Bringing Closure and Justice to Guatemala

Vol. XXIX, No. 2 June 2012 “…and that government of the people, by the people, and for the people, shall not perish from the earth.” ABRAHAM LINCOLN

FOUNDED BY THE VETERANS OF THE ABRAHAM LINCOLN BRIGADE

ALBA/Puffin Award for Human Rights Activism Bringing Closure and Justice to Guatemala

Perry Rosenstein presenting the ALBA/Puffin Human Rights Activism Awards to Kate Doyle and Fredy Peccerelli. Museum Gallery Features Plaque to Lincoln Brigade The new Puffin gallery at the Museum of the City of New York, focusing on the history of social activism from colonial days to the present, features a permanent plaque to honor the men and women who volunteered to defend the Spanish Republic against the military uprising during the Spanish Civil War (1936-39). Although the U.S. volunteers in the Abraham Lincoln Brigade came from nearly every state in the union, the largest numbers originated in New York City, and nearly everyone who sailed to Europe to enlist in the fight departed from the port of New York. The visual symbol on the plaque, a three-pointed star, was used by the International Brigades in Spain to represent that “all mankind”—believed to consist of three “races”—supported the elected Spanish Republic. Photo by Len Tsou.

The Volunteer founded by the Veterans of the Abraham Lincoln Brigade an ALBA publication 799 Broadway, Suite 341 New York, NY 10003 (212) 674-5398 www.alba-valb.org Editorial Board Peter N. Carroll • Gina Herrmann The Future of ALBA Fraser Ottanelli • Sebastiaan Faber Planning for your will and your legacy? The Veterans of the Art Director-Graphic Designer Abraham Lincoln Brigade established their legacy with the Richard Bermack Abraham Lincoln Brigade Archives. Now you can continue Editorial Assistance their “good fight” by establishing a legacy gift to ALBA in Nancy Van Zwalenburg your will. As a non-profit educational organization, 501(c)(3), Submission of Manuscripts ALBA can accept legacy gifts in any amount, large or small. Please send manuscripts by email Please help us continue to expand our horizons, and your [email protected] beliefs, and help us to teach the Lincoln Brigade’s legacy to the next generation and beyond. www.albavolunteer.org For more information, call us at 212-674-5398 or email [email protected].

2 THE VOLUNTEER June 2012 ALBA Executive Director Marina Garde, Fredy Peccerelli, Granito director Pamela Yates, ALBA Board Chair Sebastiaan Faber, Kate Doyle, and Granito producer Paco de Onís at the New York celebration. ALBA/Puffin Award Honors Struggle for Victims’ Rights LBA’s annual celebrations in New Human Rights Activism before the sold- which no case could be made,” ALBA York City and Berkeley, California, out auditorium of the Museum of the City Board Chair Sebastiaan Faber remarked. Acommemorated the 75th anni- of New York on May 13. Doyle also joined “They have shown tremendous tenacity, versary of the bombing of Guernica and the reunion festivities at Berkeley’s Freight courage, care, and acuity in vindicat- honored the groundbreaking work of & Salvage auditorium on May 27, where ing victims of government violence and two tireless defenders of human rights she was greeted by Lincoln vet Delmer pursuing the perpetrators of criminal in Latin America: Fredy Peccerelli, Berg, the only surviving vet able to attend activity—helping make possible the first- Executive Director of the Guatemalan either event. He was delighted to see that ever conviction of Guatemalan military Forensic Anthropology Foundation, the “good fight” goes on. forces for crimes against humanity. The and Kate Doyle, Senior Analyst of U.S. “Doyle and Peccerelli do the tough, forces and people they are up against policy in Latin America at the National tedious searching and retrieving of evi- are cunning and powerful, and the Security Archive. They accepted their dence, which the perpetrators try so stakes are high. But their search for the shared $100,000 ALBA/Puffin Award for hard to bury and destroy, and without truth does not serve just a legal purpose.

June 2012 THE VOLUNTEER 3 I work within a web whose documentary Granito: How to of extraordinary col- Nail a Dictator recounts the story of the leagues. We have Ríos Montt trial. Also present was Néstor been plucked out of a Villatoro, son of Guatemalan labor leader line where we stand Amancio Samuel Villatoro, who was disap- with hundreds and peared and killed in the country’s internal hundreds of amaz- conflict. Villatoro’s remains were retrieved ing activists.” and identified by Peccerelli’s team. “The work we This year’s ALBA/Puffin Student carry out,” Peccerelli Activism Award was granted to Andrew added, “is made Plotch, a high school sophomore from possible first and Bergen Academies (New Jersey), because foremost by the of his commitment to social justice as a thousands of brave leader in his school’s Junior Statesmen survivors, witnesses of America program and in Amnesty and relatives—who International. “An activist life,” said have never stopped Plotch, “means a commitment to fighting searching for their injustice, no matter the odds, no mat- loved ones, for truth ter the consequences. Learning about the Andrew Plotch, winner of the ALBA/Puffin Student Activism and for justice.” Lincoln Brigade has opened my eyes to a Award, addresses the New York gathering. Peccerelli dedicated group of people who cared about righting his award to the vic- the wrongs in the world to an extent I had They also provide closure. Every docu- tims of military violence in Guatemala. never seen before.” Plotch is a student of ment and every body they dig up help A roundtable discussion preced- two alumni of ALBA’s institute for educa- strengthen democracy and the rule of ing the award ceremony described the tion, which organizes workshops for high law. Their work embodies international advances made in the fight against impu- school teachers all over the United States. solidarity, moral outrage, and a thirst for nity in Guatemala, as well as the obstacles “It is amazing,” said ALBA Executive justice. That is the lasting legacy of the still remaining. “The numbers of per- Director Marina Garde, “to see the work volunteers of the Lincoln Brigade that we want to honor—a legacy that leads from Guernica to Human Rights.” “The work we carry out is made possible first and foremost by Peccerelli heads a large team that, the thousands of brave survivors, witnesses and relatives— over the past 15 years, has exhumed hundreds of mass graves filled with victims who have never stopped searching for their loved ones, for of Guatemala’s civil war. Doyle has spent truth and for justice.” —Fredy Peccerelli 20 years working with Latin American human rights organizations and truth commissions—in Mexico, Guatemala, petrators indicted and convicted may that high school students are capable of El Salvador, Honduras and Peru—to seem small in comparison to the hun- when put into contact with the compel- obtain the declassification of U.S. gov- dreds of thousands of victims of violence ling stories contained in ALBA’s archive.” ernment archives in support of their in Guatemala,” said Daniel Wilkinson, Both events, which also honored investigations. Deputy Director of the Americas recently deceased Lincoln vet Vernon “Doyle and Peccerelli have bravely Division at the Human Rights Watch Bown, closed with a stirring performance sought out the criminals in Central organization. “But the progress made is of Spanish Civil War songs by Bruce America,” said Perry Rosenstein, President actually remarkable. Fifteen years ago Barthol’s band. of the Puffin Foundation, “criminals whose nobody would have imagined that a for- The ALBA/Puffin award has murderous actions have been supported by mer head of state like Augusto Pinochet been widely covered in U.S. and Latin our government. We worry about Kate and could have been indicted, as Judge American media, including NPR, CNN, Fredy’s safety. But we hope their work will Garzón did in 1998. This past January, EFE, and Salon. inspire others to participate in bringing the the same fate befell Efraín Rios Montt, The New York event was made possi- stories of these atrocities to light.” President of Guatemala during the worst ble by the Puffin Foundation and the “Human rights activism,” Doyle said of the genocidal violence in the early Rosenstein family, the Host and Honorary in her acceptance speech, “is the recog- 1980s. His indictment was made possible Committees, the Center for nition of the imperative of engagement largely through the work of Doyle and Constitutional Rights, the Jacob & Ruth in order to right wrongs so grievous that Peccerelli.” Epstein Foundation, the Political Science we have no other choice but to join in The roundtable discussion was Department at Pace University, and the the struggle. In Guatemala, Fredy and moderated by filmmaker Pamela Yates, Museum of the City of New York.

4 THE VOLUNTEER June 2012 Attendees at the New York event. Clockwise, starting at top left photo: (l to r) Molly Klopot and Tibby Brooks; Nancy Wallach and Josie Nelson Yurek; Nancy Tsou, Sylvia Thompson, and Len Tsou; members of Fredy Peccerelli’s family with June 2012 THE VOLUNTEER 5 Georgia Wever; forensic anthropologist Gina Hart (right) with daughter Allison Sharplin. Photos by Richard Bermack. Fredy Peccerelli and Kate Doyle with Nestor Villatoro. The identification of the bones of Nestor’s father by Peccerelli’s team was a breakthrough in establishing the military’s responsibility for the disappeared in Guatemala. Photo by Richard Bermack.

