse.
00:18:09The German machine metal breaks through the Russian infantry, forces them into a retreat.
00:18:18As Mother Russia mourned her loss, people were beginning to demand some answers.
00:18:24All fingers were pointing to Rasputin.
00:18:27Soldiers' letters back from the front all suggest that they explained the defeat of the army in 1915
00:18:35as not just the incompetence of the government, but as active treason within it.
00:18:42Rumours were beginning to circulate that there was a pro-German bloc giving the German commanders secrets
00:18:50about military manoeuvres, in which Rasputin and the Empress were the main culprits.
00:18:58Palace authorities tried to dampen the stories.
00:19:02Rasputin kept the fire alight by spreading wild rumours about his passionate nights with the Empress.
00:19:09There was one very famous occasion in the restaurant of the Yard where, in 1915,
00:19:15he took a few prostitutes and began to get drunk and to play with the gypsy ladies.
00:19:22And he made these gestures with his hands saying,
00:19:24oh yes, I can make the Empress dance to any way I fashion.
00:19:28Rasputin once ran out on the balcony, waved his private parts to crowds beneath shouting,
00:19:35this is what rules Russia.
00:19:37What counts is not whether the rumours are true or not.
00:19:41It's the ability of these rumours to spread, enter people's mind as if they were truth.
00:19:48Rasputin had become a living legend, whose own judgement day was drawing near.
00:19:54Rasputin is demonised.
00:19:58The monarchists blame him for bringing the monarchy down.
00:20:03The people who are opposed to his influence over the monarchy,
00:20:08members of the inner circle of the Romanov family,
00:20:11who see his influence as disastrous,
00:20:13the senior police, senior members of the government.
00:20:17When all of these people decide enough of Rasputin,
00:20:22then I think the final story is already scripted.
00:20:29In the small hours of a cold December night in 1916,
00:20:33Rasputin was driven to the palace of the Tsar's cousin, Prince Yusupov,
00:20:37for what he thought was a secret tryst with a beautiful woman.
00:20:42When he turned up in his shiny silk shirt, best leather boots,
00:20:47ready to meet this beautiful hostess,
00:20:51he was invited down into the basement and given poisoned Madeira.
00:20:58It didn't seem to have any effect on him.
00:21:01He was given some cakes which had cyanide.
00:21:04Again, the guy seemed to be as robust as ever.
00:21:09At this point, Yusupov becomes impatient,
00:21:12goes to his office, collects a pistol, comes down again,
00:21:15shoots Rasputin twice in the side.
00:21:18Rasputin falls to the ground.
00:21:20They believe he's dead and the conspirators take away his coat.
00:21:24In their absence, he gets up again,
00:21:27staggers out of the doorway into the courtyard
00:21:30where he's found and shot again.
00:21:33They begin to think that he's actually the devil incarnate
00:21:37and they can't get rid of him.
00:21:39Yusupov's frustration was so great that he allegedly castrated the man he referred to as Satan.
00:21:46They start beating him with a rubber truncheon and kicking him.
00:21:52They finally get him into a car.
00:21:56They then drive him away and dump him in the river where he's washed up a couple of days later.
00:22:06Grigory Rasputin was finally dead.
00:22:09Within three months of his murder, the Tsar lost his throne and the royal family were imprisoned and later executed.
00:22:19If there wasn't a Rasputin, they probably wouldn't have fallen so fast as they had and so disastrously.
00:22:30They were really hated and hated most probably because of Rasputin's involvement with them.
00:22:36The revolutionaries see him as the embodiment of everything that was evil about the old regime.
00:22:45And they use his image to frighten the people so that if they betray the revolution,
00:22:52they will get Rasputin, they will get the Germans coming back, everything evil will return.
00:22:57Rasputin's body was later exhumed and burned by the revolutionaries
00:23:02as a symbol of the complete annihilation of Russian imperial government.
00:23:12History night concludes after the break as we head off to the battlefield to hear about the medicine men
00:23:17who risked their own lives to save those of others.
00:23:32In the 16th century, the Spanish conquistadors tore into the new world of South America.
00:23:51Francisco Pizarro, an illiterate peasant soldier who conquered Peru, was perhaps the most ruthless of these soldiers of fortune.
00:23:58In 15 years, he and his followers killed thousands of indigenous Indians, wiped out the ruling Inca monarchy, and enslaved an empire.
00:24:10These acts were committed in pursuit of power, gold, and religious imperialism.
00:24:17Few men have changed the course of world history in such a violent, ruthless manner.
00:24:22Francisco Pizarro was born in 1478 in the poor rural Spanish community of Trujillo.
00:24:33His peasant mother abandoned him on the steps of the local church.
00:24:38He was the illegitimate son of a Captain Gonzalo Pizarro, who was a small-time gentry man from the Spanish city of Trujillo.
00:24:52In his youth, Pizarro showed little promise.
