The Volunteer, vol 36, no. 4, December 2019

Vol. XXXVI, No.4

December 2019

FOUNDED IN 1937 BY THE VOLUNTEERS OF THE LINCOLN BRIGADE. PUBLISHED BY THE ABRAHAM LINCOLN BRIGADE ARCHIVES (ALBA)

In memoriam Gabriel Jackson

Franco Exhumed p4 FDR & the Spanish Republic p6 Watt Awards p16

Gabriel Jackson at Oberlin College in 2010. Photo S. Faber

Dear Friends, Founded by the Veterans of the Abraham Lincoln Brigade 239 W. 14th Street, Suite 2 New York, NY 10011 (212) 674-5398 www.alba-valb.org Editor Print Edition Peter N. Carroll Editor Online Edition www.albavolunteer.org Sebastiaan Faber Associate Editor Aaron B. Retish Book Review Editor Joshua Goode Graphic Design www.eyestormx.com Editorial Assistance Phil Kavanaugh Manuscripts, inquiries, and letters to the editor may be sent by email to info@alba-valb.org The editors reserve the right to modify texts for length and style.

Books for review may be sent to Joshua Goode Claremont Graduate University Blaisdell House, #5, 143 East 10th Street Claremont, CA 91711

www.albavolunteer.org The Abraham Lincoln Brigade Archives (ALBA) is an educational non-profit dedicated to promoting social activism and the defense of human rights. ALBA’s work is inspired by the American volunteers of the Abraham Lincoln Brigade who fought fascism in the Spanish Civil War (1936-39). Drawing on the ALBA collections in New York University’s Tamiment Library, and working to expand such collections, ALBA works to preserve the legacy of the Abraham Lincoln Brigade as an inspiration for present and future generations.

IN THIS ISSUE p 3 Alba News p 5 Teaching History Through Comics p 6 FDR and Spain p 8 Language Barriers in the IB p 10 Ernst Toller’s Campaign p 11 El Zapatero: A Memoir p 19 Gabriel Jackson Obit p 21 William Katz Obit p 22 Ascención Mendieta Obit p 22 Herbert Freeman Obit p 22 Contributions 2 THE VOLUNTEER December 2019

On November 11, ALBA joined several educational organizations in Pittsburgh for an inspiring Conference on Anti-Semitism, Hate, and Social Responsibility.

Organized by Classrooms without Borders, the gathering was held to commemorate the horrific shooting at the Tree of Life Synagogue in 2018. As part of the meeting, ALBA offered two workshops on the rise of the far-right in Europe and the United States.

The topic was timely. Just the day before, on November 10, Spain went to the polls to elect a new parliament, for the fourth time in as many years. At the most recent elections, in April, the new far-right party Vox had entered the 350-seat chamber for the first time, with a stunning 24 deputies. On Sunday, the party more than doubled that number, claiming 52 seats, representing more than 15 percent of the electorate. More than 3.5 million Spaniards voted for a party that is rabidly Spanish nationalist, anti-immigrant, homophobic, and reactionary; that rejects protections for women who are the victims of gender violence as a construct of “gender ideology”; and that defends Spaniards’ right to celebrate the legacy of Francisco Franco against the “dictatorship of progressive morality.”

The worrisome growth of Vox comes at a time of upheaval in Spain. In late October, the government finally removed Franco’s remains from the Valley of the Fallen (see p. 3-4). Earlier that month, hundreds of thousands of Catalans reacted indignantly to the Supreme Court’s decision to sentence nine proindependence politicians and activists to heavy prison sentences. The progressive government coalition that the Socialist Party and Podemos announced as this issue went to press will have its hands full.

Education was the focus of the Pittsburgh conference. How can we leverage our educational system into a building block for an anti-fascist front? This has long been the key question behind ALBA’s work. This fall and spring, our teaching workshops and film screenings take us all over the United States. Because the United States, too, has important questions to settle when it comes to its violent past.

There is still so much work to do. No one at ALBA doubts that the road ahead will be difficult. But we know that, with your unstinting support, we can keep fighting the good fight.

Thanks for all that you do.

Peter N. Carroll & Sebastiaan Faber, editors

P.S.: Please use the donation envelope enclosed in this issue to make an end-of-year donation!

In October, ALBA board member Chris Brooks, who is responsible for the massive online database of US volunteers, Spain, received the following note: [...] I'm currently finishing a (rather long) global history of the brigades, to be published in the US, UK, and Spain next year. [...] I'd like to thank you [...] for all your work, which has proved very useful to me.

The very best, Giles Tremlett

Emilio Silva back in New York City Shortly Before Franco’s Exhumation

ALBA News Restoration of San Francisco Monument Nears Completion

Emilio Silva, the founder of the ALBA/Puffin Award-winning Association for the Recovery of Historical Memory (ARMH, by its Spanish acronym), was back in New York City in October as part of a North-American tour. His New York visit included a screening of Bones of Contention, a Puffinfoundation-sponsored documentary by Andrea Weiss about Silva’s organization’s efforts to locate and exhume victims of the Spanish Civil War and the Franco regime.

On October 13, Stephanie Golob, Associate Professor of Political Science at Baruch College, hosted an ALBA-co-sponsored meet-and-greet. That same week, Silva visited the ALBA Collection at NYU’s Tamiment archive, in the company of ALBA’s Josie Yurek and Mark Wallem. Silva’s visit turned out to have been timed propitiously: less than two weeks later, former dictator Francisco Franco was exhumed from his tomb at the Valley of the Fallen. Silva and the ARMH have applauded the decision by the Spanish government, which was also approved by the Parliament, to remove Franco’s remains from his tomb at the Valley’s massive basilica. As a national monument, the Valley is maintained by taxpayers. Yet the ARMH has criticized Franco’s new resting place, a family grave, because it is still a public cemetery. “This is a slap in the face of the victims,” Silva said. “How can you oblige them to pay for the maintenance of the person responsible for their suffering?”

After more than a year of work, the restoration of the largest United States monument dedicated to the volunteers who fought fascism in Spain, at the end of San Francisco’s Market Street, across the Embarcadero from the Ferry Building, is nearing completion. Designed by Walter Hood and Ann Chamberlain, the monument consists of 44 translucent panels displayed in three rows in a large steel frame. The panels are printed on both sides with texts and photographs. It was inaugurated in 2008 to great public enthusiasm, with speeches by several surviving Lincoln veterans and then-mayor, now governor, Gavin Newsom.

The restoration of the monument coincides with a revitalization of ALBA activities in the Bay Area. Executive Director Mark Wallem traveled to San Francisco this fall to attend a meeting with a group of longtime Lincoln Brigade supporters, including Judith Montell, Adam Hochschild, Peter Glazer, Richard Bermack, and others. In addition to a rededication ceremony for the monument this spring, the group is planning other programming as well.

ALBA Teaches Teachers in Five States, Co-Sponsors Film Screening This past October and November, ALBA staff have worked with high school teachers in Ohio, New York, and New Jersey, offering full-day workshops on “The United States and World Fascism: Human Rights from the Spanish Civil War to Nuremberg and Beyond.” In November, ALBA also offered two workshops for educators at the Conference on Antisemitism, Hate and Social Responsibility organized by Classrooms without Borders in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania; and at the Conference of the National Council for the Social Studies in Austin, Texas. In the Spring, ALBA is scheduled to offer workshops in Melrose, Massachusetts; Madison, Wisconsin; Elmhurst, Illinois; and New York City. In October, ALBA co-sponsored the screening at Oberlin College of the Goya-Award-winning documentary The Silence of Others, which tells the story of Spanish victims of the Franco regime who seek justice by appealing to an Argentine court. In November, ALBA staff was present at screenings and roundtable discussions at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, and Michigan State University in East Lansing.

Bryan Stevenson’s Memoir Inspires Major Feature Film Just Mercy, the bestselling memoir by ALBA/Puffin Award winner Bryan Stevenson, has inspired a film featuring Michael B. Jordan (who plays Stevenson), Jamie Foxx, Rob Morgan, Tim Blake Nelson, Rafe Spall, and Brie Larson. It tells the true story of Walter McMillian, an Alabama man on death row who appeals his murder conviction with the help of young defense attorney Bryan Stevenson. The film had its world premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival in September. It will have a limited release on December 25 and a wide release on January 17, 2020.

December 2019 THE VOLUNTEER 3

ALBA News ALBA Co-Chair Interviewed on NPR

of Spanish fascism, it is estimated to hold the remains of more than 30,000 victims of the war.

In October, ALBA co-chair Sebastiaan Faber was interviewed on National Public Radio’s Here and Now to talk about the exhumation, on October 24, of former Spanish dictator Francisco Franco from his tomb at the Valley of the Fallen, an hour outside of Madrid, where he was buried following his death in November 1975.

Franco’s tomb has long been a symbol of Spain’s inability to come to terms with its dictatorial past. Supporters of the former dictator gathered there annually at the anniversary of his death to celebrate his legacy, a practice that wasn’t outlawed until 2007—although it has continued since then. The Valley of the Fallen, a massive monument, was built over 18 years’ time, in part by political prisoners. In addition to the bodies of Franco—now removed—and José Antonio Primo de Rivera, the founder

“It’s tempting to see Spain as a special case,” Faber told NPR’s Tonya Mosley.

