The Volunteer 36.2 (June 2019)

Vol. XXXVI, No.2

June 2019

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

Defending Migrant Rights Did the Spanish Civil War Last 17 Years? p9 Dreaming in the Archives p11 Neus Català (1915-2019) p18

The Central-American Caravan, 2018.

Courtesy of Skylight from their upcoming film Borderlands.

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.

More than 50 New York City high school students, together with their history teachers, attended our annual event on May 5. It’s been a while since we had so many young faces in the audience. Along with some 150 other attendees, they saw the Immigration Justice Campaign receive the ALBA/Puffin Award for Human Rights Activism. They also heard the poet José Olivarez perform from his award-winning collection Citizen Illegal and sang along with Miriam Elhajli’s stirring rendition of songs like Woody Guthrie’s “Deportee,” “Peat Bog Soldiers,” and “Viva la XV Brigada.”

“The event was great!” one of the students told us. “I would definitely recommend it to my peers.” “It was great to learn the history of ALBA and how their work is relevant to what is happening today,” another one wrote. “It was an insightful experience for me to have while I write my history paper on the Spanish Civil War.” “It was really powerful to know that the songs we were hearing came directly from the battlefields of the Spanish Civil War,” a third student said.

Among ALBA’s goals is to continue to reach out to new constituencies. This effort is at the core of the workshops we organize for teachers throughout the United States. This work, along with the ALBA/Puffin Award, seeks to honor the activist and internationalist legacy of the Lincoln Brigade. Of course, the world has changed over the past 80 years, and so have the tools and tactics of activism. Yet many of the principles stay the same: activism is about raising awareness, getting people mobilized, putting bodies in public spaces. And about fighting the good fight.

Young people all over the United States have been doing this, again, in recent years. They have marched and organized for social and racial justice, against police oppression, against sexual violence, and for gun control. These young people are looking for models. They are interested in the past. They really, genuinely are. And this is where ALBA’s work comes in.

We have our work cut out for us. Anyone who follows the news these days knows that we need all hands on deck.

Words matter. Intentions matter. Actions matter. As individuals and as part of a progressive community, we have the power to change our world. In fact, it is our moral obligation to try to do so. Thank you for joining us in this struggle. ¡Salud!

Peter N. Carroll & Sebastiaan Faber | Editors P.S. Please remember to make a monetary contribution to support ALBA’s educational mission!

We are thrilled to announce that ALBA has hired a new executive director. Mark Wallem is an accomplished human rights lawyer who comes to ALBA with more than 20 years of experience in international non-profit management and fundraising. Hailing from Minnesota, Mark holds a BA in Political Science and a JD. He has been driven by a strong commitment to social and economic justice for as long as he can remember.

You can reach him at mwallem@alba-valb.org or (212) 674-5398.

IN THIS ISSUE p 3 Immigration Justice Wins Award p 5 The 2019 Event in Pictures p 7 Human Rights Column from the Border p 9 The Spanish Civil War: A Reinterpretation p 11 Dreaming Wide Awake in the Archives p 14 Alvah Bessie p 16 Iraqi Volunteers in Spain p 18 Neus Català p 19 Geoffrey Servante p 20 Sanctuary (Poem) p 22 Book Review

To the Editors: I was privileged to attend the ALBA event at the Museum of the City of New York with a friend whose cousin died fighting with the Abraham Lincoln Brigade. It was a moving experience.

ALB volunteers and their stateside supporters were driven by a passion for a better world. They were grounded in an understanding of the structural oppressions of the existing order and the need to confront fascism with an alternate vision of class equality and anti-racism. They understood that the first enemy of fascism is the left, and that an unapologetic left is the only force capable of defeating it.

So I had expected a bold and defiant celebration that reflected and honored the political values of those brave antifascist volunteers. What I witnessed was a depoliticized NGO that stayed well within the “responsible” mainstream. The apolitical “human rights” discourse that I heard has become common as an all-purpose rationale for any initiative that leaves the status quo intact—it politely sidesteps a principled frontal attack on oppression, exploitation and racism—the political forms of capitalism that give rise to fascism. continued on p. 4

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IMMIGRATION JUSTICE CAMPAIGN RECEIVES ALBA/PUFFIN AWARD ALBA Draws Younger Audience Than Ever

Among the audience this year were more than 50 New York City high school students whose teachers are alumni of ALBA’s professional-development workshops.

Karen Siliciano Lucas with Neal Rosenstein, Kate Doyle, and Sebastiaan Faber. Photo Alejandro Fernández Carrasco

O

paign, recipient of the ninth ALBA/Puffin Award for Human Rights Activism, mobilizes more than 9,000 volunteers to provide these immigrants with much-needed legal assistance.

The focus of our gathering was the plight of the hundreds of thousands of immigrants who are increasingly subject to cruel treatment by the US justice system. The Immigration Justice Cam-

“The Trump administration has authorized a dramatic increase in efforts to detain and deport immigrants,” Karen Siciliano Lucas, the director of the Justice Campaign, told Juan Carlos Ruiz, of the Good Shepherd Lutheran Church in Bay Ridge, Brooklyn, in a conversation about the challenges that immigrants face. “With a lawyer, an immigrant is ten times more likely to prevail in their case. And yet, only 14 percent of detained immigrants have an attorney by their side in immigration court.”

May 5, two days after what would have been Pete Seeger’s one hundredth birthday, more than 200 people gathered in the same auditorium of the Museum of the City of New York where, nine years earlier, Seeger joined Patti Smith and Guy Davis for a benefit concert for ALBA. Among the audience this year were more than 50 New York City high school students whose teachers are alumni of ALBA’s professional-development workshops. n

June 2019 THE VOLUNTEER 3

“When Puffin’s President, Perry Rosenstein, first suggested the idea of a Human’s Rights Prize to be presented by ALBA our thoughts were drawn abroad,” Neal Rosenstein, Vice-President of the Puffin Foundation, said. “But we cannot and must not ignore current events and our country’s own crimes and misdeeds. From our policy of placing children in cages to violating the rights of immigrants and refugees, we knew that this year the prize truly needed to focus on a group working here on our own Southern border.”

The audience saw a brief clip by filmmakers Paco de Onís and Pamela Yates of Skylight Pictures, who in 2018 and 2019 filmed the Central American exodus, the Caravan, as part of their new documentary Borderlands. Earlier in the program, Chicagoborn poet José Olivárez performed a stirring reading from his bestselling debut collection, Citizen Illegal, which was a finalist for the PEN/Jean Stein Award and a winner of the 2018 Chicago Review of Books Poetry Prize. He opened with “Mexican American Disambiguation”: my parents are Mexican who are not to be confused with Mexican Americans or Chicanos. i am a Chicano from Chicago which means i am a Mexican American with a fancy college degree & a few tattoos.

Very much in Pete Seeger’s spirit, the evening’s music was provided by Miriam Elhajli-Rodríguez, a Venezuelan-MoroccanAmerican composer and vocalist whose work is influenced by the folk traditions of South and North America. In two sets, she roused the crowd with songs ranging from Woody Guthrie’s “Deportee” to classics like “Viva la XV Brigada.”

Among the special guests attending were Perry and Gladys Rosenstein; Berlin-based journalist Victor Grossmann, who (from page #2) For the past 20 years, through administrations both Republican and Democratic, the United States has been building the machinery for the savage white ethnostate now emerging. The three million deportations under Obama were politely hidden; now cruelty is openly celebrated. The army has been asked to prepare camps for hundreds of thousands of human beings. Is an appropriate response to this crisis the deployment of volunteer lawyers and social workers? The head of the organization you honored thinks that what we need is more “discussion” so we “understand each other better.” 5,000 lives have been lost in the deserts on the border since 2010 - would better understanding have prevented this crime? The Abraham Lincoln volunteers knew better than that—they knew that humanity requires us to pick a side and put our bodies on the line to resist savagery.

Outcomes in New York City now show that even with counsel, fully fifty percent of asylum applicants will lose their cases and face deportation.

These migrants may well have been facing starvation, but economic violence does not entitle them to asylum. Why should we uncritically accept the narrative of the worthy asylum-seeker? Our vision should be a world where borders are as open for the free movement of human beings as they are for the free movement of capital.

Lawyers and social workers are the apolitical bourgeois “human rights” faux-solution to every problem—they make us feel good while leaving a violent system intact. Why not honor an activist group like No More

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brought a message of support from ALBA’s German sister organization; and Dr. Mona Hanna-Attisha, a pediatrician, professor, and public health advocate whose research exposed the water crisis in Flint Michigan. Dr. Hanna-Attisha, who was joined by her father and daughter, comes from a distinguished line of activists; her great uncle, Nuri “Anwar” Roufael Kotani, was one of two volunteers from Iraq to join the International Brigades (see p. 16).

This year’s event was endorsed by an Honorary Committee that included, in addition to Dr. Hanna-Attisha, Goya- and Oscarwinning filmmakers Alfonso Cuarón, Almudena Carracedo, and Robert Bahar; Bryan Stevenson of the Equal Justice Initiative; prize-winning authors Adam Hochschild and Sonia Nazario; Judge Manuela Carmena, mayor of Madrid; and New York City Councilor Carlos Menchaca.