00:24:55Unable to read or write, Francisco became a swineherd.
00:24:58By the early 16th century, the Spanish conquest of the New World was underway.
00:25:07Ordinary men were bringing great fortunes back home.
00:25:11The harsh conditions in rural Spain produced tough, brutal mercenaries, who were prepared to travel overseas and risk their lives in search of glory.
00:25:21The one thing which set the imagination of men like Pizarro going was seeing in southwestern Spain, not just Indians who were brought back, but gold objects.
00:25:40And they immediately saw an opportunity to get rich quick, I suppose.
00:25:45At the age of 23, Pizarro left Trujillo for the New World.
00:25:51He had become a soldier of fortune.
00:25:56In 1501, he arrived in the Americas and joined a series of expeditions to find land and gold.
00:26:03The conquistadors were waging a brutal, merciless war against vulnerable Indian natives.
00:26:10In the name of the Spanish crown and the Catholic Church.
00:26:13This wasn't Renaissance Europe.
00:26:17It was a place where men killed their brothers for a gold ingot.
00:26:21For mercenaries like Pizarro, unimaginable power and wealth were on offer.
00:26:27I think he was like anybody there, like any young soldier with a license to do anything they wanted.
00:26:38And for young soldiers at the time that could kill, rape and did any other atrocity, that was part of war.
00:26:45Pizarro joined up with another soldier, Diego de Almagro, and the pair earned a reputation for their ruthlessness in dealing with the natives.
00:26:54In Panama, Pizarro and Almagro had the living, and the main income of this living came from their ability to capture runaway Indians.
00:27:11So their first fame was those two guys that are able to catch any Indian at any cost.
00:27:21Once captured, Indians were treated like animals.
00:27:25Pizarro excelled at torture.
00:27:29He was known for burning the eyes of Indian chiefs to get their gold.
00:27:33Exemplary punishments, cruel punishments, like cutting off hands and feet, cutting off noses, cutting off ears, were often resorted to.
00:27:41By 1522, Pizarro was 44.
00:27:47He had a comfortable life in Panama, but wanted much more.
00:27:51He'd seen how other ruthless adventurers had plundered massive fortunes.
00:28:00A fellow Spaniard, Cortes, had conquered Mexico and accumulated great wealth by seizing Aztec gold.
00:28:06News travelled fast, and it was, in a sense, the desire to find something similar or even richer than what Cortes found in Mexico,
00:28:17which persuaded Pizarro and his companions to start probing down the Pacific coast.
00:28:25In 1526, Pizarro and Almagro set sail from Panama to conquer the unexplored lands of the south.
00:28:32After months without finding anything, the men were mutinous.
00:28:39So some of the soldiers complained in secret to the governor of Panama,
00:28:47and the governor of Panama sent an ownership to pick them up.
00:28:51Pizarro's starving men had camped on a hostile island off the coast of Colombia, called the Isla del Galo.
00:28:58When the rescue boat arrived, Pizarro was furious at the lack of loyalty.
00:29:05He took his sword and drew a line in the sand, demanding those who wanted to carry on to cross it.
00:29:10To some degree, Pizarro's decision to draw a line in the sand, it was a risk.
00:29:19It was a risk that paid off because he eventually succeeded.
00:29:24Of the original 160 men, only 13 crossed the line.
00:29:28The others returned to Panama and safety.
00:29:35Pizarro eventually reached the Peruvian coastline and landed at the town of Tumbes.
00:29:41The local Indians had never seen Europeans before.
00:29:45The heavily armored Spaniards who emerged from huge wooden ships were like aliens to them.
00:29:50They live in the sea, in a house made out of wood. Nobody makes a house of wood here.
00:30:00But not only that, they have iron.
00:30:05Some of them have like a tail for the sword.
00:30:09They have wool in the face, like my llama, wool in the face.
00:30:17The locals gave the Spaniards gold, silver and precious stones.
00:30:25They told stories of great cities containing unimaginable riches.
00:30:29Pizarro had found his El Dorado, but had to be patient.
00:30:34This historic meeting of races meant nothing.
00:30:38Pizarro simply ordered one of his soldiers to scout the town for a future attack,
00:30:42when he returned with reinforcements.
00:30:48Pizarro went back to Spain and triumphantly headed for the town of his birth.
00:30:52Pizarro was drawn to his hometown of Trujillo, partly because of its tradition by now,
00:31:00of sending fit, able, competent young men, many with some sort of military experience, to America.
00:31:08He was drawn by the whole family network.
00:31:11He recruited his half-brothers, Gonzalo, Juan and Hernando.
00:31:15One of the strong links was blood link.
00:31:21If you can trust somebody, it has to be your blood.
00:31:24So in that sense, it was very helpful that they had all these brothers around.
00:31:29And at the end, if they gain something, it's still within the family.