Editor’s note: The following are the edited speeches by the recipients of the 2012 ALBA/Puffin Award for Human Rights Activism, presented at the Museum of the City of New York. The Search for Truth and Justice By Fredy Peccerelli Valdez, Leonel Paiz, Renaldo Acevedo, I would like to thank our many U.S. want to begin by thanking the Shirley Chacon. Also, FAFG direc- supporters and friends, specially Clyde Abraham Lincoln Brigade Archives tors Bertony Giron and Silvia Pellecer, Snow, Kate Doyle, Pamela Yates, Paco de I and the Puffin Foundation for honor- as well as La Verbena Cemetery Project Onis, Peter Kinoy, Scott Greathead, Holly ing the work of the Guatemalan Forensic Coordinator Jessika Osorio. Montufar, John Crews and Almudena Anthropology Foundation and for rec- The many human rights organiza- Bernabeu. ognizing the importance of the process tions that have worked side by side with To my family: my kids Ashley and of the search for truth and justice in us for the last 20 years, specially Grupo Tristan, my Mom and Dad, to Jessy my Guatemala. This award has already raised de Apoyo Mutuo (GAM), CONAVIGUA, love and to Bianka, Antonella, Tony, awareness about the work of the FAFG and the need to find the 200,000 victims My message to you is “We are looking for you and of Guatemala’s armed conflict, and will continue to do so for a long time. we will find you. Your stories will be told to every It is a great honor and a privilege to share this award with Kate Doyle. I could Guatemalan and to the world.” For truth, for justice, not think of a more deserving individual. and for dignity! Her work has directly contributed to the search for truth and justice in Guatemala and has impacted my life personally. Famdegua. Also CALDH, Fundacion Jeannette, Mama Toya, Walter and You’re my hero, Kate! Myrna Mack, ECAP and the Amancio William, I love you all. Thank you for I would like to thank: Villatoro Foundation. always supporting me and the FAFG. All the members of the Fundacion I would like to thank all of the archi- I humbly accept the 2012 ALBA/ de Antropologia Forense de Guatemala vists at the Guatemalan Historical National Puffin Human Rights Activism Award (FAFG), specially the board of directors: Police Archive and the prosecutors at the on behalf of the 136 members of the Jose Suasnavar, Claudia Rivera, Nancy Guatemalan Attorney General’s Office. Guatemalan Forensic Anthropology

6 THE VOLUNTEER June 2012 Foundation. We hope that our work honors a process that involves many people and a shared history, a collective history, the memory of the thousands of brave men organizations. This long process with- our history. In the case of the Abraham and women who fought against tyranny stood many obstacles, including death Lincoln Brigade it’s the history of during the Spanish civil war as part of the threats and lack of official Guatemalan these 2,800 American citizens who left Abraham Lincoln Brigade. government interest, but it has now the safety of their lives, their worlds, The FAFG is a scientific organiza- become a necessity, a new tool, and new to join the fight against international tion comprised of young Guatemalans hope for the families and the country. fascism as it played out on the battle- who dedicate their lives to search for the I want to end by dedicating this fields of Spain. And that is the case 200,000 victims of Guatemala’s armed award to the 201 victims of the Dos Erres of human rights activism all over the conflict. The process takes us on a jour- Massacre, the 268 victims of the Plan de world: a recognition of the imperative ney to try to understand who the victims Sanchez Massacre, the 424 victims of the of engagement in order to right wrongs were, how they were tortured and exe- Cuarto Pueblo massacre, the 177 women so grievous that we have no other choice cuted, in many cases where their bodies and children executed at the Rio Negro but to join the struggle. were disposed of, and in the case of the massacre, and to the victims of all the I have to thank my own organization, 45,000 victims of enforced disappearance, massacres in Guatemala. But not only to the National Security Archive, which has the fact that the families still don’t know them. Also to Amancio Villatoro, Sergio been a standard for activism, engagement, what happened to them. Linares, Juan de Dios Samayoa, Hugo scholarship, and history. This search for truth begins with Navarro, Moises Saravia, and the other And a special warm thanks to the families requesting an investigation 178 victims that appear in the Military “Granito” and the team at Skylight that they hope can lead to the recovery Diary, as well as the other 45,000 victims Pictures for helping tell the story not only of the bodies of their loved ones and to of enforced disappearance. My message to of what Fredy and I did, but of the work the truth of what happened to them. If we you is “We are looking for you and we will that goes on in Guatemala every day. know where the bodies might be buried, find you. Your stories will be told to every This is Mother’s Day, as Andrew has we search for the graves and conduct the Guatemalan and to the world.” For truth, already so aptly pointed out, and I think exhumation to recover the bodies, ana- for justice, and for dignity! we should recognize the central role that lyze them, and eventually extract DNA to mothers have played in every human compare the profiles of the victims to the rights struggle around the world… profiles of the thousands of family mem- The Imperative of whether you are talking about the Madres, bers looking for their loved ones. or the Abuelas, of the Plaza de Mayo in The work we carry out is made pos- Engagement Buenos Aires, Argentina, or the Mothers sible first and foremost by the thousands By Kate Doyle of Srebrenica, or Mothers for Peace here of brave survivors, witnesses, and rela- in the United States. I am a mother too. tives who have never stopped searching hank you so very, very much. It is I have two beautiful children who have for their loved ones, for truth, and for so exciting to be here. I am grateful supported me every step of the way in justice. Their trust in the FAFG is the Tto everyone who made this possible, the work that I do—Ruby and Emma first of many steps in the search, recov- and to everyone who has come and turned Doyle—they are here today. So is my hus- ery and identification of the bodies of the out in such a wonderful way to accom- band, Tim Weiner; my mother-in-law, disappeared. It is also made possible by pany us today. Dora Weiner; my own mother; my own brave prosecutors of the attorney gen- I need to thank in particular a few father; my three sisters; their sweethearts; eral’s office, who now understand the institutions that have meant so much to their children Ben and Eliza…. I get to need for this work, not only to identify us. First to the Puffin Foundation, to the work surrounded by this network of affec- and return the bodies to their families, Rosenstein family: it’s been a wonderful tion and support. And in Guatemala, too, but also the need to document the causes pleasure meeting you. It is a great honor Fredy and I work within a web of extraor- of death and present the evidence of the to accept this award from your family and dinary colleagues. crimes in the search for justice for thou- your foundation, so thank you. It is wonderful to be honored in this sands of Guatemalans still coping with I also want to thank the Abraham way for the work that we do. But it is also the repercussions of impunity in these Lincoln Brigade Archives: Marina Garde, strange, in a way, to have been plucked out crimes. It is made possible by the peo- the executive director, and Sebastiaan of a line where we stand shoulder to ple of the Netherlands, Sweden, and the Faber, and all the people on the board of shoulder with hundreds and hundreds of U.S., through the support of their state ALBA. It is an organization that espe- other amazing activists and lawyers and development agencies and their support cially speaks to me and to the work we do human rights investigators and family to the FAFG through the United Nations at the National Security Archive. ALBA is members and other ordinary citizens who Development Program. engaged in what we call in Latin America collaborate to try to uncover the hidden The search for truth and justice “the recovery of historical memory”: that history of violence in a country better through science, with the support and is, the rescue and the preservation of known for its silence and impunity and trust of the families of the victims, has many human individual experiences, on injustice. Your award honors all of us and now turned into a national movement, the one hand, but also the restoration of I thank you very much.

June 2012 THE VOLUNTEER 7 Delmer Berg, one of the last surviving vets, greets the audience at the Berkeley celebration. Photos by Richard Bermack.

8 THE VOLUNTEER June 2012 Attendees at Berkeley celebration. Top left (l to r), Joan Balter and Theresa Huhle; bottom left (l to r), Yvonne Corbin, Lenore Veltfort and friend; right, Lew Levinson. Photos by Richard Bermack. One night that same week I was contacted at my hotel room and handed a military log book [containing military photographs and descriptions of the disappeared] that would become the first document from inside the killing machine that was the Guatemalan government in the 1980s. Justice for the Disappeared By Kate Doyle

Editor’s note: The following is an edited operation carried out through all of find information about what happened version of excerpts from Kate Doyle’s Latin America, involving torture and in their country through their own mili- speech at the Berkeley event. disappearance. tary or government, we could do that My organization, the National for them through the information we y interest in Guatemala began Security Archives, advocates for the had collected on our own government when I was a student, when I right of any citizen to have information agencies. Mlearned that in 1954, the United about what its own government does. In 1996, the horrible 30-year conflict States had engineered a coup against We knew that when the U.S. formed in Guatemala ended with the forma- Guatemala’s elected president, Jacob close alliances with any government in tion of a truth commission, set up with Árbenz, and installed a military dicta- the world, that relationship automati- United Nations support and an agree- tor, beginning cycles of destruction and cally generated paper documents, such ment between the guerrillas and the repression. A small guerrilla army grew as meeting minutes, travel notes, mem- government. So we began to work with up in the 1960s to challenge this repres- oranda, intelligence reports, and all the truth commission. After two years of sive and corrupt regime, and as a result, kinds of secret records. Beginning in the investigations, the commission presented the Guatemalan army, with the explicit 1990s, we started to mine the CIA, State its report at a public event in the national and very direct support of the United Department, and Pentagon archives by fil- theater of Guatemala City. I went down States, planned and carried out a sav- ing Freedom of Information Act requests. there to witness the proceedings and age counterinsurgency. The military was Slowly, over the course of 20 years, we to present the testimony of thousands funded, trained, and supported by U.S. accumulated thousands and thousands of of survivors of the massacres and their government policy, through the doctrines declassified documents, creating our own family members, such as Nestor and of national security and anti-communism. secret archives. Samuel Villatoro, the sons of Amancio These doctrines provided the ideologi- When human rights organizations [a Guatemalan labor leader whose bones cal underpinning for a scorched earth or the families of disappeared couldn’t were exhumed on a military base]. The