The ALBA/Puffin Award for Human Rights Activism, an annual $100,000 prize, is an initiative to sustain the legacy of the experiences, aspirations, and idealism of the Abraham Lincoln Brigade by supporting contemporary international activists and human rights causes. Philanthropist and visionary Perry Rosenstein, President of the Puffin Foundation, created and established an endowed fund for this human rights award in 2010. Previous awardees include investigative journalists Lydia Cacho and Jeremy Scahill; Judge Baltasar Garzón; Kate Doyle and Fredy Peccerelli, for their work exposing human rights violations in Guatemala; United We Dream, a national network of youth-led immigrant activist organizations that fight for the rights of millions of undocumented immigrants in the United States; public-interest lawyer Bryan Stevenson; Proactiva Open Arms, dedicated to rescuing migrants in the Mediterranean; and the Coalition of Immokalee Workers, a worker-based labor and human rights organization founded in Florida in 1993.

Deaths, whose members are going to jail for saving lives in the Arizona deserts—all lives. There are myriad other organizations where immigrants themselves are asserting their agency and refusing the status of passive victims. Your remarks acknowledged the fascist threat worldwide - but the organization that bears the name of antifascist fighters now chooses to sit this one out—and remain balanced, moderate, not too strident or controversial. However, history has taught us that you do not fight fascism from the safety of the center.

In 1939 Germany, with the storm clouds gathering, Max Horkheimer said “whoever is not prepared to talk about capitalism should also remain silent about fascism.” We can redeem the sacrifice of those young men murdered in Spain if we are courageous in our truth-telling today.

In solidarity, Beth Oram (New York City) This thoughtful critique of the ALBA/Puffin Award for Human Rights Activism merits further consideration about the role of education in ameliorating injustice. No doubt there are various activist groups that deserve support for challenging the abuse of migrant people but in the face of the massive detention of refugees and asylum seekers, the Immigration Justice Campaign offers, as best they can, immediate assistance to desperate people.

—The Editors

Clockwise from the top: Miriam Elhajli-Rodríguez; New York City high school students; Karen Siciliano Lucas and Rev. Juan Carlos Ruiz; Neal Rosenstein; Dr. Mona Hanna-Attisha and family with ALBA ED Mark Wallem. Photos by Alejandro Fernández Carrasco, Pako Domínguez, and Jeannette Ferrary.

The 2019 Event in Pictures With Student Reactions

“I really enjoyed the poetry and music.”

“I would recommend that our history teacher encourage future students in the AT European History class to attend this event. It was an insightful experience for me to have while I write my history paper on the Spanish Civil War.”

“I greatly enjoyed listening to some of José Olivarez’s work. I thought it was interesting how much of what he spoke about was paralleled by the events which occurred during the Spanish Civil War.” June 2019 THE VOLUNTEER 5

Clockwise from the top: New York City high school students; ALBA’s María Hernández-Ojeda (r) with friends; Kate Doyle, Peter Miller, and Neal Rosenstein; audience singing the Internationale; Karen Siciliano Lucas with the Immigration Justice team; filmmakers Paco de Onís and Pamela Yates.

Photos by Alejandro Fernández Carrasco, Pako Domínguez, and Jeannette Ferrary.

“It was really powerful to know that the songs we were hearing came directly from the battlefields of the Spanish Civil War.”

“This event was extremely enjoyable and interesting I will definitely recommend it next year.”

“I really enjoyed the gentleman’s poems.

I definitely plan on buying his book.

His performance really resonated with me because my parents are both first generation citizens.”

“I thought the music was incredible and was a real piece of living history which was really special to experience.

Because everyone was singing and participating made it very impactful” 6 THE VOLUNTEER June 2019

For a full slide show and video of the New York event, see the online edition at albavolunteer.org

Human Rights Column

REFLECTIONS FROM THE BORDER Advocating for Migrant Children’s Rights

By Marissa Gutierrez-Vicario

What prompted the migrant caravan of 2018? A first-hand account from Honduras and Tijuana. “The inhumane conditions that asylum-seekers are forced to endure are a matter of basic human rights and dignity.”

A

Border wall at Tijuana, 2014. Marcela Barroso. CC-BY-SA-4.0

about the migrant caravan approaching the Mexico-US border began to emerge in the media last fall, I traveled to two epicenters of the immigration story to get a first-hand look at what prompted the crisis. As a Program Leader with the Unitarian Universalist College of Social Justice, I visited Honduras in December 2018 to examine the root causes of migration. In northern Honduras, women leaders who were members of Foro de Mujeres por la Vida (Women’s Forum for Life), a coalition of feminist groups engaged in several justice struggles, described in detail various human rights violations as the reason many Honduras have left their homes for safety. The following month, January 2019, I visited Tijuana, on the U.S.-Mexico border, to bear witness to human rights violations that were occurring and continue to occur there. s stories

As a human rights educator, I work with young people of color who are frequently denied access to art education in New York City. In my time at the border, I worked with several different organizations, including Enclave Caracol, Al Otro Lado, World Central Kitchen, and New Sanctuary Coalition. I met many unpaid volunteers who have committed countless hours supporting asylum-seekers and migrants. The reality at the border, especially for children, continues to change each day, but the efforts of activists and humanitarian workers also continues.

In Tijuana I saw, heard, and experienced many different stories from many different people: • Stories of kidnapping and of deportation from people of all ages and from all backgrounds; • The tortuous holding cells, la hieleras (“freezers”) that immigrants, including children, are kept in when taken into custody by the United States Customs and Border Protection (CBP); • The kindness of volunteers who worked tirelessly in preparation of 3,000 daily meals in a temporary shelter / camp for immigrants and asylum seekers; • The temporary shelters where whole families, including mothers and their infant children, lived in an abandoned nightclub in the outskirts of the city; • The exhaustion of legal volunteers, both temporary and longterm, providing asylum seekers with their very limited options and helping them to better understand their rights; • Activists who placed their bodies on the line, camping out in the shelters with immigrants to help delay the evictions of asylumseekers;

June 2019 THE VOLUNTEER 7

• Stories of families tear-gassed in middle of the night; • A tear-jerking wedding of two migrants on a rooftop; • Children of asylum-seekers who were so excited to see new faces to play with, as they waited for their parents.

Many of the issues are complex. Yet some elements are not complex at all. These include the inhumane conditions that asylum-seekers are forced to endure once in CBP custody. Addressing these are a matter of basic human rights and dignity that cannot be overlooked.

This November, the United Nations will celebrate the 30th anniversary of the Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC), a “legallybinding international agreement setting out the civil, political, economic social and cultural rights of every child [individuals up to the age of 18], regardless of their race, religion or abilities.” The United States remains the only country in the world that has not yet ratified this treaty.

Despite the rights guaranteed for children under the CRC, the United States continues to place children in detention. In March 2019, almost 40,000 children will come into the custody of the CPB. Unaccompanied children are placed in particularly precarious situations.

I heard stories of teenagers seeking asylum who were frequently turned away from overcrowded shelters. Social workers, volunteers, and others providing assistance to migrant communities are warned not to transfer unaccompanied minors, as that places them at risk of being charged with kidnapping. Other children in CBP custody are frequently transferred from shelter to shelter until the age of 18. At 18, everything changes. In many cases, these young people are locked up in adult detention facilities, despite the protests of immigrant rights activists.

Migrant children in detention facilities within the United States must receive free public education as guaranteed under federal law. Yet the education that migrant children receive is inadequate and does not accommodate children with special needs. In the heavily regimented environment, children also fear that they will be deported back to their home countries, where many have fled because of violence and other dangerous circumstances. The detainment of children and the trauma that they have experienced, along with the disruption to their education, will have effects for the rest of their lives. In an exhibition in El Paso, artwork was showcased by several children who were detained in the now-closed detainment camp in Tornillo, Texas, reminding us of the trauma, desperation, and devastation they experienced in the detention facilities and their journeys crossing the border.

Despite these massive human rights abuses of children and their families, I believe that there are several ways that individuals can continue to take action.

First, education is critical. Organizations like Human Rights Educators USA (HRE USA), Teaching Tolerance and other networks and organizations of human-rights practitioners continue to mobilize groups of educators who seek to create safe learning spaces for undocumented students and provide resources for educators to teach their students about the situation at the border.

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Second, members of the immigrant rights community continue to advocate for language that does not dehumanize immigrants and asylum-seekers. As long as migrant children and their families are described as “illegal” and “alien,” they will be continued to be dehumanized and deemed unworthy of rights.

Third, we must continue to support the grassroots organizations that are doing work with and for immigrant and migrant communities. Organizations that I visited in Tijuana, such as Al Otro Lado, work tirelessly to support asylum-seekers. So do organizations like the New Sanctuary Coalition in New York City, which organizes accompaniments for people “facing deportation to their immigration hearings” and check-ins with Immigration and Customs Enforcement. They are deserving of donations, future volunteers, and other assistance as they support the migrant communities they serve.