“But when you think about it, the kinds of big questions that Spain is grappling with today—what to do with the legacies of historical injustice—are questions that a country like the United States is facing as well. What to do with the physical traces of the Confederacy, for example, the statues or even holidays, have stirred up contemporary political controversy. In Spain, one of the legacies of Francoism is socio-economic. The almost 40-year dictatorship allowed individuals, families and corporations to amass massive fortunes through their connections to the regime, fortunes that today continue to exist. In the United States, questions of historical justice also touch on economic questions—for example, the debate about

reparations for slavery. What is the responsibility of present generations for past injustices that they didn’t themselves commit, but whose results and legacies they continue to either suffer or enjoy?”

This was not the first time Franco’s tomb was featured on NPR. In 2003, a radio reporter interviewed Lincoln Brigade veteran Jack Shafran, who had attended a series of memorial events in Spain. Shafran explained that soldiers sometimes make promises that haunt them for their entire lives. While facing bombardments on Hill 666, Jack swore that if he survived the war he’d return someday to piss on Franco’s grave. Not until 1986 did he have the opportunity to come clean with his conscience. With his son Seth, Jack visited the dictator’s tomb. Before stepping inside, he entered a pharmacy and purchased a glass vial, which he took to his hotel room. He filled the vial with urine, returned to the cathedral, and emptied it on Franco’s grave.

Merriman Commemorated in Berkeley and Spain Robert Hale Merriman, the commander of the Lincoln Battalion who mysteriously disappeared during the Battle of Teruel in early April 1938, has been drawing attention. Milton Zerman, a history major at UC Berkeley, has been raising $1,000 to place a plaque commemorating Merriman and his wife, Marion, outside the Virginia Street apartment building where they lived. Bob Merriman was pursuing his doctorate in Economics at UC Berkeley when he left for Spain. Merriman is believed to have been captured and shot, but his body was never found.

Zerman learned about the Merrimans when he read Adam Hochschild’s Spain in Our Hearts: Americans in the Spanish Civil War, 1936-1939 for a class. Another plaque honoring Robert Merriman was installed in the Catalan town of Corbera d’Ebre, in April 2018, close to where the

4 THE VOLUNTEER December 2019

Lincoln commander was last seen exactly eighty years earlier. Efforts to locate Merriman’s remains by a research group at the University of Barcelona have so far been unsuccessful.

Zerman told the Berkeley News that he hopes the plaque will help keep the memory of Merriman and the Lincoln Brigade alive. “Merriman is a unifying

figure for the campus,” Zerman said. His next plan is to work with the campus to create a memorial to all the Berkeley students who fought in the Spanish Civil War. “We already have monuments on campus to students who served in World War I and World War II, as well as in other wars,” he said. “So I think it could be a suitable addition.”

“In a world full of appeasers and isolationists,” Zerman told the News, Merriman “bucked conformity to fight for what is right, even if it meant putting his own life and reputation on the line.

He represents the best of us, as Berkeley students and as American citizens. We should always strive for that level of courage and personal initiative.”

A page from Memoria y Viñetas

Fighting the Black Hole: Teaching

Twentieth-Century History through Comics in Spain

By Sebastiaan Faber Spanish high schools often cover the Civil War and Francoism only sporadically and superficially. A new book with lesson plans based on graphic novels hopes to improve the situation.

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Francisco Franco a dictator? The question seems silly. Yet in the days following Franco’s exhumation from the Valley of the Fallen this fall, a poll conducted by the Spanish television network LaSexta found that more than a third of those voting for the conservative Partido Popular did not think he was. Close to sixty percent of those voting for the farright party Vox agreed with them.

It may be a given that ideology colors our view of the past. But there is a practical explanation for these surprising poll results as well: a deficient history education. At Spanish secondary schools, the Civil War and the Franco period are often only covered superficially, if at all. In the last large nation-wide poll conducted on this topic, which dates from 2010, close to 70 percent of respondents said they had received no or very little information about the Civil War in high school. According to Fernando Hernández Sánchez, who trains future history teachers at the Autonomous University of Madrid, the situation has only worsened since then. “A massive black hole”: that is how he describes the state of Spanish history education when it comes to the twentieth century.

“The history curriculum for 15- and 16-year-olds is heavily overloaded,” says David Fernández de Arriba, a 34-year-old high-school history teacher from Catalonia.

“We only teach three hours of history per week. And we start in the seventeenth century. This means that the Spanish Civil War doesn’t come up until the very end of the year—if we don’t run out of time, that is. Getting to cover the Franco period is even less likely. Just the other day I was talking to my colleagues at the school where I teach. Many said they, as students, had never gotten around to the Civil War at all. Of course, for some teachers and schools it’s a convenient excuse to avoid a still controversial topic.” The period returns to the curriculum in the last years of high school, but only for the subsection of students who aspire to go to college.

“There clearly exists a political will to keep things the way they are,” Fernández adds. “Otherwise, the situation would have been addressed through a curricular reform a long time ago.”

In addition to the unfortunate timing, the textbooks themselves leave much to be desired, as well, he says. “They tend to treat the war and the dictatorship in ways that are extremely superficial.

Often they also adopt the notion that ‘both sides’ carry blame, as

since ‘atrocities were committed by both’.” As scholars like Paloma Aguilar and Pablo Sánchez León have argued, this view of the Civil War is in effect a legacy of late Francoism.

Although the panorama is disheartening, interesting local initiatives are under way. Along with three co-authors, Fernández has coordinated the publication of Memoria y Viñetas (Memory and Comic Strips), a book that features four critical essays and gathers more than a dozen lesson plans about the Civil War and Francoism based on graphic novels. A Catalan edition came out last year, sponsored by a Catalan government agency.The first print run of the Spanish edition, of a modest 700 copies, was fully distributed within a month.

“I love comics, and have read them all my life,” Fernández says. “But our main goal is to remedy the lack of knowledge about the past.” This is an urgent task: “The far right has grown tremendously in recent years,” Fernández says. “And they openly defend the Franco period. In fact, the Spanish right has never been willing to condemn Francoism. With the rise of right-wing revisionism, it’s more necessary than ever to make sure the new generations study our past.”

The book builds on the boom in graphic novels set during the Civil War and Franco period (see Carmen Moreno Nuño’s article in these pages in December of last year), with lesson plans inspired by the work of Antonio Altarriba, Ana Penyas, Jordi Peidro, or Paco Roca—whose novel Surcos del azar, written with ALBA’s Robert Coale as advisor, was featured in The Volunteer in December 2014.

“The language of the graphic novel is highly accessible to a teenage audience,” Fernández says. “Moreover, narrating history through individual stories that allow students to identify with the characters allows for more meaningful forms of learning. And the graphic novel is versatile enough as a genre to give teachers plenty of freedom to adapt the material to their students or teaching style.”

Memoria y Viñetas. La memoria histórica en el aula a través del comic, written by Gerardo Vilches, Pepe Gálvez, Elena Masarah Revuelta, and David Fernández de Arriba, is published

by Desfiladero Ediciones and can be easily ordered online.

Fernández also runs the blog historiaycomic.com.

December 2019 THE VOLUNTEER 5

Roosevelt with Brazilian President Getúlio Vargas and other dignitaries in Brazil, 1936. Public Domain.

Roosevelt and the Lessons from the Spanish Civil War

By Andreu Espasa

Why was the United States so reluctant to support the Spanish Republic?

What prompted Roosevelt’s reactionary attitude to the struggle of Spanish democracy against fascism? Isolationism and FDR’s fear of losing the Catholic vote played a role—but they are not the whole story.

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resident Franklin D. Roosevelt has long been an iconic figure for progressives around the world. His name is associated with the defeat of Fascism in World War II and the creation of the US welfare state. Even now, more than eighty years later, the reformist experience of the New Deal continues to inspire generations of younger militants, witness 6 THE VOLUNTEER December 2019

the growing popularity of the Green New Deal.

Spanish fascism. When the war broke out in July 1936, Washington adopted a “moral embargo” against selling arms to Spain that And yet for any Spaniard with some was legalized in January 1937. The embargo historical knowledge, there is one aspect of would remain in place until the end of the Roosevelt’s political career that is particularly war in April 1939. The apparent contrast uncomfortable. No matter how you look between Roosevelt’s complicity with Franco’s at it, the Roosevelt administration made victory and the heroic generosity of the Lina crucial contribution to the victory of coln Brigade volunteers could not be greater.

What prompted Roosevelt’s reactionary attitude to the Spanish Republic’s struggle for its survival against Fascist aggression? Scholars usually point to three main reasons: the popularity of isolationism in American politics, Roosevelt’s fear of alienating Catholic voters, and the American adherence to the policy of the British Foreign Office, especially on European issues.

Although these reasons carried weight in the Spanish policy of the Roosevelt Administration, they need to be nuanced.

in the affairs of another country. More implicitly, it could also be understood as a gesture of alignment with the pro-Franco sentiment of most Latin American governments.

To be sure, isolationism was an important factor in the moral embargo and its subsequent legalization. Yet the main proponents of isolationism—especially Republican Senator Gerald P. Nye of North Dakota— did not take long to come out supporting Spanish democracy, even calling for the re-establishment of the arms trade with Republican Spain. And while the Catholic hierarchy was very committed to defending the Francoist cause in the United States, according to the polls at that time they never managed to convince most of American Catholics. Finally, although it is true that in the first two years Washington diplomats were always considering British reactions to America’s policy toward Spain as a decisive factor, this changed after the Munich Agreement of September 1938.