00:31:34Before he could return to Peru, Pizarro needed approval from the Spanish king, Charles V.
00:31:39The monarchy was an enthusiastic supporter of the idea that it might become richer and more powerful.
00:31:47And that through the monarchy, Spain, Spanish civilization would become more important, greater,
00:31:54more recognized by the rest of Western European Christendom.
00:31:59Charles V was about to extend his territory.
00:32:032,000 miles away in Peru, the Inca Empire was in disarray.
00:32:07There had been a vicious civil war in Peru before the Spaniards arrived.
00:32:15This civil war was between rival Incas.
00:32:18Huasca had been beaten by his brother, Atualpa.
00:32:24The civil wars weakened the Incas so that when they faced the Spaniards,
00:32:31they were clearly not at the top of their power.
00:32:33Unlike the vulnerable Incas, the Spanish were well-trained in the art of conquest.
00:32:40The number of the Spaniards were coming out of 700 years of constant struggle and combat against the Moors.
00:32:48These were people that have been breed for 700 years, generation after generation of warriors.
00:32:53Pizarro returned to Tumbes in April 1532.
00:32:58In the four years he'd been away, the town had been ravaged by the civil war.
00:33:03He realized from the reception that he got in Tumbes that he was not going to have to fight his way through Peru.
00:33:13And I think he was then very quickly aware that the majority of the Indians with whom he first came into contact were not going to resist him.
00:33:23Seizing the opportunity provided by a divided nation, Pizarro gave the order to cross the Tumbes River and head south into the unknown heart of Atualpa's Inca Empire.
00:33:36They marched to the city of Cajamarca, where Atualpa would meet them.
00:33:43Atualpa and his men came to Cajamarca, probably without a very clear idea of precisely how they were going to deal with these strange men.
00:33:52What they weren't prepared for was the ferocity, the savagery of the Spanish attack.
00:34:01The Incas were expecting a peaceful encounter.
00:34:04Pizarro saw this as an opportunity to seize power.
00:34:10When Atualpa arrives in Cajamarca, there is a small group of Spaniards that approach him.
00:34:15The other group of Spaniards are within the different buildings that surrounded the square and are ready with weapons.
00:34:26The Spanish were not in the mood for negotiation.
00:34:30Pizarro said he was an ambassador from a great king overseas.
00:34:35His priest urged Atualpa to reject his false idols and worship the true Christian God.
00:34:42The friar Valverde handed a religious book to Atualpa.
00:34:51Atualpa almost unwittingly heard his part in the script by throwing away that symbol of the true religion of Spani's superiority.
00:35:05With the excuse he needed, Pizarro ordered the attack.
00:35:08In an act of unrestrained savagery, his men drew their arms and began shooting into the crowd.
00:35:15The shocked Incas were thrown into panic.
00:35:18For the Incas, the Spanish might have been seen as something absolutely overwhelming, a force of nature maybe.
00:35:27These people were shot not only with guns but with cannons and also horses were thrown to them. It was just panic.
00:35:37In the confusion, Atualpa was dragged from his throne and captured, while the mounted Spanish soldiers tore into the fleeing Incas.
00:35:44Over 2,000 Incas died and 5,000 were captured. More importantly for Pizarro, the native emperor was his hostage.
00:35:56They knew that they have one key individual that was the leader. If you take the leader, everybody else will fall.
00:36:07In a bloody double cross, Francisco Pizarro had captured the head of the mighty Incan Empire.
00:36:13He was now in a prime position to conquer this new world and satisfy his lust for power and gold.
00:36:20Francisco Pizarro had launched his conquest of Peru and taken the Incan emperor Atualpa hostage.
00:36:35He saw him as a prized asset.
00:36:39You have to understand that Pizarro's behavior is nothing but the same behavior of a contemporary criminal.
00:36:47Who will always take care of his or her victim first and will go to extremes to guarantee his life.
00:36:57Pizarro wanted to get his hands on the wealth of the Incan Empire and demanded vast sums of gold and silver as Atualpa's ransom.
00:37:08The petrified Incas filled two rooms full of gold and silver for the Spaniards.
00:37:14Gold was usually associated with the sun and silver was associated with the moon.
00:37:19So that the proper way to revere the sun god was to produce golden objects.
00:37:26When the Incas discovered that the Spaniards were basically after gold, for them it must have been a shock because these were basically religious objects that were used for ritual.
00:37:37Pizarro didn't care about the cultural significance of these artifacts.
00:37:41He began melting them down into gold bars.
00:37:43When all had been melted down, the Spaniards had 13,000 pounds weight of gold.
00:37:51That's about six tons of gold and 26,000 tons of silver in bars.
00:37:57Pizarro's men had been promised fortunes when they set out.
00:38:01After their military success, they were each rewarded with a share of the booty.
00:38:06They were obsessed by gold because they never saw that amount of gold in their lives.
00:38:11And they got so much that everything became very expensive.