Lastly, coupled with the help of grassroots organizations on the ground, we must continue to hold the United States and the larger international community accountable. Recently, on behalf of HRE USA, I attended a meeting with the Office of the High Commission on Human Rights organized by the United States Human Rights Network (USHRN), where members delivered over 80,000 signatures calling for a United Nations investigation of human rights violations against migrants and asylum-seekers at the Mexico-US border. This was a powerful, symbolic act. But signatures are not enough. People must continue to understand and take action on what is happening at the border. For instance, until mid-May, the United States Commission on Civil Rights is collecting Public Comments on Immigration Detention Centers & Treatment of Immigrants here.

I continue this work within my own community in New York City.

While I was at the border for a very brief period, my time there was a reminder not to become desensitized to the violations of human rights and not to forget the children who face an uncertain future.

Months later, I find myself thinking about the child I played with for hours, who jokingly stuffed toy cars in his shirt and never ceased to make the same jokes with me while I played with him. I think about his mother in search of diapers for his baby brother and clothes to help keep her children warm through the cold, Tijuana nights. I wonder if he will receive the same dignity and rights that others have been afforded, just on the other side of the border.

Marissa Gutierrez-Vicario is the Executive Director of Art and Resistance Through Education (ARTE), a non-profit organization which works to amplify the voices of young people for human rights change through the visual arts. She also serves as the Co-Chair of Human Rights Educators USA, a growing network of human rights practitioners dedicated to building a culture of human rights across the United States, and is an Adjunct Lecturer in Art Education at the City College of New York.

The Spanish Civil War (1936-1952): A Reinterpretation

By Jorge Marco

The notion that the Spanish Civil War ended on April 1, 1939 is a convention that is as taken for granted—in textbooks, scholarship and the media—as, say, the date of Franco’s death, November 20, 1975. Yet the death of Franco is a fact, while the establishment of the end of the war in 1939 is an interpretation. And like any interpretation, it is subject to debate.

M

y argument in what follows is simple: the Spanish civil war did not end in 1939, but in 1952. It was a civil war, therefore, that lasted 17 years instead of the three conventionally assumed.

To be sure, this 17-year-long civil war was not homogeneous in military terms. It varied over the years, and so did the repertoires of violence employed. In fact, the military dimension of the Spanish Civil War can be divided into three distinct phases: (1) A non-conventional symmetrical civil war; (2) a conventional civil war; and (3) an irregular civil war. (I take these three concepts from Stathis N. Kalyvas, who has analyzed the different military devices in the context of civil wars.)

This first phase, of unconventional symmetrical civil war, emerged from the failure of the coup d’état until November 1936, although there was a period of transition that lasted until February 1937.

As several historians have pointed out, this period saw a primitive form of column warfare that confronted small infantry units lacking heavy weaponry. This situation began to vary from November 1936 on, thanks to the role of foreign military advisors, the gradual organization under a single command in both armies, and the massive shipment of heavy weaponry from Germany, Italy and the Soviet Union.

of 1937 the conflict had evolved into a conventional civil war. From then until April 1939, the war was fought by two regular armies that faced each other on the battlefield using the power of modern artillery by land, sea, and air. The defeat of the republican regular army in April 1939, however, did not imply the end of the internal armed conflict. Rather, it spurred a second military transformation of the war.

These changes led to a slow military transformation of the war. From an unconventional symmetrical war, by the spring

From April 1, 1939, Franco’s dictatorship had to face a much weaker enemy, less numerous and completely isolated, but

A company of the XXXV Brigade of the Unión Nacional Española, a Spanish guerrilla army formed in France in 1942.

at the same time quite elusive: the antiFranco guerrillas. Small armed groups, active mostly in mountainous areas, tried first to defend themselves against the wave of violence deployed by the dictatorship after the end of the conventional war. By 1944, however, in the heat of the Allied victories in the context of World War II, they tried to organize themselves as an irregular army in an attempt to overthrow the dictatorship.

The irregular war between the Francoist state and the anti-Francoist guerrillas June 2019 THE VOLUNTEER 9

generated a logic of violence of its own, within the framework of the political purges initiated by the rebels in July 1936.

Thus, in the 1940s Franco’s dictatorship deployed two parallel logics of violence that in some ways operated like communicating vessels but were nevertheless quite distinct. They were directed against the same internal enemy: those who in political and class terms had dared to challenge the traditional order.

The defeat of the republican regular army in April 1939 spurred a second military transformation of the war.

After the defeat of the Republican regular army, the dictatorship applied an extensive punitive program. The defeated civilians and soldiers alike had to atone for the actions they had committed in the past.

Most of them were classified by the dictatorship as “redeemable” and subjected to an intense program of isolation, punishment, and forced conversion. On the other hand, thousands of Republicans were classified as irredeemable and execut-

ed by military courts. This punitive logic was designed to permanently subjugate the enemy. It was the sheer magnitude of this repressive process that, in the 1940s, compelled a small but significant number of its targets to rebel.

of psychological warfare, designed tactics to attract the guerrilla fighters, infiltrated the main armed and political sectors of the anti-Franco opposition, and resorted to the systematic use of torture as a method of extracting information.

The armed challenge of the guerrilla groups unleashed an irregular civil war and with it, a logic of violence conceived as counterinsurgency. The organization of armed groups against the dictatorship threatened stabilization of the regime. The guerrilla was also the ultimate example that the country’s internal enemy had not yet been completely exterminated. For that reason, the dictatorship combined different repressive instruments, including military courts and the prison system.

Still, the logic of counterinsurgency fundamentally imposed a broad repertoire of brutal practices and massacres against civilians and combatants alike.

The irregular civil war, with its logic of counterinsurgency, continued until 1952, when the last guerrilla groups linked to the Spanish Communist Party were demobilized.

Many of the methods used were similar to those used during the first stage of the civil war—including such practices as the public exposure of corpses. But novel practices were introduced as well. Particularly noteworthy among these was the development of intelligence services, which created extensive networks of confidants, directed paramilitary groups specialized in the dirty warfare, implemented methods

Given all this, it is time we question the notion of the Spanish “post-war” period. Spain in the 1940s is closer to the irregular wars in Poland (1942-1948), Greece (1946-1949), the Baltic countries (1944-1953), the Ukraine (1944-1953) and Romania (1944-1962) than to any of the countries of post-war Western Europe after World War II.

It is time to rethink to deconstruct the narrative that the dictatorship helped solidify and that has been dominant for more than 80 years.

It is time, in other words, to rethink the periodization of the Spanish Civil War and to deconstruct the narrative that the dictatorship helped solidify and that has been dominant for more than 80 years.

The Spanish Civil War did not end in the year 1939. It lasted 17 years.

Jorge Marco teaches Spanish Politics, History & Society at the University of Bath (UK).

A longer version of this text will appear soon as “Rethinking the Post-War Period in Spain: Violence and Irregular Civil War, 1939-1952” in the Journal of Contemporary History. A Spanish version of this text was published in The Conversation on May 9, 2019. English version by Sebastiaan Faber.

Republican prisoners of the XXIII Brigade in the concentration camp at Villalba, Tarragona, August 23, 1938. Biblioteca Digital Hispánica. BNE, CC BY-NC-SA

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Dreaming Wide Awake in the Archives

By James D. Fernández

The ALBA collection at NYU’s Tamiment Library is an extraordinary trove of documents, images, and artifacts chronicling the lives of the almost 3,000 American men and women who joined the Spanish Civil War. Its collection represents about ten percent of these volunteers—a respectable sampling. But is it representative?

Making private memoranda of our thoughts from time to time, so far from necessarily proving a help to the accuracy of the memory may, if especial care be not taken to guard against the danger, tend even to mislead the memory; because it may occasion our forgetting more completely whatever we do not enter in the book...Hence, there is the danger of our remembrance becoming not like a book partially defaced and torn, in which we perceive what deficiencies are to be accounted for, but more like a transcript from a decayed MS, which the ancient copyists, by trade used to make: writing straight on all they could make out and omitting the rest without any marks of omission, for fear of spoiling the look of their copy.

—Richard Whately (1866)

“T

he Abraham Lincoln Brigade Archives—ALBA— housed at NYU’s Tamiment Library, is the most important collection of documents, images and artifacts in the world chronicling the lives of the almost 3,000 American men and women who, between 1936 and 1939, volunteered to join the fight against fascism in Spain.” Over the last twenty years, I’ve probably repeated that sentence dozens of times, in articles, blog posts, talks, grant applications, classrooms, workshops and even in a documentary short.

This extraordinary collection of primary sources about an extraordinary group of people has occupied a prominent place in my research, teaching and everyday life since I arrived at NYU. The archives came to Washington Square from Brandeis University in 2000. A handful of veterans had deposited their personal files there in the late 1970s, as they approached retirement age and found themselves with the time and the inclination to fret about the final resting place of their long and precarious paper trail, to worry about the fate of their legacy. They had good reason to be concerned.

It was in December of 1936—a full five years before Pearl Harbor—that the first contingent of American anti-fascist fighters

boarded a ship in New York’s Hudson docks, bound for Spain.