Yet in the autumn of 1937 an important change took place, as Getúlio Vargas’ coup d’état in Brazil prompted widespread alarm about Fascist penetration in the Western Hemisphere. Franco’s military victory in Spain now began to be perceived in Washington as a potential danger for Latin America. After all, a victorious Franco could end up acting as an effective bridge between Hitler’s expansionist aspirations and the former Spanish colonies in the New World.

"The main proponents of isolationism did not take long to come out in support for the cause of Spanish democracy."

This is why, from the autumn of 1937 until the beginning of 1939, the Roosevelt Administration made some gestures that showed a desire to thwart a total Francoist military victory. Of those, the most important was the purchase of several tons of Spanish silver by the US Treasury DepartIn fact, we can only understand the US po- ment. The rise of anti-Francoist sentiment sition on the Spanish war if we take two ad- in the White House was also decisive in ditional factors into account. First, we have the conflict with Mexico over that country’s nationalization of its oil industry in to acknowledge that in the 1930s the US State Department practiced its own version March 1938. The US desire to prevent the of “appeasement.” That is, it applied a policy emergence of a “Mexican Franco” paved the way for the adoption of a friendly and of non-confrontation with Nazi Germany and rapprochement with Mussolini in order peaceful approach to the oil conflict. At the same time, the lessons learned from to separate him from Hitler—all based, as in the case of Paris and London, on a strong the Spanish conflict and its application to the Mexican case would prove relevant to anti-Communist sentiment that was fairly the transformation of US strategic thought widespread among the US elites.

—particularly when it came to balancing the defense of US economic interests The second factor is the US relationship with Latin America. Indeed, a key pillar of with national security concerns. Despite oil companies’ interest in a more heavyAmerican diplomacy at the time was the handed approach, Roosevelt did not want so-called Good Neighbor Policy toward to provoke a Mexican civil war that could its southern neighbors, which sought to serve as an excuse to attract Nazi aviation improve inter-American relations through on its own southern border. greater respect for the formal sovereignty of the Latin American republics. At first, the embargo against Spain aligned with the The influence of the Spanish war on Good Neighbor Policy. For one, it could be American strategic thought was clear from justified as an example of non-intervention the US adoption of the “Fifth Column”

concept. The United States was also highly alert to possible attempts to reproduce in Latin America the same intervention strategy that Hitler and Mussolini had successfully applied in Spain. For the Axis powers, encouraging a revolt of reactionary and discontented military and, once the conflict broke out, providing aviation support and infantry troops of Fascist “volunteers” could prove to be a very cheap, discreet, and efficient way of winning new allies without having to assume the costs and risks of a full-fledged military invasion.

A victorious Franco could end up acting as an effective bridge between Hitler’s expansionist aspirations and Latin America.

At the same time, warning the US population about a likely replay of “the Spanish type of war” in Latin America conveniently allowed Roosevelt to educate the country about the dangers of Fascism and provide a non-traumatic path from “continental isolationism” toward US participation in the next world war. Ultimately, a broad national consensus emerged that any Hitler attempt to intervene in Latin America should be met with a declaration of war.

Although the attack on Pearl Harbor eclipsed the debate over the dangers of Fascist penetration in Latin America, the truth is that in 1940 a majority of the population considered such an intervention quite likely.

Still, the United States never revoked the embargo against the Spanish Republic. To make matters worse, the Cold War would prompt a sad historical irony. Some of the later US-sponsored interventions in Latin America would prove to be disturbingly similar to Hitler and Mussolini’s “Spanish model”: support for local reactionary militaries in overthrowing a democratic government by invoking the ghost of communism and social revolution.

Andreu Espasa de la Fuente holds a doctorate from the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona and teaches at the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México. His most recent book is Estados Unidos en la Guerra Civil Española (2017).

December 2019 THE VOLUNTEER 7

A page from the Book of the XV Brigade

The Antifascist Tower of Babel: Language Barriers in Civil-War Spain

By Jorge Marco

The International Brigades were a hybrid bunch: multi-ethnic, multi-national— and multi-lingual: not everybody spoke everybody’s language. This posed serious organizational challenges for the Republican war effort.

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any of the 40,000 foreign volunteers who traveled to Spain to fight fascism as soldiers, advisors, or medical workers were migrants and political exiles.

Between 32,000 and 35,000 joined the International Brigades (IBs) created by the Communist international. The hybrid culture they embodied was the antithesis of fascism. In fact, their experience in Spain helped shape a new antifascist transnational identity. Yet the multi-cultural, multi-ethnic, and multi-lingual nature of the Brigades also posed serious organizational challenges for the Republican war effort.

In addition to around 30 European languages, the linguistic symphony of the IBs included more exotic tongues such as Turkish, Arabic, Chinese, and Japanese. Both in the internal reports of the IBs and in the memoirs of the volunteers we find recurrent references to the Tower of Babel, the biblical story in which God punishes humanity’s hubris by cursing it with linguistic division.

On the one hand, the military leadership highlighted that the Brigades’ linguistic melting pot represented the new world that

8 THE VOLUNTEER December 2019

antifascism was trying to build beyond ethnic or linguistic barriers.

On the other, they recognized that it presented enormous problems in practical terms, turning into a cacophony that provoked high levels of confusion and misunderstanding.

To be sure, most of the main leaders of the International Brigades were polyglots, speaking to each other in French, Spanish, and Russian. In fact, Russian became a sign of distinction among the IB elites, as many had gained military experience in the Soviet Union. Yet given that the largest contingent of volunteers came from France—whether they were French or had lived there in exile—the first official language of the IBs was French. The problem was that many of the volunteers who arrived in Spain did not understand French.

The IBs rushed to organize in mid-October 1936 and had their baptism of fire only two weeks later, in early November, in an attempt to prevent the fascist occupation of Madrid. While the participation of the IBs was key in defending the capital of the Republic, it also showed the difficulties of managing multi-lingual units. Sometimes orders had to be translated orally into up to three languages,

A page from the Book of the XV Brigade

Driven by a utopian and idealistic vision, André Marty wanted to maintain the multilingualism of the battalions. inevitably causing misunderstandings in this chain of translations.

After November 1936, some high commanders of the IBs pointed out that it was necessary to create linguistically homogeneous battalions to reinforce the military efficiency of the units on the battlefield. Yet the IB’s top leader, André Marty, was against this measure. Driven by a utopian and idealistic vision, he defended that it was necessary to maintain the multilingualism of the battalions in order not to break the international unity of the IBs. This policy was maintained from November 1936 until March 1937. But the language problems generated on the battlefield in the Battle of Jarama convinced the high commanders of the International Brigades that it was necessary to establish a new policy. In April 1937 the high command of the IBs began to reorganize the soldiers, moving battalions between brigades, trying to gather groups based on the prevailing languages. Thus the 11th Brigade (German), the 12th Brigade (Italian), and the 14th Brigade (French) were established, at the same time that a new multilingual Brigade was created composed of volunteers from Eastern Europe, who spoke many languages given the multiethnic nature of the ancient Austro-Hungarian empire.

Still, the high command of the IBs was soon faced with a new linguistic challenge. Starting in February 1937 the IB units were accepting Spanish soldiers due to the lack of international volunteers to supply the battalions. By May, some battalions had more Spanish soldiers than foreigners. The Spaniards did not know the official languages of each of the military units.

Faced with this situation, the high command of the IBs decided to “Hispanicize” the battalions. The objective was to move from the existing linguistic policy towards bilingualism. Thus, the new brigades had to combine two official languages: Spanish-German (11th Brigade), Spanish-Italian (12th Brigade), Spanish-Slavic languages (13th Brigade), Spanish-French (14th Brigade) and Spanish-English (15th Brigade).

This new policy helped to improve the military effectiveness of the IBs, although communication difficulties continued throughout the rest of the war. To this end, the IBs were assisted by transla-

tors and interpreters who tried to build bridges of communication.

Spanish courses were also offered to volunteers, although they were only compulsory in the 13th Brigade, where the predominant multilingualism was conducive to language learning.

In addition to Spanish, Yiddish became an important language of communication among volunteers of different nationalities, many of whom were Yiddish speakers who had fled the fascist and authoritarian regimes of Eastern and Central Europe, along with others from Western countries, especially the USA. In fact, for many of these volunteers their experience in Spain meant recovering the lost Yiddish of their childhood.

The multilingualism of the IBs generated enormous communication difficulties in practical terms, but also offered an opportunity to build and strengthen a new slang and antifascist culture.

Many brigadistas ended up speaking a hybrid language that contained words and grammatical structures of different languages. Numerous Spanish loanwords made it into their everyday vocabulary. Two of the most common words used by the Spanish brigadistas were “Salud” and “Camarada,” which were immediately incorporated into the international antifascist vocabulary.

During the Second World War, many international volunteers, together with their Spanish comrades, brought this new antifascist language and identity to the concentration camps and resistance movements in their respective countries. On the lips of these “Spanci”—a nickname for former IBs volunteers derived from various Eastern European languages—the new hybrid language forged on Spanish soil resounded across the mountains, forests, and deserts of occupied Europe and North Africa.