00:38:17If you want to buy a horse, you have to pay the amount of money you could buy three houses in Spain.
00:38:24Why? Because everybody had gold.
00:38:26While Pizarro satisfied the greed of his men for the time being, he kept up a facade of friendship with his prisoner.
00:38:32Pizarro had a very strong relationship with Atahualpa.
00:38:38It was openly strong. It was well-rehearsed.
00:38:43But it was only because it was in his best interest.
00:38:47It was part of his policy.
00:38:49Atahualpa remained under close guard.
00:38:52He grew increasingly dependent on the Spanish, and was even coerced into ordering the death of his rival brother, Huasca.
00:39:05Pizarro had stayed long enough in Cajamarca.
00:39:08His scouts told him of many new territories offering greater riches.
00:39:11After 12 months in captivity, Atahualpa was outgrowing his usefulness.
00:39:19I think Pizarro knew that if he was going to take control of this empire, that killing Atahualpa would not only get rid of an enemy who served his purpose, it would assist him in projecting himself to the very heart of the Inca Empire.
00:39:37After befriending the fallen emperor, Pizarro betrayed him.
00:39:43Atahualpa was found guilty of treason, and condemned to death by burning at the stake.
00:39:50For the Incas, the sentence was horrific.
00:39:54They believed that burning would deny their emperor an afterlife.
00:39:58In order to keep his soul, Atahualpa was forced to accept baptism.
00:40:03He was then garrotted in Cajamarca on the 26th of July, 1533.
00:40:14Pizarro marched on the ancient city of Cusco, the spiritual home of the Incas.
00:40:20It was the last bastion of potential rebellion.
00:40:22To avoid conflict, he offered the Inca monarchy a share of power.
00:40:28He was prepared to do a deal with the Inca elite in Cusco, so it's a skillful combination of force and diplomacy.
00:40:35Pizarro crowned a puppet king, Manco Inca.
00:40:39Manco Inca was used by the Swanians.
00:40:45He was prepared to collaborate with them in return for being given the title of Inca.
00:40:51And in return for his extended family being, in theory, confirmed in its position.
00:40:57Now dominant in the city, Pizarro encouraged his soldiers to enjoy the fruits of their labor.
00:41:05They looted religious temples for gold and took any Incan woman they fancied.
00:41:10Mixed race children were a useful way of cementing the Spanish presence.
00:41:15This is where you see his politics of mixing blood very conveniently.
00:41:26He would never allow an indigenous noble girl to marry a man that was not part of Pizarro's team.
00:41:37Pizarro was also in dispute with his old partner, Almagro,
00:41:40who felt he and his men hadn't had a proper share in the spoils of conquest.
00:41:45To precate him, Pizarro sent Almagro to the unknown lands to the south,
00:41:51where he could claim what he found as his own.
00:41:54Francisco Pizarro left Cusco to set up his new capital of Lima on the coast.
00:42:00He left two of his brothers in charge of Cusco,
00:42:04but Juan and Gonzales lacked the leadership powers of their half-brother.
00:42:07We have a number of accounts of the Spaniards fulfilling the almost stereotyped role of aggressive, ignorant, greedy, bloodthirsty conquerors.
00:42:23The conquistadors were out of control.
00:42:27Their greed and bad behavior caused resentment amongst the Incas.
00:42:31It was so rude and so rough that a few of them left everything, went back to Spain after seeing what was going on.
00:42:45In 1535, the frustrated puppet leader Manco Inca was caught trying to raise resistance against the Spanish.
00:42:55He was clapped in irons, tortured and publicly humiliated.
00:42:59Manco's life is tragic. He starts as a puppet Inca. He then is humiliated. He was at least clever enough to run away.
00:43:14One night, Manco slipped out of Cusco and grouped together a significant Incan army.
00:43:21Now, the Incas were fighting not only for their lives, but for the existence of their race.
00:43:27In May 1535, the oppressed people of Cusco rose up and fought the Spanish forces in the hills above the city.
00:43:38Despite their limited technology, the Incas managed to take control.
00:43:44They certainly succeeded in capturing the city of Cusco, which they held for about a week.
00:43:50The Incas may have beaten the Spanish had Pizarro's old partner, Almagro, not returned from his expedition to reinforce the struggling Spanish forces.
00:44:03He arrived back, however, in Cusco just in time to ensure that Manco Inca's revolt would not succeed.
00:44:12And he then installed himself in command in Cusco.
00:44:15Almagro still felt cheated by Pizarro. His conquest to Chile had been fruitless. He decided to take matters into his own hands.
00:44:26There was a power struggle, effectively, between Almagro and Pizarro, each of whom could claim, with some justice, to have the crown on his side.
00:44:35Pizarro wanted to get rid of his troublesome partner, but he was now the respectful governor of Lima and didn't want to get his hands dirty by murdering a successful conquistador and subject of the king.