They were breaking US law by volunteering to help the Spanish Second Republic defend itself from the military coup that had been spearheaded by a group of right-wing generals, backed by Hitler and Mussolini. In the US at the time, non-intervention and appeasement underwrote the law of the land; passports were being stamped: “Not valid for travel to Spain.” The Communist Party took charge of the recruitment and travel logistics of the volunteers, and the Soviet Union was one of the only countries that intervened in the Spanish Civil War on behalf of the Republic. Some 40,000 volunteers from more than 50 countries would end up serving in the International Brigades before the Spanish war ended in the Spring of 1939, with the defeat of the Republic and a pro-Axis dictatorship firmly in place.

Many of the volunteers represented in the archive were remarkably self-conscious chroniclers of their own lives and times.

The fact that the volunteers of the Abraham Lincoln Brigade had bravely taken up the fight against Franco, Hitler and Mussolini as early as 1936 would bolster their image for many people in the years leading up to, and immediately following, US involvement in WWII. Robert Jordan, the rugged and sympathetic hero of Hemingway’s 1940 novel, F​ rom Whom the Bell Tolls​, was a fictionalized version of an American anti-fascist volunteer. As was Bogart’s gruff and beloved character in the legendary C ​ asablanca​(1942); in a key scene of the film, Renault reminds the “I-stick-myneck-out-for-nobody” Rick Blaine of his commitment to antifascism by recalling his altruistic service on the Loyalist side in Spain.

The fact that the volunteers had been recruited and organized by the communist party, and had fought in Spain alongside forces supported by the USSR, would tarnish their image for many people, especially as the anti-fascist imperatives of the Hot War gave way to the anti-communist fervor of the Cold War. To further complicate evolving popular perceptions of the Lincolns: after the defeat of the Axis, a fox-like Franco forswore his friendship with Adolf and Benito, retooled himself as an upstanding and indispensable ally in the struggle against communism, and—voila— soon welcomed Eisenhower—and American military bases—to Spain. Just a few more decades of Cold War revisionism would have to pass before another American president, Ronald Reagan, June 2019 THE VOLUNTEER 11

Photographs from the 15th IB Photo Collection at the Tamiment Library and Robert F. Wagner Labor Archives at New York University.

12 THE VOLUNTEER June 2019

could blithely declare—as he defended his covert support of antisandinista “contras” in Nicaragua—that the Lincolns had actually fought on the wrong side in the Spanish Civil War. “Setting the record straight” is often the driving force behind the creation of archives. Being suspected of having been on the wrong side of history would have been a major impetus for the constitution of ALBA in the late 1970s and early 80s. That’s when that original handful of veterans decided to bring together their personal papers into a collective archive, which would document their early lives, their reasons for going to Spain, their experiences while there, their post-war activities, and, in many cases, the harassment, persecution and misunderstanding they had to endure after returning from Spain.

the anti-fascist credentials of the United States and its “Greatest Generation” need to be put into perspective; or how a working class identity—which cuts across race, creed, ethnicity, gender and nationality—was a powerful motivating force for many in the United States just 80 years ago. The ALBA collections, in this regard, constitute an invaluable counter-archive, made up precisely of what often gets left out of the unspoiled copy of the book of US self-righteousness and exceptionalism.

At the same time, however, this archive—like all archives—poses significant challenges and risks. The apparent exhaustiveness of these compelling collections, together with our parching thirst, in this age of fake news, for the Real, can lead us to let our guard down, to take the part for the whole, to forget that every set of documents, no matter how vast, has its own history, its own agenda, its own unmarked omissions and silences. The 10% of volunteers most fully represented in the collection is a respectable—but not representative—sampling. Probably twice as many volunteers died in Spain—and except for the tributes, they were often rendered by those who returned, we can learn little in Tamiment about them and their thoughts about the war. Another 10% of the volunteers had Spanish last names, but, for a complex set of reasons yet to be sorted out, not a single collection of theirs survives in the ALBA collections. Hundreds of volunteers returned from Spain and chose to sideline or in some cases even hide their experience in Spain; most of their stories are, for now, lost to us. And those who were disillusioned or bitter about their time

“Setting the record straight” is often the driving force behind the creation of archives.

Hunter College students research the ALBA Collection at the Tamiment Library (NYU), April 2018. Photo María

Many of the volunteers represented in the archive were remarkably self-conscious chroniclers of their own lives and times; almost as if they were aware of controversies to come, they often kept detailed diaries, wrote thousands of letters, and collected, while in Spain, all manner of printed matter, photographs and ephemera, including not only Republican propaganda posters and handbills, but also things like cigarette packs, bar napkins, and even, in one case, the business card and photograph of a certain Madame Albita from Barcelona’s red light district. The immense and diverse collection has expanded exponentially over the years; its core is now made up of the personal archives of almost 300 veterans—roughly 10% of the total number of volunteers—and is supplemented by a still growing amount of related materials: books and pamphlets, photographs, postcards, FBI files, research notes for publications and films about the Lincolns, as well as the administrative records of the Veterans of the Abraham Lincoln Brigade, founded in 1937, when the first American wounded began returning from Spain.

Students who immerse themselves in the ALBA collection invariably come away with valuable lessons that have quietly been written out of the dominant, shared narratives about our past:

in Spain were, it stands to reason, disinclined to contribute their personal archives to the ALBA collections.

Students who hope to find in the archives the rock-solid ground of “what really happened” are almost always disappointed. As well they should be. And not only because there are “missing” documents, missing voices. “He told his mother he was going to Spain for one reason, and he told his girlfriend he was going for a different reason.” “In 1937 she says that she went to Spain for one reason, and in 1947, she says she went for another.”

The documents, more often than not, offer interpretations and interventions, that themselves need to be interpreted, intervened.

Not exhaustive, but exhausting; there’s no rest for the weary in the archive. More than access to a self-present and unmediated past, the archive allows us to glimpse a repertoire of some of the unrealized or aborted futures that haunted someone else’s present. And more than providing a repository of firm answers about the past, an archive like the ALBA collection, when engaged critically, while wide awake, allows us to dream up new questions about our own futures.

James D. Fernández is Professor of Spanish at NYU and a longtime contributor to The Volunteer. This essay originally appeared in the May 2019 issue of ESFERAS, the undergraduate student journal of NYU’s Department of Spanish and Portuguese.

How there were many people in the US who long before 1941 clearly understood the menace that fascism posed for the entire world, and were willing to do something drastic about it; or how June 2019 THE VOLUNTEER 13

Alvah Bessie’s “Men in Battle” published in Spain

By Xavier Montanyà Alvah Bessie’s 1939 memoir still reads like a compelling lesson in twentieth-century history —as does the rest of Bessie’s activist life.

A

s an historical document, Alvah Bessie’s Men in Battle, whose translation was recently published in Spain, is comparable to Joris Ivens’s documentary The Spanish Earth (narrated by Ernest Hemingway), and André Malraux’s novel L’Espoir (filmed as Sierra de Teruel). Yet there are important differences. For one thing, Bessie put his own life on the line. For another, he transmits truths (with a few minor exceptions), whether they are comfortable or not. And he writes journalism, not propaganda. These are three virtues that rarely combine in books about the Civil War written for the general public.

Alvah Bessie managed to publish Men in Battle thanks to the intervention of Ernest Hemingway, whom he had met in Spain during the war. “Take it! It will be the best book about the American brigadistas in Spain!” the future Nobel Prize winner told his editor at Charles Scribner’s Sons.

Men in Battle arrived at bookstores in September 1939, coinciding with the Nazi invasion of Poland. It got excellent reviews.

“It’s a true, honest, fine book. Bessie writes truly and finely of all that he could see … and he saw enough,” Hemingway wrote.

Today, the book still reads like a compelling lesson in twentieth-century history. The author transmits the reality of the war, the life and the death of the soldiers at the front, their feelings, the landscape—a world. Men in Battle reflects an experience that is both intimate and collective, framed through a sincere and realistic narrative of the war, as Bessie narrates the day-to-day of volunteers who fought and risked their lives with more commitment, imagination, and sacrifice than weapons, logistics, or organization.

Bessie, along with his companions, crosses the Pyrenees on foot, passes through Figueres 14 THE VOLUNTEER June 2019

Charged with contempt of Congress, nine of the Hollywood screenwriters give themselves up to U.S. Marshal in December 10, 1947. From right: Robert Adrian Scott, Edward Dmytryk, Samuel Ornitz, Lester Cole, Herbert Biberman, Albert Maltz, Alvah Bessie, John Howard Lawson and Ring Lardner Jr. Los Angeles Times photographic archive.

and Albacete, and participates in the battles of Gandesa and the Ebro under the orders of the legendary Milton Wolff. The narration reflects the attitude of a free man who comes to fight because he believes in a cause—focusing not only on fear, reflections and surprises, but also the debates among fighters on international passivity, the obscene imbalance of forces between Franco and Republicans, the logistical and precarious armaments of the Republicans, along with the landscape, the cold, hunger, blood, and death.