June 2012 THE VOLUNTEER 9 commissioners testified that they were hampered from carrying out their work by a lack of cooperation from the government and the military police in handing over documents and their denials that any documents or records even existed. One night that same week I was contacted at my hotel room and handed a military log book [containing military photographs and descriptions of the disappeared] that would become the first document from inside the killing machine that was the Guatemalan government in the 1980s. That military log book was the beginning. After that, government records were stolen or leaked and, in one very extraordinary case, acci- dentally found on a police base during Professor David Rodríguez-Solás’s class on representations of the Spanish Civil a routine inspection by human rights War visited the Abraham Lincoln Brigade Archives at the Tamiment Library at investigators. All of these documents NYU in March. have now come together to provide the first real, concrete, and sometimes direct corroborative evidence of the crimes of Teaching Programs the Guatemalan state. For the first time, we are now seeing human rights trials where the perpetrators of these crimes, Continue to Grow leaders of the country, such as Efron Rios By Peter N. Carroll Montt, are being put on trial for human rights crimes, based not only on the tes- ow in its fifth year, ALBA’s Florida for a fourth session with timony of these brave family members, educational program aims to Tampa high school social stud- but also increasingly on the innovative Nreach high school teachers of ies teachers. ALBA explained how and creative forms of evidence, includ- social studies and Spanish who will the study of the Abraham Lincoln ing the use of new technologies such as use archival sources related to the Brigade and the civil war in Spain fit DNA testing. And it is not just me and Spanish Civil War in their classrooms. within the state’s curricula guide- Fredy, but hundreds of us that have been Three separate programs filled the lines. ALBA Vice Chair Fraser Ottanelli using this evidence to put together these calendar during the spring term; drew on local resources to assist the prosecutions. It’s been an unbelievably three more are expected in the fall. project. rewarding experience, especially meeting Last March, ALBA board members Thanks to a matching grant from people like Samuel and Nestor. James Fernández, Tony Geist, and the Ohio Humanities Council, ALBA Just to give you an idea of the cli- Peter Carroll joined with the Center Chair Sebastiaan Faber leads the sec- mate that was Guatemala in 1984, for Spanish Studies and the Division ond week-long teaching institute at Amancio, as a labor leader, was the target of Spanish and Portuguese of the Oberlin College, which will accom- of constant surveillance and death University of Washington to co-host a modate 20 high school teachers from threats. He knew there was a possibility Saturday development day in Seattle, around the state. that something would happen to him. So mostly for local Spanish teachers. For the coming fall, ALBA is one day, when Nestor was about 16 years The teachers were introduced to looking to New York, New Jersey, old, his father called him into his study a variety of source materials. The and Chicago, Illinois, for additional and said, “I want to show you something. seminar focused on U.S. policy in the programs. As always, the goal of Look inside my mouth. You see the silver Spanish Civil War and related human these sessions is to reach teachers, crown? If anything ever happens to me, rights issues of civilian casualties and and through them, their students, to remember it, and maybe you’ll be able to showed how volunteers from the keep alive the history of American identify me.” That crown, along with the Pacific Northwest participated in the activism. clothes he was wearing, was the first struggles. identifying feature, before the DNA tests, In May, ALBA returned to the Peter N. Carroll chairs ALBA’s that linked Amancio’s body to his wife campus of the University of South committee on teaching. and children.

10 THE VOLUNTEER June 2012 Mobilized Spanish emigrants in Tampa, Florida. Reproduced in Stars for Spain: La guerra civil española en los Estados Unidos. An Unfinished Journey: U.S. Spaniards Face the Civil War By James Fernández address a meeting of Spaniards there.” out in 1936, these small communities of n March 27, 1938, Avelino Spaniards in West Virginia? Groups working-class Spaniards dotted the entire González Mallada, former mayor of Spanish immigrants from New York map of the country, as can be seen on Oof the Asturian city of Gijón, all the way to California? Enough to war- the nation-wide list of wartime affiliates died in a car crash on a country road in rant a coast-to-coast fundraising tour? of the umbrella organization, Sociedades Woodstock, Virginia. The next day, The Yes indeed. Hispanas Confederadas [Confederation of New York Times explained that “Señor Spanish Clubs]. Mallada was in this country on a sixty-day West Virginia Of the 120-odd affiliated Spanish permit granted to him by the Department In the early decades of the 20th cen- clubs on that list, 12 are located in the of Labor after he had appealed a ban on tury, there was a significant influx of state of West Virginia, in places like his entry imposed at Ellis Island by immi- working-class Spanish immigrants into Holden, Raysal, Fairmont, Warton, gration officials upon his arrival here on the United States, a process that reached Lillybrook, Spelter and, of course, Beckley. February 16.” Other papers reported that its peak in the years before World War In the story of working-class Spanish González was here to carry out a fund- I and the restrictive immigration laws immigration to the United States, West raising tour on behalf of the Spanish imposed in the early 1920s. During those Virginia is the stage of a crucial chapter or Republic and had plans to travel as far as two decades, thousands of Spaniards came two. Thousands of Spaniards found work California, addressing groups of Spanish to the U.S., either directly from Spain or, either in the coal pits of the southern part immigrants along the way. An article in more often, after stints in other parts of of the state or in the zinc foundries fur- the Washington Post later reported that on the Spanish-speaking Americas. Like other ther north and organized themselves into the night of the wreck, González Mallada immigrant groups, Spaniards tended to the clubs that González Mallada was on “was en route to Beckley, West Virginia to cluster in regions where certain kinds of his way to visit on that fateful night in the work were available and to live together spring of 1938. ALBA Vice Chair James Fernández is in enclaves, forming networks of solidar- currently conducting research on the ity and survival by establishing social The Sunshine State Spanish communities in the United clubs, mutual aid societies and the like. Had González Mallada continued States during the 1930s. By the time the Spanish Civil War broke his fundraising tour, he almost certainly

June 2012 THE VOLUNTEER 11 List of member organizations of the Sociedades Hispanas Confederadas in late 1937. Originally printed in the Brooklyn-based paper Frente Popular (15 January 1938), reprinted in Marta Rey García’s invaluable Stars for Spain: La guerra civil española en los Estados Unidos (Sada, A Coruña, Edicios do Castro, 1997).