Jorge Marco teaches Spanish Politics, History & Society at the University of Bath (UK). This article draws on “‘Mucho malo for fascisti’: Languages and Transnational Soldiers in the Spanish Civil War,” co-authored with Maria Thomas and published in War & Society (vol. 38, no. 2). English version by Sebastiaan Faber.

December 2019 THE VOLUNTEER 9

Ernst Toller in 1938. Photo Erich Schaal

Fifty Million Dollars for Spain: Ernst Toller’s

Forgotten Relief Campaign

By Ana Pérez In the midst of the Spanish Civil War, the German writer Ernst Toller organized a multi-million-dollar international campaign to alleviate the hunger and misery of Spain’s civilian population. Although Toller’s herculean effort garnered broad support, it has been largely forgotten.

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orn in 1893 from a Jewish family in Samotchin (East Prussia), Ernst Toller was one of the most prominent figures of his time. A playwright, political activist, and journalist, he was a typical representative of the interwar generation.

He volunteered for World War I but found himself radicalized by his experience at the front. Despite his conversion to pacifism, he supported the revolution that followed the war. His involvement in the Soviet Republic of Munich (1918-19) cost him a five-year prison sentence. While in jail, he wrote his first and most important plays, which were acclaimed inside and outside Germany. After his release in 1924, Toller’s literary and political career garnered further international acclaim. He was among the most vocal opponents of the growing right-wing in the Weimar years. He was also among the first to warn of the danger posed by Adolf Hitler and to advocate for antifascist unity.

In 1931, he travelled to Spain to experience life under the Second Republic first-hand. His reports, written from a deep empathy with the country and its people, lucidly describe the Republic’s political and social challenges, which, he feared, helped prepare the ground for the emergence of fascism. In exile since Hitler’s rise to power in 1933, he actively fought Nazism, denouncing its crimes and continuing to call forantifascist unity.

From the beginning of the Spanish Civil War, Toller supported all initiatives in favor of the Republic, which he saw as a model of anti-fascist struggle. When, in July 1938, he travelled to wartime Spain, he was so deeply struck by the hunger and misery of the ci10 THE VOLUNTEER December 2019

vilian population that he decided to set up a massive international relief campaign. With the approval of the Republican government, Toller began to collect data on the food situation and to seek broad support for his humanitarian initiative.

Knowing full-well that the Non-intervention Committee would block his project if aid was only provided to the Republican zone, he agreed with the Republican authorities to extend his project to the entire country, “based on need.” On August 26, 1938, in Madrid, he gave an important radio speech urging all the democratic powers, but especially President Roosevelt, to lend their support. He then traveled to Barcelona, where he continued to gather data, and to the Ebro front, where he met with the volunteers of the International Brigades.

By September, Toller had left Spain for a whirlwind international tour in search of support. His goal was to raise 50 million dollars—the equivalent of close to a billion dollars today. The plan was to use these funds to purchase surplus food from the democratic countries and send it to Spain to alleviate the shortages. In a few months’ time, Toller travelled to France, Great Britain, and the Scandinavian countries, where he managed to mobilize trade unions, the press, and progressive circles to support his relief project.

Finally, he convinced several European governments to lend their support, on the condition that U.S. President Roosevelt lead the initiative. Toller then traveled to the United States—as always, on his own dime. In the States, no one had heard of

the project. Refusing to be discouraged, he began again to seek support. A news article by the New York Herald Tribune’s Dorothy Thompon, published on November 30, 1938, and titled “Intervene—With Food!” set off a wave of publicity and support.

Even Eleanor Roosevelt joined. By January 1939, Toller had managed to pull together a committee to direct the implementation of his plan. An important first shipment of wheat was approved. The objective, it seemed, had been achieved.

Unfortunately, the project’s eventual success was overshadowed three months later by the defeat of the Republic and the international recognition of the Franco dictatorship.

On 22 May 1939, exhausted and plunged into a deep depression, Toller—by then exiled in New York City—committed suicide. His funeral, at the Funeral Chapel of Broadway in Manhattan, found some five hundred German, Spanish and American antifascists in attendance. In his eulogy, Sinclair Lewis described Toller as “a symbol of the revolution.”

Ana Pérez, emerita professor of German Literature at the Complutense University of Madrid, writes about German antifascist exiles. From 1995 to 2012, she presided over the Association of Friends of the International Brigades (AABI). Her new book Ernst Toller entre la II República y la Guerra Civil española has just been published by Comares (Granada).

EL ZAPATERO

By Maria Alvarez

A SEASONED NEW YORK CITY REPORTER’S SEARCH FOR HER FAMILY HISTORY LEADS HER BACK TO CIVIL WAR SPAIN.

The author’s mother and her parents, Enric García Agustí and Pilar Agustí Yoller, in Narbonne, France.

I

New York City reporter. My grandfather, a shoemaker, hailed from Catalunya. He was a Spanish Republican—a communist, a shadowy mystery I never knew. He was a crossed, tormented, silent man, pained by the Civil War, the Nazi occupation of France, and a forced exile into Bolivia in 1951. Locked out of his beloved Catalunya, he led a tortured life. am a

What’s more, Enric García Agustí disapproved of my parent’s marriage and therefore of my existence. He never laid eyes on

me and I never heard his voice. I didn’t know whether to love him, pity him, or just see him as a person with an interesting story. I got my answer on September 11, 2001. *** That morning the Hudson River sparkled and the Statue of Liberty stood tall and brave in the sunshine. A quiet filled my apartment facing New York Harbor. I was getting ready for work when I December 2019 THE VOLUNTEER 11

12 THE VOLUNTEER December 2019

The Zapatero’s shoehorn

MY GRANDFATHER WAS A CROSSED, TORMENTED, SILENT MAN. “WHY TALK ABOUT THOSE THINGS?” SHE SAID SQUEEZING MY KNEE TO STRESS THOSE GRUESOME YEARS ARE BEST FORGOTTEN. ENRIC JOINS THE RESISTANCE, BUT IT IS NOT LONG BEFORE HE IS DENOUNCED WHEN A TRAITOR INFILTRATES HIS GROUP. heard a sudden eerie back-fire blast. The thumped muffled sound turned my insides dark. Then the telephone rang.

My New York Post editor asks if I can run over to the World Trade Center. “There may be an explosion. It sounds real. Can you get down there?” I hurry out the door. Within several blocks, I stop dead in my tracks. I stand motionless with several people staring at a harmless black plume of smoke that grows darker with each second. A woman screams. “Someone fell out of a window.” I look up and see people jump. Their jackets inflate like parachutes. They descend into a cluster before they hit the pavement.

I hear a rocket engine roar. It’s thunder in my gut. It vibrates through my body. I look up to see the belly of an American Airlines jet fly over me. The plane’s wings crisscross the tower’s steel and glass for a more lethal hit before it torpedoes into the South Tower. The expected fireball is too horrific to watch.

I shut my eyes and cry out for my mother, preparing to die.

But instead, I feel my mother’s fearless grit. Like my mother and grandparents—survivors of the Spanish Civil War and Franco’s bombs—I am not ready to die. I open my eyes to see the orange and yellow fireball explode into a burst of black smoke. *** It is 1937, on the hilly cobblestone street of Los Caballeros in Lleida, Spain. It is dark inside my mother’s home. It was always dark, she told me. She is seven, and my great-grandmother Tata is closing the wooden shutters of their home. A nightly practice to survive Franco’s bombardments that kill women and children recklessly while the men fight on the front.

My mother’s tummy rumbles with the usual hunger. She is numb.

Death stirs through her thin arms and legs. Her sister, María Teresa, is bedridden starving to death with pneumonia. My grandmother sits vigil at her bedside watching her daughter die.

Little Pilar climbs up the three-story staircase to Tata’s room with

a blanket under her arm. Tata, my great-grandmother waits to embrace her granddaughter and nestles her into her chest. Little Pilar rests her cheek onto Tata and the two begin to count the exploding bombs to gauge their distance. “Was that one far? Do you think the next one will be closer?’’ asks my mom, whose childhood innocence turns the trauma into a game. Tata gladly plays along.

Tata, the matriarch, leads the family of women. Her husband León died before the war. Her son is lost on the front. She and her four grown daughters work every surface to feed themselves. The youngest, Amparo, joins a convent. She is one less mouth to feed, but she is in peril.

She is thrown into a violent religious backlash where nuns, priests and monks are killed throughout Spain. Convents, monasteries and churches from the fourth century in Lleida are burned and pillaged. Sanctuaries are destroyed now that the church is a symbol of fascist rule. Amparo never tells those horrific stories when she is alive. "¿Para qué hablar de esas cosas?" she said squeezing my knee to stress those gruesome years are best forgotten. “Why talk about those things?” But I am intent to research my family’s story, my curiosity spurred on by my experience on 9/11.

It’s November 1937, and Lleida lays in rubble. Fires smolder at curbsides and its cobble streets are stained in blood. Italian war planes bomb and destroy the nearby school Liceu Escolar de Lleida. Forty-eight students and several teachers are killed. Inside my mother’s home there is no light and no food. She remembers the shivering cold and laying close to the coal heater that blackens her legs and the walls of her home. A nervous anxiety inside the house fuels her hunger. To earn money and help the Resistance, my mother and grandmother work under an oil lamp and sew button holes and buttons onto Republican uniforms. The Republicans gear up to fight the Ebro Offensive a hundred miles away. The piecemeal work is as endless as the war.