Bessie’s writing style is highly visual. He’d already worked as a journalist in Brooklyn; after the war, he’d be a Warner Brothers scriptwriter until he was blacklisted.

As one of the Hollywood Ten, he served

almost a year in prison, accused of being un-American. His case was far from exceptional. Many veterans of the Lincoln Brigade were marked for life by the FBI. Bessie is a leading character in A War in Hollywood, the brilliant 2008 documentary

by Oriol Porta, which opens with a statement by Bessie from 1981 that says it all: “Everybody was on the side of the Spanish Republic. And when the polls were taken, everybody was on the side of the Spanish Republic. I wanted to be involved in this fight as a soldier. … There was no romance, there was no glamor. I don’t recommend a war to anybody, for any reason whatsoever, unless you have to fight it—which we felt we did.”

For his script, Porta used Men in Battle, Bessie’s war notebooks, and his 1975 memoir Spain Again. Porta addresses the enduring legacy of the Spanish Civil War today while underscoring the role Hollywood played in the portrayal of, and mobilization around, the conflict in Spain—including censorship and other attempts to soft-pedal any criticism of the Franco regime. Porta’s film includes clips from España otra vez, the 1969 film directed by Jaime Camino and Román Gubern in which Bessie himself plays the role of an aging Lincoln vet who returns to Spain to attend a medical conference.

The film was nominated for Golden Palm at the Cannes Festival that year. In fact, it was his experience making this film that inspired Bessie to write Spain Again, which appeared six years later.

In a speech he gave in New York City in 1941, Bessie reminded his audience of its obligation “to constantly understand and reinterpret … the facts and meaning” of the Spanish Civil War, because it “was a touchstone and a turning point.” After glossing the role of writers and artists around the world in the war, and mentioning the symbolism of the murder of García Lorca, he made the public stand up, to name one by one, the writers and American artists killed in that war.

On October 28, 1947, the Hollywood Ten refused to answer any questions before the House Committee on Un-American Activities. “The true purpose of this Committee on Un-American Activities,” Bessie said in a prepared statement, “is to provide the atmosphere and to act as the spearhead for the really un-American forces preparing a Fascist America.”

Men in Battle arrived at bookstores in September 1939, coinciding with the Nazi invasion of Poland.

“This body,” he went on, “in all its previous manifestations is on record as believing that support of the Spanish Republic was and is subversive, un-American, and Communistinspired. That lie was originally spawned

by Hitler and Franco, and the majority of the American people—in fact, the majority of the people of the world—never believed it. And I want it on the record at this point that I not only supported the Spanish Republic but that it was my high privilege and the greatest honor I have ever enjoyed to

have been a volunteer soldier in the ranks of its International Brigades throughout 1938.

And I shall continue to support the Spanish Republic until the Spanish people in their majesty and power remove Francisco Franco and all his supporters and reestablish the legal government Franco and his Nazi and Italian Fascist soldiers overthrew.” He spent a year in jail and saw his Hollywood career thwarted.

Alvah Bessie was also a prolific writer of protest letters. General Franco received at least two. One demanded freedom and amnesty for the ten trade unionists of Comisiones Obreras engaged in the “process 1001” in 1972, among them Marcelino Camacho, Nicolás Sartorius and the priest Francisco García Salve. Bessie took advantage of the opportunity to demand that the dictator grant a general amnesty for all Spanish political prisoners.

“There was no romance, there was no glamor. I don’t recommend a war to anybody, for any reason whatsoever, unless you have to fight it.”

Alvah Bessie (Tamiment Library, NYU, 15th IB Photo Collection, Photo # 110176)

On April 12, 1950, Alvah wrote a long letter to his children Dan and Dave from prison. He told them about their legal situation, gave them encouragement and advice about what people could say in favor of him or against, he defended himself, he showed them the absurdity of the accusations made of him and emphasized the right of freedom of expression and thought.

Bessie wrote numerous reviews of novels or history books on the 1936-1939 war, including the works of Gabriel Jackson, Barbara Probst Solomon, André Malraux, Pasionaria, and José Bergamín, among others. But the harshest criticism was reserved for Ernest Hemingway’s novel For Whom the Bell Tolls (1940). Alvah wrote that the longawaited book was not the novel on Spain.

The author, he wrote, had refined his “technical facility,” and “touched some moments of action with a fictional suspense that is literally unbearable.” “But,” he added, “depth of understanding there is none; breadth of conception is heartbreakingly lacking; there is no searching, no probing, no grappling with the truths of human life that is more than superficial.” Bessie’s opinion was shared by many of his Lincoln comrades. In Porta’s documentary, brigadista Moe Fishman says the novel was “a love story that has nothing to do with our experiences.”

The second was a harsh letter dated September 28, 1975, about the last five executions of the dictatorship: Txiki and Otaegi from ETA, and Baena, Sánchez-Bravo and García Sanz, of the FRAP. In this letter, Bessie addresses himself to Franco as “el señorito Don Puto Francisco Franco” (freely translated as “F---ing Francisco Franco”).

The letter opens: “Your murder yesterday of five heroic antifascist Spaniards signed the death-warrant of your putrescent regime.”

Bessie was a prolific writer of protest letters—General Franco received at least two.

Almost two months later, on the night the dictator died, Spanish national television broadcast a special program given the uncertainty about the dictator’s state of health. Instead of the regular shows and news bulletins, the network showed an old American war movie, Objective, Burma (1945), by Raoul Walsh, starring Errol Flynn. No one paid attention to a curious detail: the author of the original story was a man who’d spent his life fighting Franco: Alvah Bessie.

Xavier Montanyà is a Catalan investigative journalist and documentary filmmaker.

A longer version of this article appeared, in Catalan, in Vilaweb, on January 13, 2019.

English version by Sebastiaan Faber.

June 2019 THE VOLUNTEER 15

IRAQI VOLUNTEERS IN SPAIN

By Chris Brooks

Among the 35,000 volunteers who traveled to Spain to support the Loyalist cause during the Spanish Civil War were two Iraqis. This is what we know about them.

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aghdad-born Setty Abraham Horresh and Nuri Roufael Kotani, who served in the XVth International Brigade during the Spanish Civil War, grew up as part of oppressed minorities, Jewish and Christian respectively. Both groups experienced systematic discrimination against non-Muslims in their predominately Muslim country. Around the time Horresh and Kotani were born, the Ottoman Turks ruled Iraq; in 1917, the British conquest of Iraq briefly led to better living conditions for Jews and Christians in Iraq.

Setty was born on June 15, 1905, in Baghdad to Salik Setty and Rabeca Horresh. Setty’s family owned a business that manufactured rubber stamps. Very little is known about Setty’s early years. In the Biografía de Militantes he completed in April 1938, he noted no formal education or prior military service. He left Iraq in 1929, at the age of 24, for South America.

He worked as an interpreter, typographer, and writer in Argentina from 1929-1934, then in Uruguay from 1934-1937.

In 1937, Setty travelled to Spain to join the International Brigades. At that time he was unmarried. After crossing the Pyrenees via the Massanet route, he arrived on December 2, 1937 and was recorded under the name “Setty Abraham” as an “Argentine” volunteer. After a brief training period with the XIIIth International Brigade he was transferred to the XVth International Brigade’s 59th Battalion and served in Company 3 and later Company 2 as an automatic-rifleman. Setty saw action during the Retreats from February 22, 1938 until April 15, 1938. After the Retreats he was transferred to the Brigade Auto Park as a driver, working with the unit along the Ebro River through May. There is no record of him from the Ebro Offensive through the withdrawal of the Internationals, nor is it 16 THE VOLUNTEER June 2019

15th International Brigade Observers, Ebro Front, (Nuri standing on the right) August 1938; Harry Randall: Fifteenth International Brigade Films and Photographs; ALBA PHOTO 011; 11-1076; Tamiment Library/Robert F. Wagner Labor Archives.

clear where Setty went at the close of the war. He likely returned to South America.

Nuri Roufael Kotani was born on March 27, 1905, in Baghdad, in the district of Sababig Al-Al, to Rufael and Aliza (Eliis) Kotani, as the oldest of six children in a prominent Christian family. Nuri’s father placed great emphasis on educational development and enrolled Nuri in the Chaldean School in Baghdad beginning in 1912. He moved on to middle school in 1919 and completed his studies there in 1922. There were no secondary schools or

colleges in Baghdad, so Nuri’s father sent him to the American University of Beirut, Syria (now Lebanon), where he studied from 1923 to 1930 and participated in an association that operated under the guise of a social club to support the Iraqi struggle against British occupation. In 1927, Nuri joined the Syrian Communist Party. He was active in party activities, including numerous trips into Palestine.

Nuri returned to Iraq in 1930, accepting a position teaching mathematics and physics in Baghdad. His education placed him

among the highest ranks of the intelligentsia in Iraq. In 1931, he received a government scholarship to study engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in Boston, Massachusetts. His deep involvement in left-wing activities may have contributed to his loss of the government scholarship in 1933. After leaving MIT, Nuri found a job with a Canadian railway where he worked for part of 1934 before returning to Baghdad and again accepting teaching positions.

