Jews in the Spanish Civil War – and in My Book “Fighting Back – the Contribution of British Jews in WW2”
CLICK HERE FOR UPDATED VERSION This document is the copyright of M Sugarman and may not be reproduced in part or whole without his permission Against Fascism – Jews who served in The International Brigade in The Spanish Civil War (Note – This survey is available at the AJEX Archives of the Jewish Military Museum in Hendon, the Marx Memorial Library (MML) in Clerkenwell , The Imperial War Museum Library, The National Archives at Kew, The British Library, The SOAS Library at the University of London, the LSE Spanish Studies Library, the Jewish Historical Society of England Library, UCL Jewish Studies Library, and The Wiener Library – all in London; Manchester University Library, The Hebrew University Library in Jerusalem, The Virtual Jewish Library website, VALBA (Veterans of the Abraham Lincoln Brigade) web site and Brandeis University Library in the USA. As at 01/07/16 Spanjews.doc By Martin Sugarman, BA (Hons.), Cert. Ed. ( Archivist of the Association of Jewish Ex-Servicemen and Women, Jewish Military Museum) Introduction For reasons best known to themselves, most adherents of the Left - both old and new - and the mainstream Jewish community itself – have been, till recently, loathe to acknowledge and recall the dominant Jewish role in the International Brigade’s (IB) struggle against Fascism in the Spanish Civil War. Stereotyped as timid and submissive, the reality is that thousands of Jews from 53 countries went to fight and die opposing Franco, firing the first shots against Fascism. Some went openly as Jews, others took aliases; some fought in the battalions of their country of birth, others with other national groups; some went via a third nation, others went direct to Spain; some were refugees from anti-Semitism or political oppression already, others went freely from the 1 democracies.
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