Researching, I came across news reports describing the women of Lleida who march into the daylight onto the city’s ruins to chant declarations of liberty and freedom. They hand out leaflets—a December 2019 THE VOLUNTEER 13

Their father, Enric, ‘El Zapatero’—the shoemaker—works in the family shop. He learns the craft of sewing fine leather shoes from his father, Pere, whose father taught him. Enric’s habitat is Calle Mayor, where Catalan businessmen operate more like artisans.

Hat shops of felt berets, fabric and tailor clothing stores are intimate talleres, workshops, whose owners’ skillful hands are respected. The stone glass storefronts with their brass door handles are salons where customers and store owners conduct cordial The Republican soldiers’ defeat at the Ebro Offensive marks the business. Enric grew up surveying this commercial buzz and as a occupation of Lleida. The day Franco’s soldiers arrive, they rise the Spanish flag on the balcony of Lleida’s town hall, according to testi- young man he stood in the threshold of his family’s store—elbow monies archived at the University of Lleida. “It is a pitiful sight of hu- jutting from his waist—studying people as he drew on a cigarette. man life that surfaces from their shelters. They blink into the daylight His discerning eye mirrored a confidence that suited his other job to hear one of Franco’s generals give a speech. ‘I come in the name — a police officer for the Comisario de Policia de Catalunya. of the Caudillo [Franco] to give you bread, peace and justice.’ ‘‘ Enric wore his badge proudly. (Today it is in the possession of his grandchildren in Bolivia.) He joins the Resistance, but, as my Instead, Lleida’s convents, churches, factories—even its gothic grandmother tells me 40 years later, it is not long before he is decastle, Seu Vella—are turned into prisons for enemies of the new dictator. The first nine months of occupation pits friends, neighbors nounced when a traitor infiltrates his group. Ambushed one night after a clandestine meeting by armed men, they load Enric in the and acquaintances against each other. They spy on each other.

Neighbors and friends denounce those who do not attend Sunday back of a truck. He knows he will be tortured, starved and brain washed—a slave to Franco’s military machine. With the noose Mass; women and men suspected to sympathize with the rojos, around his neck, he plans an escape. My grandmother proudly the Reds, are sent to prison. Families of loved ones who escaped describes Enric leaping from the truck onto a dirt road in the pitch to France are closely watched. Others disappear or are killed in darkness near the wooded lake district of northern Spain. He runs the street, the assassins left free to commit more killings. into the woods of the Pyrenees to hide and struggles through the brush to circumvent the pine tree valley to find the best roadside Archive photos show the outside of my mother’s home barricaded route into France. But by dawn he is spotted by French police and

by Franco’s wall of stacked sandbags 20-feet high guarded by his troops. From the city center of Lleida Franco’s soldiers fire their rifles taken to a concentration camp. A half a million Spaniards will follow the same route less than a year later. at Republican soldiers near the Segre River. The sniper fire and lack of food and water forces civilians to flee to Barcelona or to the countryside to their farms to hide in their barns where there is food. A cousin in Barcelona, whose father was my mother’s first cousin told me another story. Soon after my grandfather’s capture, my grandmother is inside the home of Enric’s mother. A startling loud But my mother’s family stays put in Lleida. Mass starvation grips Catalunya. Quaker volunteers set up canteens where milk is served door knock reveals three soldiers who push through the doorway.

My grandmother stands next to her mother-in-law Felisa and to children. Volunteers report that they are “working under condisister-in-law Teresa. My mother and her five-year-old cousin Josep tions of appalling chaos and often in great personal danger…By huddle in the background. They watch the women of the family the end of the year mass starvation became an actuality in which the children were the worst sufferers,’’ according to a 1938 Quaker face off with the soldiers. The interrogation begins. “What does Enric do for a living?” No one answers. The soldier barks again: Annual Report. Food aid is confiscated by Franco’s Auxilio Social “What does Enric do for work?’’ Pilar’s heartfelt retort: “Lo mismo which hoards the food for themselves, according to the report. que usted pero en el otro bando”: The same as you but for the other side. The soldier slaps my grandmother across the face. The *** idea that they share a common ground cannot be accepted by the occupiers. Pilar stands ready for another blow or worse. But the Yet, my mother explained to me, life was not always bleak in soldiers leave. My grandmother’s steadfastness reputes her as a Lleida. It is Palm Sunday before the war. Little Pilar and her sister Maria Teresa smile innocently into a camera lens that captures the woman of valor. holy day on Calle Mayor—Lleida’s commercial promenade. The The ramifications of Enric’s capture create the need for an urgent two sisters are in matching dresses knitted by their mother. They flare from their knitted crochet bodices that sparkle in the sunlight exit. His family leaves for Barcelona. Pilar stays in Lleida to weather the dictatorial occupation and waits to hear from her like lace. Their white and black patent leather shoes and flawless beloved husband. A hand-delivered letter arrives. She learns a white anklet socks capture the camera’s shutter light. They hold distant cousin claims him from a concentration camp and goes identical sachets of candy and palms. The sun lights up their long brown hair that is parted neatly in the middle and braided off their to Narbonne, a small French city of gothic churches and cobblestone streets that feel like Lleida. There Enric works in his cousin’s faces with crisp shiny ribbons. The girls do their best not to giggle shoemaker shop. Industrious Catalan that he is, he opens his own into the camera but the joy of childhood bubbles over. There is abundance in the young family’s life whose parents met and fell in store: the “Coeur de la Pomme,” the Heart of the Apple.

My grandmother reads his letter repeatedly and decides to love on the very same street. manifesto that reads: “Defense Against Foreign Fascist Invaders.’’

The leaflet depicts defiant Catalan men ready to fight Franco on the Ebro and Segre rivers in Lleida and Balaguer. The leaflets call for all able-bodied men to “march to the front and halt those who are cowardly enough to give way before the claws of the Germans, Italians and Moors.’’

14 THE VOLUNTEER December 2019

follow her husband. Hiring a smuggler to cross into France is an expensive proposition when everyone in the house is hungry. My grandmother persists and sews at a fever pitch along with my mother who sews with needle and thimble. My mother remembers Tata arguing that an escape to France is too dangerous and reminds my grandmother she already lost Maria Teresa to the war.

But there is no convincing. Enric, the love of her life, could never return to Spain.

perpetrators who turn commercial jets into bombs killing innocent people. I pray for rain to extinguish the hell that is burning up the city. ***

As the Civil War draws toward a close, the Republic’s defeat only a matter of time, more Spanish war veterans, women, children and elderly flood into France. Refugees fall onto Narbonne’s beaches The evening, as they leave, the smell of snow chills the air. and are left to die—all walking distance from Enric’s shop. But Dressed in layered sweaters under heavy coats, Pilar, 27, now is Enric works undeterred, threading his family into the fabric of Narthe head of the family. In one hand she grips a small leather valise bonne despite the fog of famine that lingers at his doorstep. Enric’s in the other she clutches my mother’s small hand. My grandmother determination to outwit death runs through me as it did through vows never to let go. If caught they will be separated. Children my mother, who also never felt his love. Our connection to Enric is are taken from their mothers and placed in orphanages under visceral. It was his blood, steeped in political conviction, strength Franco’s occupying regime. and spirited zeal, that rallied inside me on 9/11—a day of terror when I was alone but, like him, a step ahead of death.

They cross the Pyrenees on foot. A string of farmers and sheep herders take them through Catalunya’s Pirineos, through the tiny villages that make up Catalunya’s Comarcas along the northern mountain footpaths. At an altitude of 2,500 meters, 7,500 feet, the winter wind shears through their city clothes. Moon rays bounce off the snowcapped mountains exposing them, but also guide their path.

They cross the Valle de Aran into Andorra, in the direction where Republican soldiers exchange gunfire with their enemy, rather than follow the roadside which is a target for Franco’s bombs.

They hike at night and hide in the day in barns where dairy farmers feed them milk and cheese. Each step is a touch of faith in a journey that takes almost a week. I know: I retraced the hike 50 years later.

It is dawn when they reach Narbonne’s main square. My grandmother stops to wash the dirt from their clothes, legs and face and shoes with the frigid waters of the Canal de la Robine. She washes my mother’s face hoping the water will rub off the fear and uncertainty. But water cannot give my mother the love and assurance she needs. She is hungry and her heart is weary. She never wanted to leave Spain. The dawn turns into a cold cheerless morning. A man near the promenade arranges café chairs and tables. My grandmother asks directions from the letter’s address she memorized. He points them in the direction. Nervous with fear, they arrive but no one is home. A neighbor hears their knock and suggests they try a cafe where Enric has his coffee. They step out onto the damp grey cobble stones and find Enric at a table.

He is with another woman. But my grandmother is not angry. This is war and jealously is a luxury. She understands her husband’s needs and knows she must reunite her family. *** I think about my grandmother and mother’s courage as I crisscross through the side streets of Lower Manhattan to avoid police after the World Trade Center collapses. It is noon and the sun beats down hard on my throbbing head. I reach the burning inferno.

There is no relief to the unfolding disaster hatched by tyrannical

The author’s mother, Pilar Agustí Yoller, and her sister María Teresa Agustí Yoller, on Palm Sunday.