Nuri’s activities appear to have attracted the attention of the authorities. On November 29, 1935, he was detained and jailed.

After his return to Iraq, Nuri was elevated to the central committee of the Syrian Communist Party. Beginning in September 1935, he obtained a position with the Survey Department of Iraq as an assistant Engineer of Topography working for the railway department. In this role, Nuri actively recruited soldiers in Iraq, railway workers, artisans, students and among the revolutionary elements in Iraq. He also participated in the Movement for the Liberation of Palestine and was a founding member of the Association Against Imperialism and Fascism and the Committee for Combating Imperialism and Exploitation.

Nuri’s activities appear to have attracted the attention of the authorities. On No-

vember 29, 1935, he was detained and jailed. He did not go to trial, however, and was eventually released due to a lack of evidence. Nuri was forced to hide from the monarch’s secret police, making it difficult for him to hold a job.

It took more than a year for Nuri to obtain employment after his imprisonment. In February 1937, the Iraqi Railways hired him as an Assistant Engineer in the Survey Department. By April, he was forced to leave his job after receiving word that the police were planning to arrest him again.

On November 1, 1937, he left Iraq, traveling by train to Syria and into Lebanon, where he boarded a ship to France. He ended his journey in Paris, where he lived with fellow Iraqi party member Yusif Ismael while arrangements were made for Nuri to cross into Spain.

Nuri arrived in Spain on February 10, 1938, over the Pyrenees via Massanet, under the name “Anwar R. Nouri” and was listed as an “American.” After less than a month of training in Tarazona Nuri was sent to the front on March 13, 1938, as a replacement for the XVth International Brigade’s Lincoln-Washington Battalion.

Nuri joined the XVth Brigade at the front during the battle the Republicans referred to as The Retreats. The Nationalist offensive was launched from the Teruel salient and eventually reached the sea, cutting Republican Spain in two. During the Retreats, the XVth Brigade was shattered, rebuilt, and shattered a second time. After arriving at the front, Nuri quickly transferred to the Observation Section in the Brigade Estado Mayor (Headquarter). Because he had experience in topography, he was appointed Chief of the Section. He served in the actions at Batea, Gandesa, and Mora de Ebro during the second phase of the Retreats and later led his section through the Ebro Offensive.

On June 1, 1938, Nuri was promoted to Cabo (Corporal). After the withdrawal of Internationals, on October 1, 1938, he was promoted further to Sargento (Sergeant).

He planned to return to Bagdad but also indicated on his Biografía de Militantes form that he could go to Detroit, Michigan, where he had friends and relatives.

Setty and Mack Coad from Alabama, Darmos, April 1938, Harry Randall: Fifteenth International Brigade Films and Photographs; ALBA PHOTO 011; 11034, Tamiment Library/Robert F. Wagner Labor Archives.

Nuri received a good report on the Communist Party evaluation conducted in Spain before the volunteers were repatriated.

It noted that his general political attitude reflected “hard work and political clarity.”

One of the form’s questions asked: What have you especially learned in the politi-

cal or military fields since you have been in Spain, and what can you take back to the antifascist organization in your country?

“In political field,” Nuri replied, “I came to understand how much people can struggle and sacrifice for their freedom and independence. In the military fields, I have never been a soldier before I can understand now the meaning of discipline, militancy order and mass cooperation.”

After leaving Spain Nuri was likely placed in a French concentration camp. He later told his family that it took four attempts before he was able to make it out. His escape was orchestrated by his friend Yusif Ismael, whose wife smuggled Nuri out hidden under the cargo load of a wagon.

Nuri arrived in Paris and stayed with Yusif’s family. Having lost his identification papers and passport in Spain, he was forced to contact the Iraqi consulate. Fortunately, he encountered a friend and alumnus of the American University of Beirut, Ali Hayder Suleman, working in the Iraqi consulate in Paris. Ali provided Nuri with a new passport and funds that enabled him to return to Iraq. By November he was back.

“I came to understand how much people can struggle and sacrifice for their freedom and independence.”

In the years following, Nuri remained politically active. In August 1944, he married Najiba Noshi, the niece of a close friend from the American University in Beirut.

Their marriage ended five years later. In 1956, he was arrested by order of the King of Iraq and sent to prison in the desert fortress of Samawah. He was not freed until after the July 14, 1958 Iraqi revolution. He became a railway minister in the progressive regime of Abd al-Karim Quasim but lost his post after the counterrevolutionary Ba’athists came into power in 1963. Nuri spent almost half of his life in prison or on the run from consequences related to his political beliefs. He died in 1980.

Chris Brooks, a longtime ALBA board member, maintains ALBA’s online biographical database of Lincoln Brigade veterans. For a fully sourced version of this article, see http://www.albavolunteer.org/2018/09/ far-from-baghdad-two-iraqi-volunteers-inthe-xvth-international-brigade

June 2019 THE VOLUNTEER 17

Neus Català (1915-2019)

By Gina Herrmann

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n April 13, 2019 in the Catalonian village of Els Guiamets in the famed Priorat wine region, the antifascist activist and Nazi camp survivor Neus Català died in an assisted living facility only a few hundred yards from the house where she had been born 103 years earlier.

Català is one of the last Spanish survivors of Europe’s longest anti-fascist resistance, having fought against the Nationalist uprising in Spain and joined the French resistance in World War II, only to return to battle against the Franco regime until the dictator’s death in 1975.

the “maquis de Turnac.” Like many women in the Resistance, her work entailed transporting weapons and clandestine documents, sheltering Resistance fighters, falsifying identification cards, and running a hidden printing press.

When a French collaborator betrayed the location of the safe house, she and Roger were arrested by the Gestapo in November 1943. After being tortured and imprisoned in Limoges, Neus was deported to the women’s concentration camp at Ravensbrück, north of Berlin, while her husband was sent to Bergen-Belsen.

Roger would not survive the Nazi camp.

Like many women who made it out of Ravensbrück alive, Català describes the terror and disorientation of the Nazi camp. The daily humiliations, tortures, starvation and meaningless slave labor killed women by the tens of thousands. Because Català was deemed “fit for work,” she was transferred to a munitions factory in Holleschein, where she was part of a forced labor group quarrying granite and making parts for fighter planes. Català and other Spanish resisters rallied other slave laborers to boycott or sabotage weapons production; this was their only and highly dangerous method for continuing their resistance to fascism. “We women disrupted various stages of the production in the manufacture of weapons,” she later explained. “Our sabotage produced millions of defective bullets and thousands of unusable artillery shells. We would crush up bugs—flies or roaches— and put them into the shells. Even our own spit rendered them ineffective!”

While her survival stands as a testament to the stalwart, decades-long anti-fascist struggle of thousands of Communist, Anarchist and Marxist resisters, Català’s primary contribution to history is the collection of oral testimonies she gathered from other women activists who participated in the French Resistance and were deported to the Nazi camp of A combination of luck, youth, and deterRavensbrück, a factory of slave labor mination, but primarily great solidarity and murder designed by the Third Reich among women prisoners, enabled Català to punish exclusively female enemies of to survive. Although she was critically ill National Socialism. Català’s book of these and starving when the camp was liberated recorded memories, De la resistencia y in April 1945, Neus recovered and la deportación: 50 testimonios de mujeres remained in France, where she threw herespañolas [Of resistance and deportation: 50 self into the anti-Franco resistance. testimonies of Spanish women] came out in 1984. Along with Cárcel de mujeres [Prison She struggled to balance the duties of of Women]—a similar collection, gathered new motherhood with her assignments by the Communist Tomasa Cuevas, on the from the Spanish communist party that brutal incarceration of Spanish anti-FranCatalà as an inmate at Ravensbrück. sent her on underground missions. While coist women—Català’s book constitutes the French resisters were celebrated in postwar main historical evidence today of the sacrificEurope, the important role played by Spaniards in the Resistance es, valor, and suffering of Spain’s female militancy against Nazism remained largely unrecognized. Through her decades of exile and the dictatorship. The feminist contribution of Català’s work in France, Català sought out and recorded the memories of her as an oral historian cannot be underestimated. women comrades to secure their place in the larger narrative of anti-fascism.

Neus Català Pallejà was born on October 6, 1915. Her father worked as farmer, growing olives and grapes. By age 14, Neus also Català eventually married again, to a Spanish exile, Félix Sanworked in viniculture, where she felt the injustice of unequal pay cho. Like many women survivors of the Lager who had suffered for women. Her first political action demanded that women earn sinister gynecological exams and experiments in the camps, the same as men during the harvest season.

Català had believed she could not have children. To her great joy, she had two —Margarita and Lluís— who still reside in Paris.

After joining a Catalan communist youth, group Català moved In 1978, after the transition to democracy in Spain, Neus and to Barcelona, where she studied to become a nurse. During the Félix returned to Catalonia, where she headed up the Amical de chaos of the Spanish Civil War, she found herself as a caregiver Ravensbrück, the anti-fascist organization of women veterans and to war orphans. When Barcelona’s fall seemed imminent, Català camp survivors. She was widely honored in Catalonia: 2015 was led 182 orphans on foot across the snow-covered Pyrenees into officially named the year of Neus Català.