12 THE VOLUNTEER June 2012 would have visited Tampa, Florida. Mallada would have found in the town’s rallies, picnics, and film-screenings to Tampa was a sleepy town of just a few “Club Español”: raise funds for the Spanish Republic. In thousand inhabitants in 1885, when the From the far wall letters in one notorious episode that took place in Spanish cigarmakers Vicente Martínez shrieking red prophesy, ¡Morirá June 1938, the police raided a Vacaville Ybor and Ignacio Haya decided to relo- el fascismo!… The Club overlooks hall and confiscated a print of the doc- cate their “clear Havana tobacco” cigar North Main Street, just above Barre’s umentary film Spain in Flames, which factories from Key West to Tampa. (They “deadline.” The furnishings are sim- was going to be screened by the Vaca had relocated in 1869 from Havana to Key ple, practical. Smooth-worn benches Valley Spanish Societies to raise funds West to avoid high tariffs on cigars pro- line the walls… for Spain. duced in Cuba and the violence of what John Bavine, born Juan would become known as the “Ten Years Bavine some sixty-five years ago in Unfinished Journey, Incomplete War.”) Thousands of workers poured Santander, Spain, is El Club’s efficient Knowledge into “Ybor City,” primarily from Spain secretary… We will never know the actual coast- (Asturias, in particular) and Cuba. By “We Spanish are good Loyalists, to-coast itinerary that González Mallada 1893, there were so many Cuban and —so you see by the walls—.” Bavine had planned in the spring of 1938. But Spanish cigar workers in Tampa that José indicated the vivid posters. “Our with the list of organizations that made Martí traveled there from New York to Club has done good work for the vic- up the Sociedades Hispanas Confederadas generate support and raise funds for the tims of Fascism. In France there are and our knowledge of Spanish immi- last push of Cuba’s war of independence 500,000 refugees in concentration grant communities in the U.S., we can from Spain (1895-98). camps. That war in Spain, it started hazard a reasonable guess as to his Immigration to Tampa from Spain, in July of 1936. It did not take us in route by connecting the dots of a spotty often via Cuba, continued unabated dur- America long to lend a hand.” Bavine archipelago of communities of Spanish ing the early decades of the 20th century. took a Club ledger from the shelf. antifascist solidarity: from the East coast Thanks in large part to the presence of “See,” he ran a stubby, calloused fin- groups sketched out here, through the a considerable population of working- ger down a page with fine writing. It steelworkers of Canton, Ohio; the zinc class Spanish immigrants, Tampa would was in Spanish, neat, the letters much workers of Cherryvale, Kansas; and the also be a hotbed of pro-Republican fund like printing. “See, here is the record. Basque shepherds and inn-keepers of raising and mobilization during the It say we start to take in contribu- Nevada, Montana, and Idaho; all the way Spanish Civil War. “No pasarán”, the tions in August. That is fast work, no? to the pruners and canners in places like rousing pasodoble that became the unof- Since then, up to date, we have taken Vacaville, California. ficial anthem of people facing fascism all in $15,000. Just here in Barre. Oh The unfinished journey of González over the United States, was composed there are many ways we raise money. Mallada is an apt metaphor for our incom- by Leopoldo González, a Tampa-based Festivals, dances, picnics, now we plete understanding of the depth and cigar-factory “lector” or “reader” from even have little stamps…” breadth of anti-fascist mobilization in the Asturias. United States around the issues of the On the Pacific Coast Spanish Civil War and, in particular, of the Green Mountain Spaniards Had González Mallada made it role of Spanish immigrants in that process. González Mallada might have cho- all the way out to the West Coast, he We know, for example, that the sen to visit another somewhat unlikely probably would have addressed the pro- Confederated Spanish Societies and the focus of anti-fascist activism during the tagonists of one of the strangest and Tampa-based Comité Popular Democrático Spanish Civil War: Barre, Vermont. The least studied waves of Spanish immigra- together raised almost two-thirds as much town was home to a significant popu- tion to the United States. In the decade money for the Republic as the much larger lation of working class Spaniards, most after 1900, some 8,000 Spaniards— and well-studied American Medical Bureau of whom had left their native region of mostly from Andalucía—were recruited and North American Committee to Aid Cantabria (Santander) to work in the to work on the sugar cane plantations Spanish Democracy ($520K/ $805K). We granite quarries and stone sheds of the of the Hawaiian islands. Working con- know, moreover, that roughly 10 percent of Green Mountain State. ditions were awful, and many of the the last names on the Lincoln Brigade roster The passage of time, the dispersal Spaniards re-emigrated to California are Hispanic. And yet many of our research of the town’s Spanish community, and as soon as they could, settling in and outreach projects seem to ignore or the corrosive ideological work of the places like the Monterey peninsula, marginalize the fact that a significant por- Cold War have all but erased the his- where they often worked in canneries, tion of “American” involvement in the tory of Barre’s antifascism. Thankfully, or in the state’s Central Valley, where Spanish Civil War was carried out by an article written just after the end of the they harvested crops in the fruit and Spaniards, in Spanish. Ya es hora de reme- Spanish Civil War by Miss Mary Tomasi nut orchards. Throughout the Spanish diar esta situación y así, de paso, rendir for the Federal Writers Project gives us Civil War, immigrant organizations all tributo al desafortunado viajero, Avelino a priceless snapshot of what González over the state of California organized González Mallada.

June 2012 THE VOLUNTEER 13 Paul Preston in 2009. Photo Colin McPherson Reframing Our View of the War in Spain

The Spanish Holocaust: Inquisition and the unmanageable chaos that makes up war” stuck early on, in Spain and in the Extermination in Twentieth-Century actual history. But names are never gra- rest of the world. This was in part because Spain. By Paul Preston. New York: tuitous: they always frame how we think its prospect had already been invoked for Norton, 2012. of the past as well. This is especially cru- several years as a threat hovering over cial when it comes to categorizing armed the increasingly polarized country. But conflict, which calls for the identifica- once the fighting began, the “civil war” By Sebastiaan Faber tion of victims and attackers, the innocent label faced fierce competition. On the Left, and the guilty. Consider the difference in some preferred to call the conflict The ames matter. How we label this respect between “The War between Spanish Revolution, or, denying the Nazi- events from the past does not just the States,” “The War of Northern aided Nationalists their Spanishness, a Nreflect how we view those events, Aggression,” “The War of Secession,” and War of Independence. The Nationalists, but actively shapes our understanding “The American Civil War.” While it is meanwhile, rhetorically dressed up their of them. One could go so far as to say generally the winners who get to deter- illegitimate coup as an alzamiento, or “ris- that historical events don’t actually exist mine how wars enter the history books, ing,” and referred to the war as a holy as events until they are labeled. We now the perspective of the losers is not erased, struggle, a cruzada. Until the 1960s, these know the messy decade of civil and mil- and often survives in competing labels. were the terms officially used in Francoist itary violence that held Mexico in its Finally, of course, the names we give to textbooks, monuments, and government grip from 1910 to 1920 as the Mexican historical events are themselves subject documents. (One multi-volume account Revolution, for example, and refer to the to change. (It took a second global con- of the war was titled History of the Spanish 40 years’ worth of intricate military, dip- flict for la Grande Guerre to become the Crusade.) As Herbert Southworth was lomatic, political, and cultural world First World War.) Often, name changes first to show, the regime’s late adoption of history between 1948 and 1989 sim- respond to changed power relations, polit- the term “civil war” was part of a deliber- ply as the Cold War. Labels, to be sure, ical interests, or sensibilities—and are ate policy change that attempted to bridge are indispensable; they help organize likely to cause disputes. the gap between official Francoist his- For the conflict that broke out in toriography and that of the democratic Sebastiaan Faber teaches at Oberlin Spain in the summer of 1936 as the result West. But the switch was only possible College and is Chair of the Board of ALBA. of a failed military coup, the term “civil because, by then, Franco’s regime had

14 THE VOLUNTEER June 2012 been strengthened by economic growth during the Civil War. “The leaders of the Republicans were executed by the Franco and international recognition, and it felt rebellion,” Preston writes, “… regarded regime in the postwar years. Thousands less need to compensate rhetorically for the Spanish proletariat in the same way more died as bombing victims, refugees, the obvious illegitimacy of its origins. as they did the Moroccan, as an inferior and inmates of prisons and concentra- race that had to be subjugated by sud- tion camps. And none of these statistics ames matter, indeed. Paul Preston’s den, uncompromising violence.” The takes into account the immense suffering choice of The Spanish Holocaust overarching purpose, however, was fun- endured by the survivors. Nfor his latest and most ambi- damentally economic and political: to These numbers are important and tious account of the massive violence ensure that the interests of the establish- shocking. But the value of Preston’s book unleashed in the wake of the 1936 coup ment—the Church, the landowning class, is the rich historical context he provides is as polemical as it is well-pondered. It and the Army—“would never again be for them. The first four chapters cover the reflects a conscious attempt on Preston’s challenged as they had been from 1931 five Republican years (1931-36) to explain part to reframe how we think about the to 1936 by the democratic reforms of the the gradual but deliberate build-up of war in Spain and its long, bloody after- Second Republic.” Since these reforms hatred and political tensions. The bulk math. Referring to the hundreds of included the establishment of workers’ of the book, organized in eight central thousands of Spanish deaths as a holo- and women’s rights, secular public educa- chapters, deals with the violence during caust has three immediate implications. tion, literacy campaigns, and land reform, the war. The long final chapter narrates First, it underscores the massive scale it is no exaggeration to say that the coup the “continuation of the war by other of civilian suffering. Second, it directly links Spain’s Nationalists to the Nazi regime, stressing that Franco’s reign of terror, like that of Hitler and Goebbels, The supporters of the Nationalists had reached was carefully planned and systematically executed. Third, it calls attention to the the conclusion that the defense of their interests motivations behind the violence in Spain. Preston presents convincing evidence required “the eradication of the ‘thinking’ of that the massive killings perpetrated by Nationalist forces were driven not just progressive liberal and left-wing elements”; or, by political differences of opinion, but also by an immense amount of cropped- in General Emilio Mola’s words, to “eliminate up hatred and disgust filtered through notions of racial inferiority. The military without scruples or hesitation all who do not Nationalist leadership saw Spain’s workers and peasants not just as dangerous sub- think as we do.” versives or fellow citizens gone astray, but actually as subhuman, mentally and mor- ally deranged creatures whose physical extermination was necessary for the good aimed to stop modernity itself in its means” during Franco’s almost 40-year of the country. tracks. The supporters of the Nationalists dictatorship, built on the conviction that This last point is one of the most had reached the conclusion that the only harsh punishment for the defeated, important contributions of Preston’s defense of their interests required “the not reconciliation, could be the basis of a monumental study to Spanish Civil War eradication of the ‘thinking’ of progres- “healthy” and “true” post-war Spain. For historiography. If the Spanish Civil War sive liberal and left-wing elements”; or, in decades, the country lived in the grips of is still generally considered to have been General Emilio Mola’s words, to “elimi- a perverted justice system that branded a class conflict, Preston reframes it as, in nate without scruples or hesitation all who loyalty to the Republican government as part, an ethnic one. He establishes clear do not think as we do.” treason and largely relied on denuncia- links between the political ideas of the The Spanish Holocaust draws on tions from ordinary citizens. rebel military leaders (in particular their Preston’s vast research, as well as scores of A brief epilogue ponders the long cockamamie belief in the existence of a recent historical studies, to establish the aftermath of violence in political, psy- global Jewish-Bolshevik-Masonic conspir- most accurate possible estimates of num- chological, and cultural terms. The acy), their decades’ worth of experience bers of Spanish victims—statistics that, regime’s “powerfully sustained attempt to as officers in the ruthlessly repressive ever since the outbreak of the war, have brainwash its population” in the years fol- Spanish colonial army in North Africa been notoriously subject to manipula- lowing the war, Preston writes, “inflicted a (whose populations were routinely sub- tion and distortion. Almost 200,000 men great long-term damage on Spanish soci- jected to acts of unspeakable cruelty that and women were murdered extra-judi- ety”: “To this day, its powerful residual included torture, mutilation, and rape), cially behind the lines. Another 200,000 effects hamper the ability of mainstream and their treatment of their fellow citizens men fell at the front. Around 20,000 contemporary society to look upon its