00:44:48It was he who had authorised his brother Hernando to put together the force which defeated Almagro.
00:44:58Almagro was caught and executed in Cusco. His head was displayed as a warning to other would-be rebels.
00:45:04With the threat to his power extinguished, Pizarro played the part of a Spanish colonial governor.
00:45:13He built himself a governor's palace in the main square in Lima.
00:45:18He essentially enjoyed the fruits of his success in Peru.
00:45:24In 1541, Don Francisco Pizarro was 63 years old. One evening, a band of assassins surprised him as he ate dinner in his residence.
00:45:37Although he fought desperately, he was overpowered and slain.
00:45:42He was killed by the avenging son of Almagro, his former friend.
00:45:46The fatal gno went through his jawbone, through his jugular mouth, and actually severed the upper part of his spine, his spinal cord.
00:45:57There were, I think, 70 other wounds found, all the remains.
00:46:03He was the subject of a violent frenzied attack.
00:46:09It was certainly, in a very obvious way, revenge by the Almagros.
00:46:14After successfully conquering a nation and destroying an indigenous race,
00:46:20Francisco Pizarro was murdered by his own people.
00:46:23It was the risk of a common alien.
00:46:24It was the Alboa and a ustedes' people.
00:46:35However, Wilbur was murdered by their own people.
00:46:38The Alboa and a wooden woman.
00:46:41He was murdered by his own people.
00:46:46In 1482, in a monastery in central Spain, a Catholic monk was appointed to the Spanish
00:47:01Inquisition.
00:47:03From this day, Friar Thomas de Torquemada would begin a career renowned for its cruelty
00:47:08and persecution.
00:47:12As head of the Spanish Inquisition, Torquemada was responsible for the deaths of thousands
00:47:16of innocent Spaniards.
00:47:19Known as the Black Legend, he spread fear throughout Spain.
00:47:23Thousands were arrested, interrogated and mercilessly tortured.
00:47:27Many more were burnt alive at the stake.
00:47:30But Torquemada wasn't evil, was worse than evil.
00:47:37He was the Satan par excellence.
00:47:41In the name of his religion, Torquemada forced almost every Jew out of Spain, destroying
00:47:47their lives forever.
00:47:54Thomas de Torquemada was born in Valladolid in central Spain in 1420.
00:48:15As a young man, he became a Dominican monk, a Catholic order known for their extreme devotion
00:48:21to the church.
00:48:22Many of the first Inquisitors were Dominican friars.
00:48:25They seem to have been regarded as the sort of shock troops, as it were, of the Catholic
00:48:31church and of the papacy in particular.
00:48:34Torquemada was a theologian and therefore a very exact and faithful product of his Dominican
00:48:44order.
00:48:45At the time, Spain was a series of kingdoms with their own rulers, racked by civil wars
00:48:51throughout the 15th century.
00:48:53An uneasy stability arrived in the 1470s with the marriage of Isabella of Castile and Ferdinand
00:48:59of Aragon.
00:49:00They wanted to unite religions in Spain.
00:49:04And of course, the power was at the hand of the Christians.
00:49:08But the cultural union wasn't achieved and religious union wasn't achieved either because
00:49:12there were three religions in Spain, the Christians, the Muslims and the Jews.
00:49:18By the time Ferdinand and Isabella came to power, Torquemada was prior of the monastery
00:49:25of Santa Cruz in Segovia.
00:49:28Evidence of the relationship between Torquemada and the crown can still be seen above the door
00:49:33to the priory.
00:49:34In the center, you can see Saint Dominic holding the cross.
00:49:42And the cross is also being held by two hands coming out of two shields.
00:49:46They symbolize Ferdinand and Isabella.
00:49:51At the bottom, you can see two dogs fighting two cats.
00:49:56The dogs are the Dominicans.
00:50:00And the cat symbolizes heresy or vices.
00:50:03There was a horrible Latin pun that was used to describe them, Dominicans, the hounds of
00:50:10the Lord.
00:50:11They accepted that because they wanted to be the defenders.
00:50:16So just as a dog defends a place, they wanted to defend the religion.
00:50:21Having been the childhood confessor to the devoutly Catholic Isabella, Torquemada's influence
00:50:26over the queen was enormous and they shared one obsession, religious purity and the threat
00:50:32of heresy.
00:50:34People start trying to fix belief as it should be and to write down a. what should be believed,
00:50:43orthodoxy, and b. what shouldn't be believed, heresy, which of course tends to be the opposite.
00:50:48The ideology of the Inquisition was we have heresy in our midst and it's up to us to try
00:50:54and root it out.
00:50:56From the Christian body, a large number of people who are contaminating it and who represent
00:51:03a threat to their beliefs.
00:51:06As far as Torquemada was concerned, the real heretics or unbelievers were not the Jews or
00:51:11the Muslims but the conversos, former Jews or Muslims who had converted to Catholicism but
00:51:18were suspected of not being true to the faith.