December 2019 THE VOLUNTEER 15

ALBA Awards 21st Annual Watt Prizes

By Aaron Retish

Students from around the world once again applied to ALBA’s Watt Essay contest, which recognizes academic projects and essays about the Spanish Civil War. This year, five prizes were awarded.

T

his year’s Watt Award Jury applauded the wide diversity of submissions that included poetry, fiction, long-form essays, and, for the first time, digital humanities projects. The jury awarded two prizes at the collegiate level, recognizing the wonderful quality of the deep pool of submissions. Elissa Sutherland received one award for “My Grandfather was Also a Disappeared,” a chapter of her New York University Senior thesis. Analyzing and drawing inspiration from the famous article by Emilio Silva (the recipient of the 2015 ALBA/Puffin Award for Human Rights Activism) who

wrote of his grandfather as one of the disappeared, Sutherland examines the significance of labelling victims of the Franco regime in a way that linked them to victims of brutal regimes in Latin America. The jury was very impressed by Sutherland’s complex balance of literary theory and close textual analysis. Breanna van Loenen, also of New York University, received the other award. She unravels how the perception of Franco and Fascism was “redesigned” at the beginning of the Cold War in her essay “Friend or Foe? Defining the Enemy in Franco’s Spain from 1936 until 1959.” According to van Loenen,

Argentine banners denouncing the “disappeared.”

16 THE VOLUNTEER December 2019

in the US press, Franco went from a dictator to a benevolent leader fighting against Communism. In the process the veterans of the Lincoln Brigade went from popularly admired heroes to officially suspect Communist sympathizers.

Wonderfully researched and filled with insights, the author draws heavily on letters found in the Abraham Lincoln Brigade Archive at the Tamiment Library. van Loenen will celebrate her award from South Africa where she has just started as a volunteer for the Peace Corps.

The jury also presented awards to three projects at a pre-collegiate level. Jason Huang of Phillips Exeter Academy was recognized for his sophisticated analysis of African American volunteers of the International Brigades in his essay “Abraham Lincoln Brigade: African American Internationalism Manifested.” Kate Harty and Alice Tecoztky’s carefully researched and complex essay “For the Love of God: The Intersection of Politics and Religion in the Spanish Civil War” looks at how religious institutions in the US and Spain portrayed the Civil War and how religion shaped the worldview of volunteers to the Lincoln Brigade. Harty and Tecozkty are students of George Snook at Packer Collegiate Institute in Brooklyn, an ALBA teaching institute alum and mentor to a number of Watt award recipients. Briann Siener of Rosary Hight School in Illinois

received our third award for his piece of fiction. Briann wrote a sparse and effective story of a young girl of a peasant family whose family protected her from the hardships of the Civil War until the bombing of Guernica that killed her father and the world that she knew.

The jury for the Watt award was comprised of Angela Giral (Columbia University), Josh Goode (Claremont Graduate University), Gina Herrmann (University of Oregon), Jo Labanyi (New York University) and Aaron Retish (Wayne State University). The George Watt Memorial Essay award honors the memory of Abraham Lincoln Brigade veteran George Watt (1914-1994), a social worker, writer, and lifelong activist central to the creation of ALBA.

Collegiate Award Elissa Sutherland This essay analyzes the victims of Francoist reprisals from the perspective of language and law. Beginning with the 1936 coup, General Francisco Franco and the Nationalist rebels used ritual violence to instill terror and destabilize the Second Spanish Republic. The coup was used as justification of a culture war and populations suspected of aligning with the Republic were killed. Extrajudicial killings molded into a successful institution of violence centering on public and private denunciations, paybacks, and arbitrary killings.

This identification became the basis for the “otherization” of the Republicans that facilitated their mass execution. However, a significant shift occurred in September 2000 when Emilio Silva published the article “My grandfather was also a disappeared” in the La Crónica de León.

By using the term “disappeared,” Silva demanded a reorientation in society’s view of the dead by directly implicating them as victims of international crime.

This chapter analyzes “My grandfather was also a disappeared” as a performative utterance and the resulting implications for social and legal progress. In contrast to Latin America, where the term disappeared originated, the relationship between the disappeared in Spain and the judi-

Isidore Irving Fajans, soldier of the Abraham Lincoln Brigade who reported discrimination by the military when trying to enlist during WWII. Source: Abraham Lincoln Brigade Archives

cial system is virtually non-existent. The analysis of “My grandfather was also a disappeared” as a performative reflects a legal reorientation in the social conscience of Spain that has taken place in the last decade as a result of an “Argentinization” of civil society strategies. This performative served as a catalyst in the Historical Memory Movement and was an essential contributor to the reinterpretation of the victim’s identity in Spain. Despite Silva’s intention of placing victims of Francoist reprisals in an international legal scenario, Spain’s distinct political context has blocked the recourse of justice for victims of political violence that has taken place in Argentina with the trials and imprisonment of perpetrators.

Breanna van Loenen When nearly 3,000 American men crossed the Atlantic to fight against dictator Francisco Franco in the Spanish Civil War in 1936, they were celebrated as heroes in their country, both by the administration of FDR and the public. Fascism was seen in America as the direct antithesis of democracy, so they viewed the Abraham Lincoln Brigade soldiers as true patriots for risking their lives to defeat it in Spain. Yet, during and after World War II,

these men quickly fell from grace. Once lauded for their service to America and the world, they were now the subjects of FBI investigations into un-American activities as a result of their past connection to the left-leaning Spanish Republicans. The military apparatus during WWII, rather than embrace these ardent anti-fascists as a strategic advantage, discriminated against them, citing their history fighting in Spain as valid evidence of their subversive political ideology, and preventing them from seeing the front lines.

The tragic story of the Abraham Lincoln Brigade serves as a clear example of the type of revisionism undertaken to rewrite American history and portray the nation more favorably. To support Franco in America during the Spanish Civil War was akin to treason in the eyes of the public and the FBI. By the end of WWII, however, both the state and the public rebranded Franco as a benevolent, paternalistic leader, and campaigned to differentiate his kind of fascism from that of Hitler and Mussolini. Spain became strategically important in the Cold War, so America suddenly had no qualms about sending billions of dollars in aid their way, propping up a brutal and unfree dictator in the middle of the “free world” they purported December 2019 THE VOLUNTEER 17

to be protecting. My essay explores this dramatic shift in state and public opinion of fascism through analysis of the Brigade members, who experienced the changes first-hand.

Pre-collegiate Award Jason Huang During the Spanish Civil War, approximately 3,000 Americans served in the Abraham Lincoln Brigade, the International Brigade composed primarily of volunteers from the United States. Of these 3,000 Americans were 90 African Americans from a variety of different backgrounds who heeded the international call for arms and fought for the rights and freedom of people in another country, when their own rights were little more than a promise.

The structure of the International Brigades was unique because of the leftist ideology of the vast majority of volunteers. While most conventional militaries, including that of the reformed post-revolutionary Soviet Red Army, was centralized, the International Brigades were instead democratized. This would lead to African American soldiers being elected by their comrades into leadership positions within the brigade, most notably Oliver Law,

Spanish banners denouncing the “disappeared.”

18 THE VOLUNTEER December 2019

who became commander over the entire Abraham Lincoln battalion and thus the first black commander of a mixed-race US military unit. This was a huge difference from the US army that many of them would return to when continuing their fight against the fascists in World War II. In contrast, the US army would remain segregated until 1948.

battle against fascists raged in Europe.

Across Spain, leftists of many persuasions, from moderate democrats to communists to anarchists, fought against General Franco’s rebels. Thousands of men and women traveled from around the world to fight fascism, and many of these volunteers often left countries which were themselves internally divided. Though the United States was officially neutral in the SpanMy work on the actions of African Ameri- ish Civil War, the country contained both can volunteers in the Abraham Lincoln vocal leftist groups and prominent proBrigade explores their backgrounds and Francoists. This paper discusses the role of reasons for joining such a distant war, as religion, in determining or deepening the well as how the communist ideals of the political persuasions of Americans during brigade helped shatter class and racial the Spanish Civil War. In particular, it borders well before the brief integration of examines clashes between the frequently African American units during the Battle left-wing, communist-affiliated Jewish of the Bulge. Many African American community, and the anti-interventionist veterans of the Abraham Lincoln Brigade and pro-Franco Irish Catholic enclaves. would continue to lead the fight against The religious press contributed to the segregation and oppression back in the insular natures of both these communiUnited States. ties, and often circulated misinformation and promoted more radical politics. This Briann Siener paper also discusses the occasional leftist “Beans and Bombs” tells the story of Madissenters in the Catholic community, and ria, a young girl growing up in a farming the political variability of American Protestown outside of Guernica during the Span- tants. Ultimately, this paper found that the ish Civil War. The story explores Maria’s influence of religious views as well as ideogrowth as she learns about the dire state of logical sympathies complicated American her country and the pain of loss. attitudes during the Spanish Civil War. Kate Harty and Alice Tecoztky In the years before World War II, another

Gabriel Jackson at Oberlin College in 2010. Photo S. Faber.