June 2012 THE VOLUNTEER 15 recent violent past in an open and hon- enemy and “purification by fire” as first assessment of the crimes he describes. In est way that could facilitate the necessary steps toward a new, more just society. (For fact, Reverte unwittingly proved one of social and political closure.” This is due Preston, “the outburst of revolutionary Preston’s key points: The persistence in not only to the fact that the memories fervor and an orgy of killing” in some of Spain and elsewhere of myths about the of suffering on the Republican side were the areas in which the coup failed “would war and Francoism, which allows the not allowed into the public sphere. The demonstrate once more that Spain’s public to identify the notions of “objec- “near-hysterical reaction” of some sectors harshly repressive society had produced a tivity” and “balance” with a “neutral” of today’s Spain to the recovery of histori- brutalized underclass.”) condemnation of both sides as equally cal memory, the exhumation of unmarked As Graham wrote in T h e violent and therefore equally reprehen- graves, and the investigation of past Independent, this book, years in the mak- sible and equally guilty. “To this day,” crimes also “derives from the fact that ing, happens to appear at an opportune Preston writes, “General Franco and his there were…many historical memories and complicated moment. The movement regime enjoy a relatively good press,” among the victors and their descendants for the “Recovery of Historical Memory,” thanks to “a series of persistent myths that had to be repressed by the need to which over the past dozen years has about the benefits of his rule,” includ- safeguard a false memory”—including the exhumed hundreds of mass graves and ing the false notions that he saved Spain haunting memories and feelings of guilt emphatically defended the rights of the from Communism or engineered its later among those who had committed atroci- victims of the Franco regime, now faces economic boom. “Recognizing that the ties. This is what Preston’s colleague Helen one of its greatest challenges. The tri- initial massive violence was generated Graham has referred to as Francoism’s als that resulted in the disbarment of by the military rebels themselves,” Helen “lasting toxicity.” Judge Baltasar Garzón, who attempted Graham echoes Preston, “remains the to seek truth and reparation through biggest taboo of all in democratic Spain’s reston covers the violence on both Spain’s criminal justice system, allowed public sphere.” (The whole notion that sides of the war. One of the sections for unprecedented scenes: victims of scholars like Preston, Graham, Angel Pthat has received the most attention Francoism telling their stories of suf- Viñas or Julián Casanova should be in Spain is his analysis of the infamous fering to Spain’s highest court. But the labeled as “pro-Republican historians” is execution of almost 2,500 right-wing Court’s sentence closed off all possibility quite curious: Should we also be referring prisoners at Paracuellos del Jarama (the of a judicial satisfaction to the victims’ to, say, Richard Evans or Martin Gilbert responsibility for which Preston places demands. as “pro-Allied historians” of the Second at the feet of, among others, the young Preston’s Holocaust, too, opens up World War?) Communist leader Santiago Carrillo). But the public sphere to individual stories of Preston admits in his preface and Preston makes clear that, on the whole, suffering. The many hundreds of horrify- acknowledgments that writing this book the killing on the Republican side was ing stories that make up the bulk of this was one of the most difficult tasks he has quantitatively and qualitatively very dif- book serve as illustrations to the larger faced as a scholar—not only because of ferent from that on the Nationalist picture, to be sure, but they also recog- the scale of its aspirations, but because of side. Here three points merit emphasis. nize and honor their protagonists, all of the book’s depressing, painful subject First, that the “repression by the rebels whom appear with their full names, as matter. Like most of us non-Spaniards was about three times greater than that citizens entitled to our attention and a who dedicate our lives to understanding which took place in the Republican place in Spain’s historical memory. As the Iberian Peninsula, Preston is driven zone.” Second, that the violence on the Graham writes, “Preston’s study is history as much by a thirst for knowledge as by Republican side was essentially reactive to as a public good, a substitute for the truth affection and respect for his subject. that on the Nationalist side. (“It is difficult and reconciliation process that has not Forcing himself to research and describe to see,” Preston writes, “how the violence taken place in Spain.” the appalling cruelties that Spaniards in the Republican zone could have hap- Meanwhile, the reception of this book were capable of inflicting on each other pened without the military coup which in Spain has been predictably uneven. must have been grueling. Gerald Brenan, effectively removed all of the restraints of Preston, after all, tells truths that many another staunch British Hispanophile, civilized society.”) And third, that while are not interested in hearing, and he does famously wrote his seminal Spanish the killings by the Nationalists were not so in great detail, with scholarly rigor (the Labyrinth (1943) as a form of therapy, a only condoned or actively planned by notes run 120 pages), and in an acces- way to deal with the anxiety caused by the rebel military authorities, those in sible, efficient prose. This leaves little the endless flow of distressing news from the Republican zone happened outside recourse to those flatly opposed to the Spain. After seeing the results of the reb- the control, and against the will, of the revelation of some of the darkest pages of els’ rage in the hospital of Toledo, the UP government, which put a stop to them as Spain’s recent past. The journalist Jorge correspondent Webb Miller told Jay soon as it could. Violence in Republican- Reverte, writing in the center-left news- Allen that “he came close to going off his controlled territory was partly driven by paper El País, dismissed the book as “a rocker.” One can imagine that the same notions among the “extreme Left, par- hyperbolic and unbalanced narration,” is true for Preston. But it was worth it: ticularly in the anarchist movement,” claiming that Preston’s sympathy for the He has produced an indispensable, about the need for elimination of the class Republican side determined his partisan important book.

16 THE VOLUNTEER June 2012 California Vets: Del Berg and Jim Benét By Nadya Williams

in Madison Square Garden “feel (for they called out during the collection) that the money should be given for arms, instead of supplies.” Benét arrived in Spain soon after the destruction of the Basque city of Guernica in April 1937 by German incendiary bombers practicing their first “Blitzkrieg.” Cynically, he said, the Spanish fascists announced to the country and the world that “the Reds” had leveled the defense- less town. He saw combat in the battle of Brunete in July 1937 and then again during the first and second attempts to stop Franco’s offensives at Aragon in March and April 1938. Of combat, he recounted, “I saw a young Lincoln’s hair turn white, in the space of one week, completely Delmer Berg at the Bay Area event. Photo by Richard Bermack. white—from fear. He was then transferred away from the front.” orthern California is the fortu- drive from San Francisco, are mentally fit “I’m very proud of the fact that my nate home to two of the remaining and living independently. family name is Catalan,” he said in a NLincoln Brigade veterans: former Already a professional journalist recent interview. “I’m mostly Irish, but newspaperman James Benét, now 98, and in New York City, 23-year-old Stanford one eighth Spanish—from Catalonia.” Delmer Berg, a very lively 96. Two of the graduate Jim Benét arrived in Spain in the After 15 months of duty, Benét left four known living Lincolns today, Berg spring of 1937 to drive ambulances. Later Spain in the fall of 1938 along with the and Benét, each of whom lives a few hours he volunteered for combat. Before leaving other internationals. “We were tricked for Europe, he wrote in the New Republic by the fascists,” he said of the defeat of Nadya Williams is a freelance journalist magazine that many in the crowd at a Republican Spain the following year. “The in northern California. fundraising rally for the Spanish Republic fascists had much more technologically