France and secured safe housing for the children.

With her Anarchist husband Albert Roger, Neus set up a safe house for the fighters of the local anti-Nazi guerrilla, known as 18 THE VOLUNTEER June 2019

ALBA Board member Gina Herrmann teaches at the University of Oregon.

Geoffrey Servante (1919-2019)

By Richard Baxell

O

ver the last few years, several announcements have mourned the passing of the last British volunteers in the Spanish Civil War. First there was David Lomon, then Philip Tammer, and then recently Stan Hilton, all of whom were hailed as “the last of the last.” In fact, none of them were.

As a November 2017 article by Carmelo García in the London Times revealed, British volunteer Geoffrey Servante was living in a nursing home in the Forest of Dean. He passed away on April 21, 2019.

Geoffrey’s Spanish adventure began in the summer of 1937. He was drinking in a Soho pub with his father when he overheard a man claiming that it was no longer possible to join the International Brigades, as the Spanish border had been closed. “I bet I can join,” declared Geoffrey, impulsively. When the man insisted that there was “no chance,” Geoffrey refused to believe him, vowing “I’ll bet you a hundred quid I can do it.”

Geoffrey was hardly a typical volunteer for the International Brigades. He had been educated by Jesuits and had never joined a political party nor even a Trade Union. “I wasn’t politically inclined at all,” he confessed. He had served briefly in the Royal Marines, however, and his earlier experience working on the Canadian–Pacific line helped him secure passage on a boat to Spain.

When they docked in Valencia, Geoffrey jumped ship and accosted a local, repeating the only Spanish phrase he knew: “¡Internacional Brigadas! ¡Internacional Brigadas!” Surprisingly, it was enough to land him a rail ticket to Albacete, the headquarters of the International Brigades.

Interviewed there by a Political Commissar, Geoffrey admitted that he was only 18 years old, and was consequently refused admission into the British Battalion, which was then being slaughtered on the Brunete battlefield. Instead, he was posted to a much less hazardous unit, an artillery battery then in training in Almansa, some 40 miles east of Albacete.

The Anglo-American artillery unit, known as the John Brown Battery, was comanded by an Estonian-born American named Arthur Timpson, who had been trained in

artillery in Moscow. Alongside Geoffrey were four other English volunteers, all under the watchful eye of Sergeant David King, a Communist Branch Secretary and former Royal Marine from Skipton in Yorkshire. Initially posted to the Extremadura front in southwest Spain, the battery was transferred to Toledo in December 1937, where it remained for the duration of the war.

With ammunition extremely scarce, the men rarely did much more than take the occasional pot shot at enemy lines. However, on one of the few occasions when they were called upon, the battery members had just taken the opportunity to polish off a barrel of local brandy. Geoffrey, who was by his own admission utterly “sozzled,” did his valiant best to aim the gun, but the shell missed its target by miles. For this, Geoffrey was punished with six extra guard duties; “it was a very lax discipline,” he laughed. Only later did he discover that he had inadvertently scored a direct hit on a fascist officer’s car, blowing him, his aidede-camp, and the car to pieces.

When the majority of the International Brigades were withdrawn and repatriated at the end of 1938, the battery members remained in place, seemingly forgotten.

Only in early 1939 were they withdrawn to Valencia, then on to Barcelona. From there, a narrow-gauge railway took them halfway to the frontier and they then had to walk the remaining 50 miles, harassed constantly by Nationalist aircraft. Safely across the French border, Geoffrey and his comrades enjoyed a huge breakfast, courtesy of the International Red Cross, before being repatriated via Paris and Dieppe.

tional Brigades. “I heard on the radio that there were no more International Brigades left, and I said, Well, that’s nonsense.

There’s still me.”

When his daughter, Honor, contacted the Spanish embassy, Geoffrey was invited to London to sign the declaration entitling him to his Spanish passport. He always retained an interest in Spanish affairs; he was a strong supporter of Catalan independence and voted in the October 2017 referendum. Geoffrey always remained extremely proud to have fought for Spanish democracy and had no regrets. Well, perhaps one. When he returned from Spain and triumphantly called into the pub to collect his winnings, Geoffrey was saddened—and a little disappointed—to discover that his fellow gambler had passed away. He never did get to see his 100 pounds.

Richard Baxell is an historian and Research Fellow of the Cañada Blanch Centre at the London School of Economics and Political Science. Between 2015 and 2018 he was Chair of the International Brigade Memorial Trust. A version of this article first appeared in the IBMT’s magazine ¡No Pasarán!

Within a year, Geoffrey was back in uniform, having been called up into the British Army. He had a relatively good war, spending three years in Egypt with the Royal Army Ordnance Corps and the Royal Electrical and Mechanical Engineers. After demobilization, he worked for Marshalls, reconditioning military lorries, joining Vauxhall Motors in 1957, where he remained until he took early retirement twenty years later.

Only in 2009 did Geoffrey discover that the Spanish government had offered citizenship to surviving veterans of the Interna-

Servante during World War II. June 2019 THE VOLUNTEER 19

Sanctuary The village creek serpentines to open seas where I stand all day at the ocean shore, feeling

the Earth’s core tremble.

Sailor Melville got it right, picturing landlubbers lined at water’s edge looking outward on holidays

chary of wet feet.

I’m of the coastal breed, fear-fed by tsunamis, yellow signs reminding NEVER TURN YOUR BACK ON THE WAVES But when a war overflows the skin of safety, even a leaky ship looks dry, launches a last hope, desperation uncommon courage.

Later, the crew of lifeguards reports orange tubes floating like macaroni, hearing the human plea for sanctuary— Bodies in the water!

How few they could reach, old men, children, the drenched Syrian mother who tumbled naked overboard,

cried out, slipped away.

Flotsam whirls undersea or aerates into mist— a woman’s gasp, spirit-ghost,

lifelines passing fast.

—Peter Neil Carroll

Refugees on a boat crossing the Mediterranean Sea, heading from Turkish coast to Lesbos, 29 Jan. 2016.

Photo Mstyslav Chernov/Unframe, CC-BY-SA-4.0.

20 THE VOLUNTEER June 2019

On Writing “Sanctuary”

By Peter Neil Carroll

T

he first pages of Melville’s Moby Dick depict the fascination of landlubbers looking out to sea: “They must get just as nigh the water as they possibly can without falling in.” I, born under the water sign of Scorpio, share that more than ordinary impulse. I live twenty minutes’ drive from the great Pacific and yearn to hear the unrelenting waves crash against the cliffs, the steady, reliable throb that echoes with the human heartbeat, the way pendulum clocks on a wall align their rhythm.

The eye’s searching for the horizon is a planetary experience: what lies beyond the global edge? Keep going and you don’t find another world, but a different aspect of the one we already inhabit.

By which I mean, other peoples, other cultures, other problems.

I belong to an organization—the not-forprofit Abraham Lincoln Brigade Archives (ALBA)—that gives a generous annual award for human rights activism. Each year

I participate in the selection of a person or group that devotes itself, at some risk, to helping people in distress.

The awardees, in my estimation, are heroic.

In my search for appropriate nominees, I came upon a group of lifeguards from Catalunya, the region of northeast Spain that touches the Mediterranean. They call themselves Proactiva Open Arms, a non-government, non-profit organization.

Their mission is simple, dangerous, indeed controversial. They rescue people from the sea.

They specialize in surveillance and rescue operations of boats packed with refugees.

While the world’s leaders wage wars that cause the numbers of refugees to rise, this small group rushes into the waters to save drowning people.

They are good at their work, though limited by the support they can muster. And they antagonize governments and groups that would prefer not to call attention to the

thousands of refugees who have already drowned or will drown or might have been saved if Proactiva Open Arms had more resources.

When a couple of these saviors came to New York to accept their award (the ALBA/Puffin Prize for Human Rights Activism), I had a chance to listen to some of their stories of courage and loss.

Their narrative, with a touch of Melville, became the basis for my poem, “Sanctuary.”

Peter Neil Carroll is Chair Emeritus of the ALBA Board. “Sanctuary” was first published in the North American Review (Winter, 2019); the essay appeared on the North American Review website on April 3, 2019.

The Jarama Society What you leave to friends and loved ones—and the causes you champion­—are ways of expressing your hopes and dreams for the future and perpetuate your part in the story of the Lincoln Brigade. As you make your plans, please consider including ALBA in your will or living trust, or naming us as a beneficiary of your estate. ALBA can accept legacy gifts in any amount, large or small. Please help us to continue to expand our horizons, and your beliefs, and help us to carry our shared legacy to the next generation and beyond.

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

All inquiries are kept in the strictest confidence.

June 2019 THE VOLUNTEER 21

Book Reviews

Darryl Anthony Burrowes, Historians at War: Cold War Influences on Anglo–American Representations of the Spanish Civil War. Brighton, Great Britain: Sussex Academic Press, 2019.