Gabriel Jackson (1921-2019)

By Sebastiaan Faber

“S

e nos ha ido Gabriel Jackson”—“Gabriel Jackson Has Left Us.” The 2010 headline in La Vanguardia, Catalonia’s newspaper of record, almost looked like an obituary. It wasn’t: the author, Francesc de Carreras, lamented that Jackson, one of the world’s most prominent historians of twentieth-century Spain, had decided to move back to the United States. After spending 26 years in Barcelona, Jackson wanted to be closer to his family in Oregon.

“It’s impossible,” the article said, “to imagine someone more down-to-earth—someone kinder, more educated, discreet, tolerant, austere, always ready to lend a hand to the weak, incapable of flattering those in power.”

It was in Oregon that Gabe Jackson, who served for many years on ALBA’s Board and Honorary Board of Governors, passed away this November 3, at the age of 98. His last published book, which came out in Spanish in 2008 and in English two years later, was a biography of Juan Negrín, the much-maligned Prime Minister of the Spanish Republic during the last years of the Civil War. Jackson strongly defended Negrín’s controversial decision to not surrender to the rebels led by Francisco Franco. “Negrín’s policy of resistance and constant diplomatic effort was the right one,” Jackson said in an interview with The Volunteer in 2010, adding: “I am also convinced that if England and France had supported the

Republic and stood up to Hitler, history would have taken a different course. … If the democratic countries had aided the Republic so that Franco would not have had the complete victory that he did, we need not have had a Second World War, or it would not have occurred in the terribly disastrous fashion that it did.”

Jackson was born into a Jewish family in Mount Vernon, New York, on March 10, 1921. At an early age he was drawn to music, which would become a lifelong passion. A semiprofessional flautist, he also wrote a novelized biography of Mozart. His interest in Spain was sparked by the Civil War, which broke out when Jackson was 15 years old. “I was an avid newspaper reader and quite politically conscious already,” he said in the same interview.

“I clearly remember the heated dinner table discussions on Spain between my father, who was a Socialist, and my Communist older brother.”

In the summer of 1942, after graduating from Harvard College, Jackson spent two months in Mexico on a fellowship. “Now of course Mexico City in 1942 was full of Spanish Republican exiles,” he recalled. “It was meeting and speaking with them that further opened my eyes to the history of Spain and Latin America.”

Together with two Princeton students, Jackson stayed at the home of an exiled Republican physician. In the apartment upstairs lived December 2019 THE VOLUNTEER 19

the widow of President Manuel Azaña, who had died in France in 1939. “She often came down to have coffee and cigarettes; we played dominos after lunch.”

After spending World War II as a cartographer in the Pacific, Jackson earned a Master’s degree at Stanford with a thesis on the educational program of the Second Spanish Republic. In 1950, he and his wife began their doctoral studies at the University of Toulouse in Southern France, resulting in a dissertation on the work of Joaquín Costa. Jackson also met many of the thousands of Spanish Republican refugees living in that city.

The fall of 1952 found the Jacksons reluctantly back in the States, where Jackson initially had trouble finding steady academic work.

His refusal to supply information about his classmates to the FBI had landed him on Roy Cohn’s list. After three years at Goddard College, five at Wellesley—where he became close friends with the exiled Spanish poet Jorge Guillén—and three at Knox College in Illinois, Jackson finally landed a tenure-track job at the University of California at San Diego, in 1965. Princeton had just published his The Spanish Republic and the Civil War.

had come out in 1961, it motivated the Spanish government to initiate a whole new line of research to defend the Francoist record in the war.” Among his later books are The Spanish Civil War (1967), The Making of Medieval Spain (1972), and Civilization & Barbarity in 20th Century Europe (1999), and Juan Negrin: Physiologist, Socialist, and Spanish Republican War Leader (2010).

As an historian, Jackson believed in intellectual rigor but rejected narrow notions of objectivity. In a subject like the Spanish Civil War, he said, “it’s impossible—and in fact not desirable—to try to conceal one’s emotions or political views. My idea of objectivity is that you don’t hide your emotions or pretend not to have them, but that you are honest and open about them from the outset. As an historian you have not only have to account for your sources, but also explain why you have the sympathies you have. The rest is up to the reader.”

Jackson began befriending veterans of the Lincoln Brigade in the 1940s. “They were a feisty bunch,” he said of the vets. “Although I never had an actual fight with Bill Susman, I was very much aware of his disappointment in a novel that I wrote, in which the hero is a Spanish Anarchist, an illegal immigrant from Mexico to the United States. My evident sympathy for a certain kind of truly idealistic Anarchist was not something that Susman appreciated.” Jackson was among the first to be invited to give the annual lecture created in Bill Susman’s honor.

Jackson’s book helped put twentieth-century Spanish history back on the academic map, earning him the 1966 Herbert Baxter Adams Prize of the American Historical Association. Its appearance did not go unnoticed in Spain, either. “I’ve been told it made a considerable scandal among regime circles—especially the appendix, which gave estimated numbers of victims of Nationalist repres- Sebastiaan Faber teaches at Oberlin College. This obituary draws sion,” he said. “Together with Herbert Southworth’s La cruzada de on a 2010 interview with Jackson published in The Volunteer.

Francisco Franco and Hugh Thomas’s The Spanish Civil War which

1948, three young activists rescued two Barbara Probst I nSpanish students from the Francoist labor camp at Cuelgamuros, outside of Madrid, Solomon where prisoners of war were building the

(1928-2019)

a law professor, who died at age 44, in 1967.

“Neither Barbara nor I had any true sense of what we were getting into,” Solomon later wrote about the 1948 rescue mission in her monument that would later become known memoir, Arriving Where We Started. “As for as the Valley of the Fallen. They were Paco danger or consequences, life was to be led like Benet, the brother of the Spanish novelist a book; in books good people lived dangerJuan Benet; Barbara Mailer, the sister of the ously.” Solomon would remain linked to novelist Norman Mailer; and Barbara Probst Spain for the rest of her life. Following the Solomon, a 20-year old New Yorker who rescue, she and Benet lived in Paris, from would go on to a distinguished writing career. where they published Península, a magazine She passed away in September. of the anti-Franco resistance. After Spain’s transition to democracy, Solomon became a Barbara Probst was born to a wealthy Upper regular contributor to El País, the country’s East Side family. Her father, J. Anthony newspaper of record.

Probst, was a lawyer and chairman of the Self-Winding Clock Company. Soon after Solomon’s books include two novels, The graduating from the Dalton School, she left Beat of Life (1960) and Smart Hearts in the for Europe, and didn’t go to college until City (1992); the memoir Short Flights; and years later, earning a BA in Spanish from Horse-Trading and Ecstasy (1989), a collection Columbia. She married Harold W. Solomon, of essays.

Barbara Probst Solomon in 1948 in Paris. Photo courtesy of the Solomon family.

20 THE VOLUNTEER December 2019

William Loren Katz

(1927-2019)

By Jesse W. Shipley

W

ith the passing of William Loren Katz, author of The Abraham Lincoln Brigade (1989), we have lost an important historian and educator. Katz helped reshape the way American history is taught, publishing over 40 books on African American, Native American, and progressive history and editing two major series totaling over 200 titles on anti-slavery resistance and African-American thought. His lifetime commitment to renarrating an inclusive American history and combating fascism and racism affirms the power of populist historiography. His work influenced generations of young scholars and artists and an array of major figures including Alice Walker, Henry Louis Gates, LL Cool J, Danny Glover, and Herb Boyd. He was in conversation with key thinkers such as Langston Hughes, John Hope Franklin, and Robin D.G. Kelley. He narrated stories of solidarity between AfricanAmerican and Indigenous peoples, anti-fascist alliances, slave rebellions and anti-slavery movements, and heroic black women, when voicing these tales was dangerous and even unpatriotic.

His ethical commitment to historical writing begins from a deep family legacy of addressing the silences— and correcting the power imbalances—in the story of America. Born in Brooklyn, New York in 1927, from a young age Katz recognized the importance of solidarity from the perspective of a progressive Jewish background. A member of the first graduating class at the progressive Elizabeth Irwin High School in Greenwich Village, he joined the progressive political and artistic scene that circulated through the school and the neighborhood, meeting figures like Paul Robeson, Harry Belafonte, Woody Guthrie, and Pete Seeger.

During World War II, Katz served in the Navy on a ship in the Pacific theater. He was appalled by how the Captain enforced segregation of black troops on board, and how some troops delighted in talking about lynchings back home and calling him a “dirty Jew.” During the Communist scares of the 1950s, Katz’s family was harassed by the FBI. He recalled two agents coming

to his father’s house, seeing African American history books and asking: “Mr. Katz—if you say you are not a Communist, why do you have so many books about Negroes?” Katz recalled trying to attend Paul Robeson’s benefit concert for the Civil Rights Congress in 1949—dubbed the Peekskill race riots—where Blacks and Jews were attacked as communists while police stood by and watched. He attended a vigil in Union Square for Julius and Ethel Rosenberg June 19, 1953, the night they were executed for espionage. For Katz, state-sponsored terror linking communism to Black life and Jewish existence pointed to the fascist global political climate shaping how American stories were told.

In his book Eyewitness (1967), inspired by his students at Woodlands High School, Katz describes his frustration and anger at the fact that American history was taught from a white supremacist perspective that erased the humanity of African and indigenous peoples. This elision inspired him to spend his life correcting this mistake.