June 2012 THE VOLUNTEER 17 advanced weaponry, but the Republican and the international troops had greater numbers and bravery.” Benét, whose uncle was the famous Stephen Vincent Benét, author of “John Brown’s Body,” resumed his journalis- tic career with the New York bureau of TASS (the Soviet news agency) during World War II. He later worked for the San Francisco Chronicle for 20 years and for the Pulitzer prize-winning KQED televi- sion show Newsroom. For several years he taught at the university level. He now lives alone in a cozy home in rural Sonoma County, assisted by regular housekeepers. He advises young people today to always question and seek truth for themselves, so that “when you get old you won’t feel, ‘I should have known. I should not have believed or accepted [the lies].’” “Spain made a man of me,” Benét added. “Going to Spain was the right thing to do. You couldn’t have a better beginning in life! We thought then, and I know now, the civil war was a genuine attempt by the Spanish people to defend democracy against the tyrannical and inhuman regimes of Franco, Hitler and Mussolini.” Del Berg’s roots contrast with Benét’s middle-class upbringing. “I was born into a struggling farm family in Southern California,” said Del in a recent interview in the spacious, stone, hillside home he built himself in the Sierra Nevada foot- hills of Tuolumne County. A life-long farm laborer and radical organizer, he Jim Benét. Photo by Phil Richardson. now cares for his ailing wife, June. Berg had already been in the U.S. National But in August 1938, at 10 p.m., Italian including the United Farm Workers, Guard—as well as the Young Communist airplanes bombed the dormitory of a the local NAACP (he was the only League—before he took off for Spain in monastery where the brigadistas billeted, white member), the Mexican American early 1938 at the age of 21. rather than their intended target, the rail- Political Association, the anti-Viet Nam Based on his military experience, he road station. “`If you want to be safe,’ we War movement, the Democratic Club, was assigned to laying communication used to say, ‘go to where the fascists want the Congress of California Seniors, peace lines from Republican bases to the bat- to bomb.’” Berg, who was sitting up in and justice committees, and many more. tle fronts. Berg’s unit worked first near bed, was hit in the side by shrapnel, which Asked if he was ever called by the House Barcelona, then in the defense of Teruel, still rests in his liver today. But several of Un-American Activities Committee, and at the battle of the Ebro River. “We the internationals from Italy were killed Berg proudly produces a 1966 letter ask- helped blow up the bridge on the Ebro, by the very fascists who had taken over ing him to “please contact” their office. because it was an important connection to their country. Like Benét, Berg left Spain “They could never find me to serve a the Mediterranean Sea for the fascists,” he in October 1938. “I felt bad,” he admits, summons,” he grins. said, smiling. “because I was not that active in Spain. His proudest moment since Spain? Next came his fateful assignment to But you do what you can do.” “When I was elected vice president of the the central coast city of Valencia, where Back home, Berg got married, was local NAACP,” Berg says, “and when one he was largely idle, as lines had already drafted into the U.S. Army for three of my grandsons was valedictorian at his been laid. “We got a liter of wine a day,” he years during World War II, and returned Oregon high school graduation and said recounted happily, “and I even got to go to to Modesto. He participated in numerous in a newspaper interview, ‘My grandfather the movies a couple of times in Valencia.” activist movements with various groups, is my inspiration. He’s a Communist.’”

18 THE VOLUNTEER June 2012 Mauthausen: A Spaniard’s Tale By Sara J. Brenneis Rodríguez del Risco was one of Rodríguez del Risco’s testimonial Editor’s note: A longer version of this piece thousands of Spaniards caught in Nazi narrative is one of the few exceptions. will be published next year in the journal concentration camps after fleeing Spain Between April 26 and June 1, 1946, the History & Memory. at the end of the Spanish Civil War. 28 installments of his story, each one First held in flea-infested, barbed-wire subtitled “Carlos R. del Risco relates Spaniard named Carlos Rodríguez enclosures along the coast of France, exclusively for ARRIBA his seven years of del Risco was imprisoned in many defeated Spanish Republicans adventure in exile,” were splashed across A the Nazi concentration camp of were forced into the French Companies the pages of Arriba, a newspaper that Mauthausen from 1940 to 1945. Although of Foreign Workers or Foreign Legion acted as the Franco regime’s mouthpiece. he was sympathetic to the Spanish in order to escape their miserable Although the author’s story mimics a Republic when he went into exile at the conditions. Like many of his exiled com- classic adventure tale, a conversion nar- end of the Spanish Civil War, he became patriots, when World War II erupted, rative, and a 19th-century serialized hostile to the Republican cause during his Rodríguez del Risco was taken by the Spanish novel, it is not a work of fiction, deportation and imprisonment. He subse- Germans and sent to a prisoner-of-war but sprang from the true-life nightmare quently renounced what he considered to camp. Although Spain was officially Rodríguez del Risco survived. be his disloyal defense of the Republic in neutral in World War II, Franco was In the articles, Rodríguez del Risco favor of a newly found devotion to dicta- complicit with Hitler’s Germany. recounts beatings and deprivations that tor Francisco Franco and the Nationalist The dictator disowned the exiled he and other Spanish prisoners suffered cause, declaring, “Catholic by convic- Republicans, leaving them at the mercy in the camps at the hands of the S.S. and tion, I am a soldier of the Church; fervent of the Nazis, and they were deported to fellow prisoners-commanders or kapos. Spaniard, I will always be a loyal servant concentration camps across the Third He observed the high-ranking Nazi offi- of my Country. And my Country is now, Reich. Rodríguez del Risco and over cer Heinrich Himmler’s inspection of whether or not the communists and ren- 7,000 other Spaniards were sent to the Mauthausen, and he identifies individ- egades like it, unanimously represented Mauthausen extermination camp in ual S.S. and kapos who were particularly by Franco, a man providentially chosen to Austria, where 5,000 of them died. None cruel or who provided aid to the prison- liberate it from the most tremendous loss were Jewish. ers. In 1940, he witnessed the arrival of of life of all time.” As a political prisoner, Rodríguez a train convoy from Angoulême, France, In 1946, one year after he was lib- del Risco was not a target for the Nazi’s of entire Spanish families, writing that erated from Mauthausen, Rodríguez Final Solution, unlike Mauthausen’s “they arrived at the Mauthausen camp del Risco published an account of his Jewish population, which was subject on the 16th of [August]. Astonishment, five-year exile in the Franco regime’s to extermination in the gas chambers. anger and terror gained control of all officially sanctioned fascist newspaper, Although he writes about meager rations, of them, but all of the protests that they Arriba. During a period when informa- inhumane working conditions, and beat- formulated ended up being useless. They tion about Nazi concentration camps and ings he received for offenses as minor made the men and boys over 10 years of World War II was largely censored in as smoking a cigarette, Rodríguez del age get off the train, and despite the des- Spanish newspapers, the author’s story, Risco survived his ordeal in Mauthausen, peration of the women, mothers, sisters “Yo he estado en Mauthausen” (“I Was unlike the majority of the Spaniards, and wives who stayed on the train, they in Mauthausen”), was the first pub- who died from starvation, lethal injec- were imprisoned in Mauthausen.” This lished account of a Nazi concentration tion, physical exhaustion, or the brutality and other detailed historical information camp by a Spanish survivor. Although of the S.S. When Mauthausen was liber- provided in the pages of Arriba dem- Rodríguez del Risco’s memoir pres- ated by American forces on May 5, 1945, onstrates the power of one eyewitness ents verifiable historical information some 2,000 Spaniards were still alive, account of the Holocaust. about the Holocaust and the experi- although many of them died in the days Yet in the same pages, Rodríguez del ences of Spaniards in a Nazi camp, it is after liberation from dysentery and star- Risco includes anti-Semitic diatribes, also propaganda for Franco, contain- vation-related causes. Unlike Rodríguez misinformation about Spanish ing offensive rhetoric about Jews and del Risco, who returned to Spain as a Republicans, glowing words about Spanish Republicans. These contradic- Franco supporter in 1945, most Spanish Franco, and the absurd argument that tions and the fact that the author is the survivors returned to France after the Hitler, whom he calls a “true patriot,” first Spanish voice from the Holocaust war, fearing they would be killed or had no knowledge of the Nazi’s system- make Rodríguez del Risco’s story appall- imprisoned in Spain for their fervent atic extermination of the Jews. The ing and fascinating at the same time. anti-Franco politics. With few excep- articles served as propaganda for the tions, the stories of the Spanish survivors anti-Semitic and anti-Republican Franco Sara J. Brenneis teaches in the Spanish of Mauthausen would remain untold in dictatorship, bordering on a denial of the Department at Amherst College. Spain until after Franco’s death in 1975. Holocaust.