00:51:21In simple terms, what happens is that by the middle of the 15th century, conversos who
00:51:28are actually baptized Catholic Christians are being treated in the same way, under the
00:51:34same suspicion, with the same accusations being made against them as Jews.
00:51:39One of the commonest phrases that's used in the charges that the Inquisition made when
00:51:43it eventually got going in the 1480s was that the accused conversos, quotes, held Jews to
00:51:49be more their neighbours than Christians.
00:51:51And this is part of the build-up of the case, as it were, against the conversos as being
00:51:57dodgy Christians, false Christians.
00:52:03In 1483, Ferdinand and Isabella put huge pressure on Pope Sixtus IV to appoint Torquemada
00:52:10as Spain's Inquisitor General.
00:52:12His relationship with the Queen was so great that she looked upon him as the Messiah, she
00:52:23looked upon him that he's a messenger of Christ and whatever he was doing was absolutely right
00:52:29and correct.
00:52:30His fanatical devotion to his religion made him the perfect candidate for the job and with
00:52:36the support of crown and papacy, he began to hunt down the converso heretics.
00:52:42He was all-powerful in having political power and being the head of the Inquisition, he held
00:52:49an enormous amount of power.
00:52:52Arrest the heretics, cross-examine them, drop a list of the heresies to be identified.
00:52:59They are concerned to repress and to exterminate and they need to be taken very seriously.
00:53:09Torquemada produced a handbook of instructions bearing his signature detailing how these conversos
00:53:16or secret Jews were to be identified.
00:53:19They identified Judaizing as the keeping of Jewish ritual practices, of cooking all the
00:53:26weekends meals on a Friday night, of changing the sheets on a Friday night.
00:53:32They get their supplies from the Jewish suppliers and not from the Christian ones so as to keep
00:53:37the dietary laws of Judaism, kosher laws.
00:53:40Spain eats a lot of pork because at that time eating pork was a sign of being Christian.
00:53:46Torquemada created a climate of fear throughout Spain, neighbor denounced neighbor and thousands
00:53:53of suspected conversos were arrested and thrown into prison, where many of them starved.
00:54:00Once brought before the Inquisition, the conversos were cross-examined.
00:54:04Torture was often used to extract confessions of heresy.
00:54:08One account involves a cobbler from Thuidad Real, a converso suspected of heresy.
00:54:13He had a rag forced into his mouth and water poured through it until he almost drowned.
00:54:22In Hyenne, a 15-year-old girl was arrested, stripped and then whipped until she agreed to
00:54:28testify against her mother.
00:54:30Her mother was eventually burned.
00:54:37In Toledo in 1486, 750 conversos, men, women and children, were processed by the Inquisition
00:54:45and marched in a parade of shame through the streets.
00:54:51They were forced to wear a san bonito, a yellow robe with a red cross.
00:54:55It was a sign that they had sinned against the true church.
00:55:02An eyewitness kept a diary describing the fate of these Toledo conversos.
00:55:10They went in procession from the church of St. Peter Martyr in the following way.
00:55:16The men were all together in a group, bare-headed and unshod.
00:55:19In their hands were unlit candles, and they went along howling loudly and weeping and tearing
00:55:25out their hair, no doubt more for the dishonour they were suffering than for any offence they
00:55:30had committed against God.
00:55:32At the door of the church were two priests, who made the sign of the cross on each one's
00:55:37forehead, saying, Receive the sign of the cross which you denied and lost through being deceived.
00:55:44When this was over, they were publicly allotted penance in order to go in procession for
00:55:48six Fridays, disciplining their bodies with scourges of hemp cord.
00:56:06For those convicted of a second offence, the sentence was death by burning.
00:56:11In what were called autodefez or acts of faith, Torquemada's inquisition sentenced up to 2,000
00:56:18conversos to the stake.
00:56:20People for their own private reasons denounce others who show no visible signs of being heretics
00:56:28or being Jews, and carry that evidence to an outside tribunal who is not in the least interested
00:56:36in the truth or otherwise of the evidence, but is willing for its own reasons to pursue
00:56:43an ideological crusade against people who are diverting from the true faith.
00:56:50In one incident in Medina in southern Spain, the local inquisitors wanted to acquit several
00:56:55prisoners because of lack of evidence.
00:56:58Torquemada flew into a rage, insisting they be burned immediately.
00:57:04Even if a heretic managed to escape the stake, an effigy of him was burned instead.
00:57:10The only concession made to the heretics was that sometimes they were strangled to death
00:57:14before the stake was lit or green wood was used so that the smoke choked them to death
00:57:20before they burned.
00:57:23We could even explain its continued existence by the fact that they went out looking for
00:57:28further heresy in order to justify the continued existence.