His theoretical brilliance lies in that his books are accessible to children of all ages; they can be read out loud to school children or taught in universities.

In the late 1960s, The New York Times hired Katz to edit two groundbreaking series for Arno Press: “The American Negro: His History and Literature” and “Anti-Slavery Crusade in America.” There were over 200 books published under Katz’s leadership that brought key titles on African American history, narratives, and resistance to the public eye. Some were contemporary scholarly works; others were unseen or out-of-print texts by African-American authors from the 19th century onwards.

Much of his work tried to elevate stories of bravery and humanity that have been neglected by sanctioned accountings of American life. The Black West, originally published in 1973, tells the history of African American cowboys and why American history portrays the old west as white. In The Lincoln Brigade, written with the late Marc Crawford, a former member of the ALBA Board, Katz examines the legacy of Americans who volunteered to fight fascism in Spain in the 1930s.

Jesse Weaver Shipley is an artist, ethnographer, and teacher whose work focuses on the aesthetics of power. He is Professor of African and African American Studies and Oratory at Dartmouth College.

For a longer version of this obituary, see the online Volunteer at albavolunteer.org.

December 2019 THE VOLUNTEER 21

Ascensión Mendieta (1925-2019)

A

scensión Mendieta, whose father Timoteo, a labor activist from Guadalajara, was killed by the Franco regime shortly after the end of the Spanish Civil War, in November 1939, passed away on September 16. She was 93 years old.

In the last years of her life, Ms. Mendieta became a symbol of the quest for justice undertaken by the victims of Francoism.

As one of the most elderly plaintiffs in the so-called “Argentine lawsuit,” which appealed to universal jurisdiction to seek the persecution of Francoist officials responsible for torture and other crimes, Ms. Mendieta gave countless television interviews. She also features centrally in

the Goya-award-winning documentary The Silence of Others.

Ms. Mendieta’s case made history in 2013, when the Argentine judge in charge of her case, María Servini, ordered the exhumation of a mass grave believed to contain the remains of Mendieta’s father.

The exhumation task was taken on by the Association for the Recovery of Historical Memory (ARMH), winner of the 2015 ALBA/Puffin Award for Human Rights Activism. After several failed attempts, the ARMH was finally able to exhume Timoteo’s remains in 2017 and hand them over to the family for a reburial that became a global news event.

Herbert Freeman (1924-2019) Herbie (Herbert W.) Freeman, 95, died November 1, 2019 in Tucson, AZ, surrounded by family.

Herbie was born in Brooklyn, on October 28, 1924, to Samuel and Vishe (Feigenblatt) Freeman. His older brother, Jack, was killed while fighting in Spain with the International Brigades for the Spanish Republic when Herbie was only 14. Herbie remained a supporter of the Lincoln Vets and the Abraham Lincoln Brigade Archives (ALBA), joining in commemorative trips to Spain, the last time in 2006.

Herbie graduated from Boys’ High, but then left Brooklyn College to serve in the Pacific with the US Army Air Corps during World War II. After demobilization, Herbie married Irene Miller in 1946. They had three children: Joshua, Rebecca, and Amy. Irene died of cancer in 1980.

A linotype operator for many years, Herbie returned to school in his mid-30s, with 3 children and a full-time night-shift job, and graduated from NYCC at the top of his class with a degree in Graphic Arts. He continued his career as a printing production manager and color expert, well into his eighties.

22 THE VOLUNTEER December 2019

A lifelong New Yorker, Herbie was an activist, friend, and vibrant presence of the Upper West Side of Manhattan for over 50 years. He was a champion of workers’ rights and social justice. Even when disabled, he continued his activism in Tucson, participating in the Women’s March and protesting the lack of sane gun control.

He was a complex man who enjoyed a good debate, yet his intelligence, warmth, and charisma made him friends of all ages wherever he went.

In addition to his parents, brother, and wife, Herbie was predeceased by his grandson, Matthew. He is survived by his children, son-in-law Bill Bemis and daughter-in-law Pat Kelly, grandchildren Adam (Jessica) Freeman, Sonja Prins, and Andrew (Jenn) Bemis, great-grandchildren Harry and Sierra, and longtime companion Rita Delespara. Herbie’s family extended far beyond the biological, as he was an “adopted” father, grandfather, and brother to many.

In lieu of flowers, contributions may be made to the Abraham Lincoln Brigade Archives or the magazine Jewish Currents. A memorial service in NYC will be planned for spring or summer of 2020.

CONTRIBUTIONS RECEIVED FROM AUGUST 1- OCTOBER 31, 2019 Benefactor ($5,000 and above) The Puffin Foundation Ltd.

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Joseph & Esther Adler • Everett Aison in memory of Irving Fajans • Julia M. Allen • Robert Alpert in honor of Victor Strukl • Corisa Baley in memory of Barney Baley, Veteran of the ALB • Henry Barton • Frank Battaglia, PhD • Judith McCombs & Ernst Benjamin • Selma Benjamin • Timuel Black • Jorgia Bordofsky • Lucy Borodkin • Nancy Hall Brooks • Victor CallejoBrighton • Jules Chametzky • Sarah Connolly • S. Lenin DiDonato • Douglas Doepke • Freda Egnal • Bernard Feldstein• Lucian Ferster • William Fisher • Virginia Franco • Gene Friedlander • Sheila Goldmacher • Luke Gordon in memory of Louis Gordon • Paul Gottlieb • Julio Granda in memory of Luis & Maria Granda • Geraldine Grant • Michael Grossman in memory of Henry Grossman, VALB • David Horowitz • Bob Inget • Martha Olson Jarocki in honor of Leonard Olson • Frederick Johnson • Marvin Kabakoff • David Kannerstein in memory of Milton H. Kannerstein • Stephen Katz • Doris Katzen in memory of Herb Katzen • David Kern in memory of Saul Wellman • Nancy Kline Piore • William Knapp • Jim Kuhn • John Kyper • Heinz Lackner • Dr. Leonard & Eleanor Larks • Jeanne Lassen in memory of Perley B. Payne (ALB VET) & Diana Payne • Eric Lessinger in honor of parents in the CPUSA. • Marc Levin • Marlene Litwin • Fred Lonidier • Blas Ruiz Lorena Gonzalez • Larry Lorenz • David Lyons • June Malament in memory of Daniel Malament • Gene Marchi • Harold Martin • James Massarello • Vivian Mazur • Andrew W. McKibben • Molly McLaughlin • Lilia Melani • Dr. José-Manuel and Maryann B. Navarro • Estella Habal & Hilton Obenzinger • James & Barbara Pandaru in memory of Constantine Dargati • Phyllis Perna in memory of Clarence Kailin • Richard S. Pressman • Paul Preuss • Martha Pyle • Marilyn Ekdahl Ravicz in honor of Fredericka Martin • Fariborz Rezakhanlou • Thomas Roe • Bill Roller in memory of Milton Wolff • Suzanne & Alan Jay Rom in memory of Samuel S. Schiff & Isabelle P. Schiff • Constancia Romilly in memory of Esmond Romilly • Judith Rosenbaum in honor of all the Lincoln Vets • Naomi Rosenblum • Jean Ross in memory of Hannah & Isadore Blumberg • Susan P. Saiz • Judith and Jay Schaffner in memory of Felix Kusman • Earl Scheelar • Arnold Schlanger • Ellen Schwartz • Tony Scully • Douglas & Karen Seidman in memory of Elkan Wendkos • Leni Siegel in memory of Joseph Isaac Siegel • Lewis Siegelbaum • Melvin Small • Elsie Solecki in honor of Stephen Zielinski • Kurt & Martha Sonneborn • Rita Spiller • Michele St. Martin • Kate A. Stolpman • Alan Thomas • Roselva Ungar in memory of Nuri Anwar Rufail • Gloria Waldman in memory of Helen & Harry Feiman • Margaret Weitzmann • Robert H. & Lois Whealey in memory of Herbert Southworth • Rosalind Wholden Thomas • Norman Williams • Thomas Wineholt • Nat Yalowitz in honor of Milton Yale December 2019 THE VOLUNTEER 23

FOR THOSE WHO CAME AFTER: SONGS OF RESISTANCE FROM THE SPANISH CIVIL WAR A new interpretation of ten iconic songs from the Spanish Civil War

Recorded live at the Japan Society in 2016 commemorating the 80th anniversary of the war, the album features a fragment of an interview with Abe Osheroff and the voice of Delmer Berg, with liner notes by Adam Hochschild.

Now available at info@alba-valb.org $20 (for domestic orders. Price includes shipping & handling.) All proceeds from the record are being generously donated to ALBA.

Make Anti-Fascism Part of Your Legacy!

What you leave to friends and loved ones—and the causes you champion—are ways of expressing your hopes and dreams for the future. As you make your plans, please consider joining the Jarama Society by including ALBA in your will or living trust, or naming us as a beneficiary of your estate. ALBA accepts legacy gifts in any amount. Help us to continue and expand our educational mission of teaching future generations about the sacrifices made by the Lincoln Brigade in their fight against the global threat of fascism. Your gift to ALBA will help ensure that today’s young people learn about the experiences of volunteers in Spain, as well as their broader dedication to social justice at home.

If you have questions or would like to discuss your options, please contact ALBA’s Executive Director Mark Wallem at 212 674 5398 or mwallem@alba-valb.org.