June 2012 THE VOLUNTEER 19 sources and provides transcriptions. Wainwright’s extensive Letters from a British research is evident and his narrative is engaging. This book is a Volunteer worthy addition to Spanish Civil War libraries. Christopher Brooks directs the ALBA biographical project. The Last to Fall, The Life and Letters of Ivor Hickman, an International Brigadier in Spain. By John L. Wainwright. Hatchet Green Publishing, 2012. Poet on the Spanish By Christopher Brooks Front rom the cover photograph of the International Brigade volunteer’s weather-beaten face to the closing lines, John Julian Bell: From Bloomsbury to the Spanish Civil War. By FL. Wainwright beautifully intertwines the personal cor- Peter Stansky and William Abrahams. Stanford University respondence of Hickman into the broader context of the British Press, 2012. Battalion. The photograph, taken during the Ebro campaign of 1938, shows a soldier who appears to be in his thirties, with By Charlie Oberndorf worry lines etched into his forehead and a tired squint. The image belies Ivor Hickman’s youth. Hickman, the Chief of n 1966, Peter Stansky and William Abrahams published Observers for the British battalion, was only in his early twenties Journey to the Frontier, which followed the lives of two young when the photograph was taken. Ipoets from families with strong intellectual and artistic back- Wainwright takes the reader through the brief life of this grounds, both of whom died in the Spanish Civil War. John almost forgotten Spanish Civil War volunteer. The letters Cornford went to Cambridge, joined the Communist Party, Hickman wrote to his wife, during both their courtship and his wrote committed poetry, and recruited for and enlisted in the time in Spain, are the book’s focal point. Hickman was only 23 International Brigades. Julian Bell went to Cambridge, wrote years old and married less than a year when he died in Spain. As some good nature poetry, and followed a road to Spain that took his letters convey, he was committed to surviving the war, exer- a number of telling detours. cising every opportunity to obtain training aimed at increasing In the past four decades, new information about Bell has his chance of survival. Despite his optimism, he understood that come to light, some of it personal details that friends were less one cannot ensure his own safety on the battlefield. likely to share in the mid-1960s, when a sense of decorum and Hickman had an impressive education. He attended Peter privacy were a strong part of British intellectual culture. Now, Symond’s preparatory acad- with the support of the heirs, Stansky has expanded the sections emy on scholarship after his about Julian Bell to produce a full-scale biography of that young father, an officer in the Great man. (Abrahams, one of our great literary editors, died in 1998.) War, committed suicide. In Bell was the son of painter Vanessa Bell and nephew of light of contemporary psy- Virginia Woolf. In a sense, he was a child of Bloomsbury, that chology and the study of group of artists that charted a new aesthetic away from Edwardian combat’s aftermath, it can tradition. He grew up wanting to be a man of action and took an likely be concluded that the interest in the nature of war, while at the same time taking an elder Hickman suffered from intense interest in what the future of poetry should be like. At post traumatic stress disorder King’s College, Cambridge, he seemed to lose his way. After a brief (PTSD). An outstanding stu- affair with Anthony Blunt (who later became a Soviet spy), Julian dent at Symond’s, Hickman fell in love several times; in all his affairs, he wrote openly and was accepted to Christ’s College, Cambridge University, graduat- honestly to his mother about his relationships. ing in 1936. While at the university, he developed liberal political Bell met with some success as a poet, producing two books, leanings and joined the Cambridge Communist Party. He also met but he had trouble shaping a manuscript that would earn him a his future wife, Juliet MacArthur, a student at Newnham College, fellowship. Trying to find a new direction, he took a position in Cambridge University. China to teach English literature. There he fell in love with his Hickman’s letters are introspective and contain less of the dean’s wife. propaganda element many other volunteers interjected into As the 1930s progressed, so did Bell’s political commit- their correspondence. Despite self-censorship, and strike- ments. When he had to leave China because of his affair, he outs by the censors, Hickman provides a very human portrait decided to join the International Brigades. There was enormous of his service in Spain. Wainwright provides context, adding pressure from his family not to go. He was told that his talents short biographical sketches, either in the text or in footnotes, could be better exploited by becoming involved politically at of volunteers Hickman mentions in his letters. This element is home. Others worried how this move would affect his mother. strengthened by Wainwright’s inclusion of many photographs As a compromise, Julian agreed to drive an ambulance rather of the volunteers. Additionally he includes relevant primary than enlist as a soldier.

20 THE VOLUNTEER June 2012 Stansky and Abrahams divide Bell’s life at Cambridge into The authors catalog a list of police tactics, recommending three sections, examining his intellectual development, his love responses to each. If innovations in communications enable affairs, and his increasing interest in politics. As a result, however, dissenters to organize, those technologies also open the door the reader doesn’t get an integrated sense of how these three threads for snoops. For example, legal restraints that apply to telephone weave together. The writers do a fine job of excerpting poems, let- lines do not extend to cell phones, and the police jump to take ters, and essays to give a sense of Bell’s thinking. At times, we see advantage of the difference. How to respond to the rap at the Julian so closely that we don’t get a sense of his charisma. door? Advice is provided. The most personal sections of the book are the most rivet- For moments we may imagine that Margaret Atwood’s fantasy ing. The authors do a fine job of catching the way Bell’s affairs of America (The Handmaid’s Tale) is becoming real. Read this book. start as great passionate encounters, then as he rethinks them, Support the Center for Constitutional Rights. Join your local chapter in the background always concerned as to how his mother will of the American Civil Liberties Union. And say no. respond to the woman in his life. The chapter on China, full of fresh information, is particularly rich, and the final chapter on Michael Batinski, emeritus professor at Southern Illinois Bell in Spain is strongest when capturing that particular ten- University, volunteered for a year at The Meeting School in New sion many who went to Spain must have felt when deciding if Hampshire. He teaches in ALBA’s program for high school they should join the fray. teachers Bell seems to be at his finest when in Spain. We don’t see the same confused young man who seemed to seek out love affairs as a way to give his life direction. We find someone who becomes the hallmark of dedication. So it comes as a surprise when A British Nurse in Spain Stansky writes, “His death was a terrible waste.” This is much different from the end of the original book, Journey to the Frontier, “For us it was Heaven.” The Passion, Grief and Fortitude of when the two writers merge Julian’s death with the deaths of all Patience Darton, from the Spanish Civil War to Mao’s China. those who had fought for the Spanish Republic. By Angela Jackson. Brighton, Portland, Toronto: Sussex Academic Press, 2012. Charles Oberndorf is working on a biographical novel about Lincoln Brigade vet Abe Osheroff. By Helen Graham

atience Darton’s life spanned the turbulent 20th century Respond to Repression across two continents. Not only was she a witness, but she Palso left a remarkably eloquent and original written record in the form of correspondence, the heart of this extraordinary Hell No: Your Right to Dissent in Twenty-First Century biography by historian Angela Jackson. America. By Michael Ratner and Margaret Ratner Kunstler. Jackson charts, in a vivid and engaging manner, Patience New York: The New Press, 2011. Darton’s extraordinary “outward” journey, from her battles against London hospital bureaucracy—themselves revealing By Michael Batinski of the severe limitations of British “democracy” in the pre-1945 world—and her midwife’s view of the struggle for sur- omewhere lurking in our imaginations we carry a picture vival among the urban poor of East End London to a memorable of ourselves responding to a rap at the door to be bullied by encounter with the exiled Ethiopian ruler, Haile Selassie, on the Sagents of the FBI. The fantasy is nurtured by films like the doorstep of her Bloomsbury church, and reaches the story’s heart Bourne series. It is made real by reports of government violations in civil war-torn Spain. The story of “Spain,” i.e., of a deeply felt of rights to privacy and free speech. While we want to dismiss personal commitment to the same cause of social justice that had the news as exceptional and the films as fantasy, we carry a dread first fixed Patience’s resolve among London’s poor, is told in a that saps our willingness to say no to government. Hell No brings fresh way that draws in the reader immediately. In particular, the fantasy to reality and the exceptional to common practice with picture she paints of front-line nursing in Republican Spain is its long catalogs of what the protectors of our security do to our vividly rendered, and the telling of its traumatic toll on the medi- rights of speech and dissent. More important, Michael Ratner cal personnel recalls those edgy truths later brought to us by and Margaret Ratner Kunstler work to counter that debilitating productions such as M.A.S.H. dread that may silence us. But even more than all of this, Jackson gives us, again As each of us reads this book, the threat becomes real, even in hugely evocative—but always precise—prose, the story of personal. The government has targeted Quakers and animal rights Patience’s remarkable inner journey: activists in its efforts to stem the terrorist threat. I am a Quaker You are quite right in saying that it is only in struggling in part as witness against our descent into a warrior society. My and fighting, not only outside things but things inside our- mother, in her last years, gave money to protect animals from selves, that make a person. […] Anyway I made a person out inhumane treatment. Neither of us ever considered that we con- of myself, and became an individual with a life and work of sorted with terrorists. my own.