00:57:32So extreme was Torquemada that even the Pope was forced to write objecting to his methods,
00:57:38but Ferdinand and Isabella defended their favorite friar.
00:57:42His name doesn't help, because Torquemada is the Spanish version of the burnt tower, and
00:57:49the fact that part of his name is Kemada, meaning to burn, and that the inquisition was notorious
00:57:55for burning its heretics, makes Torquemada immediately emerge as a sinister figure.
00:58:01Torquemada took his obsession with blood purity further with one of his most chilling innovations.
00:58:06The Limpieza de Sangre, or purity of blood document, was devised so that anyone with any Jewish
00:58:12blood in their lineage was excluded from holding public office or denounced as a heretic.
00:58:18And certainly it is true that in these years, racial discrimination, Limpieza de Sangre, begins
00:58:25to take off.
00:58:26Torquemada seems to have believed in it.
00:58:32When he founded his new convent in Avila of the Dominican Order, one of the rules of foundation
00:58:42excluded from membership people who were of Jewish origin.
00:58:48From then on, many other institutions in Spanish society tend to adopt this method of discrimination,
00:58:56which obviously is frankly racial.
00:58:59But the greatest irony of all is that Torquemada himself was of Jewish ancestry.
00:59:05What we know about him is that he comes from old Castile, that he was a Dominican friar, that
00:59:14he had achieved some seniority, and that he comes from a Convesso family himself.
00:59:21His uncle was a famous ex-Jewish clergyman who rose very high in the church and became a
00:59:29cardinal in Rome.
00:59:30At least as a protector of Jewish Christians against precisely the kind of accusations that
00:59:36were being made in Spain itself.
00:59:39We could see Torquemada as an example, showing us a new Christian to be more Christian than
00:59:46the rest of the Christians.
00:59:48People that convert into one religion, usually they show more zeal than the people that are
00:59:53raised into that religion.
00:59:56Torquemada's zeal would find its next victims amongst one of Spain's oldest
01:00:00communities, the Jews.
01:00:08Towards the end of the 1480s, Torquemada's power and influence were at their height.
01:00:13His inquisition had tried thousands of conversos or secret Jews, but as far as he was concerned,
01:00:19there was a greater threat of heresy from the Jews themselves.
01:00:26If you go to Toledo, for example, and you see the magnificent synagogues, and you close
01:00:33your eyes, you can almost see the Spanish-Jewish community still there.
01:00:40And wherever you turn, you will see the mark that the Jewish people left in Spain.
01:00:50The Spanish Jews were an old and well-established part of Spanish society, holding positions
01:00:55in all areas, even in Ferdinand and Isabella's court.
01:01:00The Inquisition had been in existence for 12 years.
01:01:07It had been struggling against what it saw as the problem of the heresy of the conversos,
01:01:13without reaching any satisfactory solution.
01:01:25Torquemada believed that the root of his problem with the conversos lay in their contact with
01:01:30the Jewish community.
01:01:32The way forward was to demonize the Jews.
01:01:37His plans were given a boost in 1490.
01:01:41In the small village of LaGuardia, 6 conversos and 5 Jews were accused of kidnapping and crucifying
01:01:48a Christian child.
01:01:50This incident, probably fictitious, became known as the Holy Child of LaGuardia.
01:01:54The case of the Holy Child of LaGuardia is a key example of typical anti-Semitic hysteria.
01:02:07Anti-Semitism already existed and would already go on existing.
01:02:14One case of hysteria in itself might add fuel to the flames, but the flames were already there.
01:02:23Torquemada fanned the flames of anti-Semitism by distributing the story to other parts of
01:02:29Spain.
01:02:30It had the desired results.
01:02:32The men were eventually found guilty of cutting out the child's heart and using it in magical
01:02:37rites.
01:02:38The accused were eventually all burnt of the stake within sight of Torquemada's abbey at Avila.
01:02:45In the eyes of the church, being a Jew really was a sin because it was a deliberate rejection
01:02:49of the God of Israel.
01:02:51Determined to sever links between the conversos and the Jews, Torquemada decided that there
01:02:58was only one course of action, expel the Jews from Spain.
01:03:03The real problem was the context of there being a permanent Jewish presence which always
01:03:11gave support to the conversos in their attitude.
01:03:15Take away that context, take away the Jews, and the conversos would have no cultural support
01:03:21to back them up.
01:03:22In the late 1480s, the Inquisition lobbied steadily, Torquemada is still leading this at this stage,
01:03:30that they lobbied the crown for the crunch time to be legislated for.
01:03:36And so it made sense to everybody to get rid of the Jews.
01:03:40Under appeal from Abraham Senor, a Jewish courtier who had helped in arranging their marriage,
01:03:45Ferdinand and Isabella wavered about the expulsion of the Jews.
01:03:50Abraham Senor tried to persuade Ferdinand and Isabella to allow the Jews to remain in Spain
01:03:58in return for the Jewish community, giving them a tremendous amount of gold.