Reviewed by Andrew Lee

A

S THE COLD WAR came to dominate the postwar world, it appeared obvious that the United States and the United Kingdom needed Franco more than he needed them. This context inevitably shaped the British and American narratives of the Spanish Civil War. It is well known that western government agencies wanted to encourage a more positive portrayal of Francoist Spain while diminishing positive mentions of the role in the war of the Soviet Union, the Comintern, and the International Brigades.

Was Spanish Civil War historiography during the Cold War “prey to intelligence agency maneuverings behind the scene or was it immune from such manipulation?” This is the central question informing Darryl Burrowes’ Historians at War, published by Sussex in the Cañada Blanch series directed by Paul Preston. To answer it, Burrowes presents a close study of the lives and works of four men who had a major impact on the historiography of the Spanish Civil War and whose names everyone who reads Englishlanguage histories of the Spanish Civil War will recognize: George Orwell, Gerald Brenan, Burnett Bolloten, and Herbert Southworth. In his book, Burrowes examines possible links between intelligence agencies and Orwell, Brenan, and Bolloten. While the case of Southworth does not fit quite so neatly, his longrunning dispute with Bolloten makes him an ideal comparison.

(The book appears to be a published version of Burrowes’ 2017 doctoral dissertation, although the only mention of this thesis is in an endnote.)

Burrowes’ research took him to archives in England, the Netherlands, Scotland, Spain, and the United States, where, among 22 THE VOLUNTEER June 2019

other archives, he consulted the ALBA collection at NYU. He uses biography and “friendship networks” to “determine the writer-historian’s psychological profile and see how they could have been open to, and influenced by, ideas prevalent at the time.” The extent to which intelligence agencies may have assisted in the publication and dissemination of histories of the Spanish Civil War is well documented and Burrowes’ research on this point is a strength of this book. Still, his conclusions remain only suggestive. He cannot offer any conclusive evidence that his subjects softened or changed their work on the Civil War to gain favor with intelligence agencies.

A great deal of Burrowes’ work is based on drawing inferences from his sources. There is often no direct line between statements and conclusions. Burrowes makes a lot of suggestive and plausible links between the publication of works and Cold War politics but does not necessarily substantiate that the authors were “bought”

by CIA gold. That they were influenced by their milieu and circles of acquaintances is a given; people flock to be with people who share similar views. However, just because people share views on one subject does not indicate a shared perspective or that these perspectives do not evolve. I am a tremendous soccer fan, so is Henry Kissinger—and there the similar views end (as far as I know). I am as proud of my work as a former board member of ALBA as my work with anarchist groups but certain anti-communist historians assert I am at best a fellow traveler—a fellow traveler who admires Bolloten’s work.

Burrowes provides a great deal of information on the lives of the four subjects and their personal relationships, which occasionally leads him to include harsh moral judgments. (For example, he speaks of Brenan’s “predatory sexual life and self-serving morality,” mostly due to his having fathered a child with a 15-year old maid and his bigamous marriage with Gamel Woolsey.) Not surprisingly, at times all four men appear to have been strapped for funds. For the sections of his work that deal with the CIAsponsored Congress for Cultural Freedom, Burrowes relies almost exclusively on secondary sources, despite listing in his bibliography the American Committee for Cultural Freedom Records at NYU’s Tamiment Library. In addition to his archival research, Burrowes also contacted numerous living historians of the Spanish Civil War. All of them appear cited by name, except for one “reputable Spanish Civil War historian who wishes to remain anonymous.” The anonymous source was included, Burrowes writes, because of “[t]his scholar’s recollections…of the negative and unflattering critique offered of Southworth.” The scholar’s desire to remain anonymous means we are relying solely on Burrowes’ assessment of the validity of this individual’s work. To be able to place this criticism of Southworth in context I would have preferred to know who this source was.

This book is not for the faint–hearted. There are 1381 endnotes for the 182 pages. Unfortunately, my review reads like the Mueller Report leading to no clear conclusions. The best advice I can give readers is to read Paul Preston’s introduction and decide for themselves.

Andrew H. Lee is a curator at NYU and teaches courses in the History Department.

CONTRIBUTIONS RECEIVED FROM 2/1/2019 TO 4/30/2019 Benefactor ($5,000 and above) Puffin Foundation • Edna Herrmann

Sponsor ($1,000-$4,999) Jeffrey Heisler in honor of the Resistance! • Harry Parsons • The Joyce Nies and Peter Witt Foundation in honor of Arnold Krammer & Chris Brooks

Supporter ($250-$999) Henry Allen in memory of Ruben Grinvert Allen • Joshua Barnett • Gertrude Blue • Peter Carroll & Jeannette Ferrary in Memory of David & Sophie Smith • Sebastiaan Faber • Roger Lowenstein • Michael J. Organek • Abby Rockefeller • Francis Nash Sherron R. Biddle & in memory of Jack Penrod • Len & Nancy Tsou • Josephine & Henry Yurek in memory of Steve Nelson

Contributor ($100-$249) William Allison • Mrs. Betty Brown • Wendy Chavkin • Steven Jonas, MD in memory of Edward K Barsky, MD • Bob Kantola • Mitchell Kief • David S. Klein • Dan Leissner • Lew Levinson • Susan Mende • Julie Eva Penrod-Glenn in memory of Jack Penrod (Lincoln Volunteer 1937-1938) • Retirees Assn. Dist. Council 37 • Hazel Rochman • Joseph B. Russell • Paul Schechter • Anne K. Smithson • Luise S. Stone in memory of my dad, Ely J. Sack, VALB • Jordi Torrent in memory of James Yates

Friend ($1-$99) Everett Aison in memory of Irving Fajans • Mark Alper • AmazonSmile Foundation • John August • Elaine Babian • Michael Bailey • Mara & Enzo Bard • Charles Barrett • Jodey Bateman • Judith & Cyrus Berlowitz • Murray Bernstein • Tom Berry • Martin Bigos • Barbara Blong • Kristin Boda in honor of Francisco Gonzalez Sosa • Eric Botts in honor of Oliver Law • Vinie Burrows • Milton Cantor • Jorge Castrillon • Kevin Cathcart & Mayo Schreiber, Jr. in memory of Vittorio Ottanelli • Howard Cohen • David Warren & Susan Crawford in memory of Alvin Warren • Shulamit Decktor • S. Lenin DiDonato • Joni Dibrell in memory of Charlie Nusser • Norman Dorland in memory of Norman B. Dorland • Nona Dorsky • Walter Effron • Felice Ehrlich in memory of my uncle Morris Brier • Al & Mary Fenske • Kerry Flaherty in honor of Francisco Gonzalez Sosa • Victor Fuentes • Alex Gabriles • Edward Garcia in memory of Eduardo Garcia Rios • Edward Goldman • Jeff Hackett • Dwight Hatfield • William A. Hazen • Oleine Hedeen • Kendra Heisler • Gabriel Jackson • Zachary M. Jackson • John L. Kailin • Cora E. Kallo • Doris Katzen in memory of Beverly Bookman • Ruth E. Kavesh in honor of Ellyn Polshek • Sandra Kish • Nancy Kline Piore • Breyer Kroup • John Kyper • Gene Lantz • Thomas S. Larson • Eugene & Elizabeth Levenson • Selma & Arthur Levy • Bernard and Louise Lown • Gene Marchi • Mark Martin • Margaret & Arnold Matlin • Andrew W. McKibben • Carol Moeller Costa in memory of Don MacLeod • Marilyn Montenegro • Martha Nencioli • Michael O’Connor • Nicholas Orchard • Gregorio Ortega • Ann & Vittorio Ottanelli • Dr. Jack Paradise • Carl Parrish in honor of Spain in Our Hearts • Paypal Charitable Giving Fund • Phyllis Perna in memory of Clarence Kailin • Louise Popkin • Nieves & Manuel Pousada in memory of Alvin Warren • Michael Quigley • Kathrin Quinn • Sylvia Ramirez • Jules Rensch in honor of Rae Torres • Mona Roberts • Gerald & Mutsumi Robinson • Patricia Rodriguez Mosquera • Suzanne & Alan Jay Rom in memory of Samuel S. Schiff & Isabelle Norah, who put in many years of volunteer work at the VALB (Alba) office • Constancia Romilly • Miki Rosen • Leona Ross in memory of Sam Ross • Gail I. & Lewis Rubman • Herman Schmidt • Ivan Schustak in memory of Saul Shapiro • Joe Sedlak • Steve Tarzynski & Kathleen Sheldon • Lynn Shoemaker • Sam Sills • Elizabeth Sims in memory of Oscar Gish • Annabelle Staber in memory of Alex Staber & Steve Nelson • Kate A. Stolpman • Joel Swadesh • Jonathan & Edith Weil in memory of Al Ersenberg • Sydney O. Williams in memory of Al Tanz • Leonard & Ellen Zablow • Robert Supansic in memory of Dr. Robert G. Colodny.

To make a one-time gift in support of ALBA’s work, or to set up a monthly donation, go to http://tinyurl.com/albadonate

June 2019 THE VOLUNTEER 23

NOW AVAILABLE IN SPANISH! HOMBRES EN GUERRA (MEN IN BATTLE) BY ALVAH BESSIE $20 (includes shipping and handling within the US)

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.