June 2012 THE VOLUNTEER 21 This is what makes the book stand out as a real gem. Patience’s story is extraordinary—inner struggle, existential Ve r n o n W. B o w n there when a bomb exploded, damag- becoming, self-fulfillment, tragedy, gritty (1917-2012) ing the house. survival, mental fortitude and undying Segregationist officials blamed love-in-memory. But the power lies in ne of the last surviving veter- the attack on a Communist plot to the telling, in the way in which Patience ans of the Abraham Lincoln instigate racial turmoil, and when herself was supremely capable of reveal- OBrigade, Vernon Bown, died investigators found communist lit- ing her experience in luminous prose. of pneumonia at a VA hospital in erature in Bown’s room, he became Patience’s words, her wit, and her arrest- Martinez, California, on March 23, as the prime suspect. “I have gradually ing, often heartbreaking, style, are the reported by his son Ricardo. come to the conclusion that Negro secret weapons in this story. Born in rural Wisconsin, Bown people have been pretty badly treated There are so many resonant went to Spain in 1937 and saw action in this country,” he told a grand jury vignettes in the text that it is difficult to with the MacKenzie-Papineau bat- investigating the bombing. For these single any out. My own choice would be talion until the volunteers were opinions, Bown was held in jail on a Patience’s telling of the three Finnish repatriated in 1938. During World high bond for six months on charges International Brigaders, mortally War II, he served in merchant of sedition. “My freedom was gone. wounded in the battle of the Ebro in marines. My job was gone,” Bown said. “There 1938, who die, untranslated—a story During the more “peaceful” was nothing left but to fight.” But not which, as told by Patience, conveys far 1950s, Bown’s politics brought him until the Supreme Court ruled that more than its content: national attention. “All of the situa- state sedition laws were unconstitu- We were very good with the tions and struggles I have participated tional was Bown released in 1956. Brigades in the hospitals about try- in throughout my life have stemmed Five years later, he was among a ing to get somebody who spoke pretty much from the same reason I group of demonstrators arrested in their language, because that was went to Spain: my extreme dislike, and San Francisco for protesting hear- always a dreadful thing with very yes, hatred of oppression…. I’ve always ings held by the House Committee ill people, dying people—they felt a kinship with the oppressed.” on Un-American Activities. Among couldn’t speak—different tongues, While working as a truck driver those arrested with him was his sec- you see. And that was where the in Louisville, Kentucky, in 1954, ond wife, Spanish Civil War nurse Commissars came in. Very often around the time the U.S. Supreme Ruth Davidow. there were a lot of Jewish people Court issued the Brown decision Bown eventually retired in his in the Brigades, a great many, and denying the legality of racial seg- hometown, Minong, Wisconsin. He a lot of them spoke Yiddish and regation in schools, Bown read a grew his own garden and kept his own something else. And you would newspaper story about community bees to make honey. He enjoyed going always try to get a Jewish per- protests against a black family that on walks and dancing at the senior son who could speak Yiddish, to had purchased a home in an all-white center as often as he could. another Jewish person—it didn’t neighborhood. Bown volunteered to Only four U.S.-born vets are matter if they were Romanian or live in the house to discourage fur- known to ALBA to be still alive. Hungarian or what they were, you ther violence. He was lucky not to be —Peter N. Carroll could get a common language, get a message if you wanted it, that they wanted to send home or say who they were or something like that. who spoke Finnish and they weren’t of the contemporary reader. This is why But we had on the Ebro, in that Jewish. Oh! I’ll never forget them; I highlight the story of the Finnish vol- cave, three Finns and nobody could they were such beautiful creatures, unteers—for it seems to me that this speak anything to them. Nobody great blonde things, you know book achieves quite beautifully the big speaks Finnish. They were all very [sigh] unable to say anything. challenge of “translating the 1930s” for bad chest wounds. In those days we Patience Darton’s life is an encap- today’s readers. Patience’s is a unique didn’t know that you could oper- sulation of some of the 20th century’s voice that locks into a rich seam of ate on chest wounds, we used to most critical moments. Without an ounce memory, illuminating the big historical strap them up tight and sit them of didacticism, her life shows the reader picture while never losing sight of the up, but they were miserable. They the abiding truth of “the personal is particularity of heartbreaking loss. This is couldn’t breathe; they were strapped political.” No didacticism then, just a a subtle, moving story—exquisitely told. up tight as well as being with all truth rendered with grace and melan- these dreadful flesh wounds, very choly (wrenching understatement is Helen Graham is a professor of Spanish deep ones. And they were all three Patience’s forte) and delivered in a way history at Royal Holloway, University of dying. And we couldn’t get anyone that speaks directly to the sensibilities London.

22 THE VOLUNTEER June 2012 Contributions Benefactor ($5,000 or more) The Puffin Foundation, Ltd.

Sponsor ($1,000-$4,999) John & Jane Brickman • Ruth & Jacob Epstein Foundation • Jeffrey Heisler • Josephine M. Labanyi

Supporter ($250-$999) Margarita Asencio-Lopez • Jane & Bill Chaleff • Edwina Lieb • Michael Ratner • Fredda Weiss

Contributor ($100-$249) Dorothy Ames in memory of Bill Susman • Alda Blanco • Kevin Cathcart & Mayo Schreiber, Jr. • Terry and Robert Corbin in memory of Maynard Goldstein • Robert Croghan • Joan Davidson • Henry Doherty in memory of Robert G. Colodny • Saul & Felice Ehrlich in memory of Morris Brier • Edward Fox • Earl Harju • Adele Idestrom • Bob Kantola • Ella & Donald Kunins • Richard & Lisa Lyons • Paulina K. Marks • Charlotte Marzani • Paul Moorhead • Patricia Munday in memory of Arthur Munday & Alvin Warren • Paulette Nusser Dubetz in memory of Charlie Nusser • Michael J. Organek • Edith Oxfeld • Rachel & Ira Perelson in memory of Eugene & Gertrude Reich • Walter J. Philips • Edward Poll in memory of Harry Poll • Kathleen Robel in memory of Charles Edward Robel • Eileen & Ted Rowland • David Turner in honor of Alex Hilkevitch & Toddy Richman • Jeri Wellman

Friend ($1-$99) Jose Luis Aliseda M.D. • Anthony S. Alpert, Esq. in memory of Victor Strukl • Florence & Peter Ariessohn in memory of Abe Osheroff & Bob Reed • Leonardo & Joan Balada • Pearl Baley • Anita Bernard in memory of Judith Lieb • Judith Lorne Bly • Harrald Boerger • John & Susan Boland • Frieda Brown • Margaret Cammer • Peter Carroll • Norah Chase in memory of Homer Chase • Fred B Chase in memory of Homer Bates Chase • Doris & Ralph Copperman • Maria Cossio • Stacy Davis • Annabelle Dixon • Lyn Dominguez • Katharine Doyle • Patricia E. Eames • Sidney & Anne Emerman in memory of Sadie Klein & Moe Fishman • Helene Flapan • Jose and Selma Fortoul • Alex Gabriles • Linda Geiser in memory of Carl Geiser • Hyman M. Gold • Nina Goodman • Roderic Gorney • M. Alba Greco • Hanna K. & David Grossman • Mark & Sandra Haasis • Kathleen Hager & Arthur Wasserman in honor of Jeanne Houck • Kathleen Hager & Arthur Wasserman in memory of Matti Mattson • Victor Halitsky, M.D. • Syd M. Hall • Richard & Marianne Hershcopf • Joyce Turner Hilkevitch in honor of Alex Hilkevitch & Marilyn Richman • Joyce Horman • Evan Imber Black in memory of Judith Lieb • Gabriel Jackson • Frederick Johnson • John L. Kailin in memory of Clarence Kailin • Estelle Katz • Stephen Katz • Judith Kennedy • Glenn Kirkindall in memory of Carl Geiser • William Knapp • Joseph Knight in memory of Paul Nicholas Danculovit • Elissa Krauss • Peter Kress • Jim Kuhn • Bertha Lowitt • Vickie Wellman & Ian MacGregor • James Massarello • Andrew W. McKibben • Isa-Kae Meksin • Mel Mendelssohn in memory of Wilfred Mendelson • Gerald Meyer • Rita Neri • Kenneth & Barbara Neuberger • Ann M. Niederkorn • Francisco Rodriguez & Mary Ann Nikl • Diane Nowicki in memory of Virginia Malbin • Michael O’Connor • Georgene Orr • Ira Oser • Olga Penn • Michael S. Perna in memory of Randall B. Smith • Ronald D. Perrone • Ilsa & Patrick Pinkson- Burke • Joy & Ricardo Pocasangre in memory of Abe & Bob • Louise Popkin • Robert Praver • Marci Reaven • Alan Reich • David Rodriguez-Solas • Suzanne & Alan Jay Rom in memory of Samuel S. Schiff • Naomi Rosenblum • Leona Ross in memory of Sam Ross • Aracelly A. Santana • Donald Sarason • Judith and Jay Schaffner in memory of Felix & Helen Kusman • Seymour Schwartz • Sylvia Scofield • Elizabeth Sims in memory of Oscar Gish • Calla Smorodin • Irwin & Elizabeth Sollinger • Kurt Sonnenfeld • Dale Sorensen • Ann Sprayregen • David Stahl • Clarence Steinberg • Paul & Valerie Taylor in memory of Robert Taylor • Elizabeth Tesh in memory of “Jocko” C. Haley • Isaac M. Thacker • Roselva Ungar • Pierre-Paul Villafafila • Eric Volpe • David Warren in memory of Alvin Warren • Bernice Wersan • Robert H. & Lois Whealey in honor of Angel Viñas • Rosalind Wholden Thomas in memory of Dr. Ralph Shapiro • Leonard & Ellen Zablow • Pearl Zeitz

In loving remembrance of Carl Marzani—life and accomplishment—on what would have been his 100th birthday. His date of birth, March 4, was also his credo: march forth! —Charlotte Pomerantz

June 2012 THE VOLUNTEER 23 The Volunteer NON PROFIT ORG c/o Abraham Lincoln Brigade Archives US POSTAGE 799 Broadway, Suite 341 PAID New York, NY 10003 SAN FRANCISCO, CA PERMIT NO. 1577

Please consider making a tax deductible contribution to ALBA. Thank you again for all your friendship and support.

www.alba-valb.org

Josh Brown “Life During Wartime” #418 Installments are archived at www.joshbrownnyc.com/ldw.htm and www.historiansagainstwar.org/wartime/2012.html.

READ THE VOLUNTEER AND THE ALBA BLOG AT WWW.ALBAVOLUNTEER.ORG JOIN THE ALBA EMAIL LIST • [email protected]