01:04:06When Torquemada heard about Abraham Senor's offer, he flew into a rage.
01:04:14And the king and queen thought seriously about it because which king or queen would not.
01:04:19And Torquemada hearing of the possibility that they might change their mind burst into the
01:04:25royal chambers and threw 30 pieces of silver in front of the king and queen and said,
01:04:32Judas sold Christ for 30 pieces of silver. If you wish to sell Christ again, here is the money.
01:04:41He was the mastermind behind the Inquisition and he was the one who was responsible for all the cruelty
01:04:50and the tragedy that our Jewish brethren suffered in Spain at the time.
01:05:00Certainly Torquemada was the decision behind the decree to expel the Jews.
01:05:09Because one of the texts which was recently discovered of the expulsion of the Jews says expressly
01:05:16that the Inquisitor General has advised me to expel the Jews.
01:05:24Bolstered by Torquemada in March of that year, Ferdinand and Isabella issued an edict of expulsion.
01:05:30It gave Spanish Jews until July to accept baptism or leave the country.
01:05:35Its terrible words read,
01:05:38We command all Jews and Jewesses of whatever age that they depart from our said kingdoms and dominions
01:05:45with their sons, daughters, manservants and Jewish attendants.
01:05:49Or they shall incur the penalty of death without further trial, declaration or sentence.
01:06:02The thriving Jewish quarters of the main Spanish towns were emptied of their inhabitants.
01:06:07After we have been exiled from Spain, our ancestors have vowed never to go back to Spain because of the suffering we suffered.
01:06:32And for no reason either, just simply because you are a Jew.
01:06:35In Segovia and elsewhere, synagogues were taken over and claimed for the Catholic Church.
01:06:42Actually, when the edict of expulsion in 1492 was issued, many Jews of Segovia didn't want to leave.
01:06:52So they moved outside the walls of Segovia to the cemetery, asking the kings to pardon them or somehow make an exception of them.
01:07:01Then, of course, it was to no avail. They had to leave.
01:07:08Torquemada, the devout prior, profited directly from the expulsion.
01:07:14In 1494, Ferdinand and Isabella gave him the Jewish cemetery at Avila for use by his own monastery.
01:07:21It's thought that anywhere between 70 and 300,000 Jews were forced to give up their homes and possessions, fleeing to Portugal, North Africa or other parts of Europe and the Middle East.
01:07:36And there were terrible, tragic scenes at the time because very often the ships that would take them away would charge a fortune and then when they were in the middle of the sea, they would just kill them all and throw them overboard.
01:07:51For those Jews who remained in Spain, Torquemada made sure they were converted.
01:07:57There is no question at all about it that what has happened in Spain is also a mini Holocaust.
01:08:04Of course, we seem to forget about it because it happened 500 years ago.
01:08:10But it is a mini Holocaust. Torquemada. He is the culprit. He is the symbol of evil.
01:08:22To this day, the expelled Spanish Jews, wherever they ended up, are known as Sephardic Jews from Sepharad, the Hebrew word for Spain.
01:08:32Even to this day, we still say a prayer asking the Almighty to help our brethren who are imprisoned by the Spanish Inquisition.
01:08:42So when we recite that prayer today, we historically think of all those human beings who suffered because of the fact that they wanted to serve their God in their way.
01:08:55Torquemada's relentless pursuit of the conversos and the Jews would continue for another six years as the Inquisitor General tortured, burned and expelled his way towards a pure Christian Spain.
01:09:10For today's Spanish Jews, Torquemada's actions were echoed in Nazi Germany over 400 years later.
01:09:18The Jews who went back after the Holocaust to Germany went back virtually immediately after the termination of the war.
01:09:26Whereas the Jews waited some 450 years before they reestablished Jewish communities in Spain.
01:09:39But the man who had caused so much suffering to so many thousands would escape any retribution.
01:09:45In 1498, at his monastery in Avila, Thomas de Torquemada passed away peacefully.
01:09:53A very significant scope of the language was simply to gauge the word among the several districts that were erased.
01:09:55When the Jews arrived, there was no longer enough to get so many people he could imagine in a book.
01:09:56When the Jews arrived, there was no longer to thewelt without even knowing what the Jews were cornered in their form.
01:10:01At the same time the Jews were mocked for the Jews who were to escape.
01:10:03States of the Jews who got down in the 1909, before the Jews were called the Jews, by the Jews who got down in the 1909.
01:10:05The Jews were commissioned by the Jews in the 1909 where the Jews who got down in the 1809.
01:10:07The Jews were blackmen who was constructed by the Jews.
01:10:08The Jews who were threatened by the Jews and were captured by the Jews from the Jews.
01:10:09The Jews that stayed in the Marathon to the Jews.
01:10:11We formed the Jews that the Jews that got under the Jews and the Jews who were blessed.