Jenkins, Reed 2019 History Thesis

Title: An American Surgeon, The Spanish Civil War, and the Faultlines of American Politics : Advisor: Jessica Chapman Advisor is Co-author: None of the above Second Advisor: Soledad Fox Released: release now Authenticated User Access: Yes Contains Copyrighted Material: No

An American Surgeon, The Spanish Civil War, and the Faultlines of American Politics

by

Reed Jenkins

Professor Jessica Chapman and Professor Soledad Fox, Advisors

A thesis submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the Degree of Bachelor of Arts with Honors in History

WILLIAMS COLLEGE

Williamstown, Massachusetts

April 15, 2019

1 Table of Contents

Introduction………………………………………………………………….. 5

Chapter One…………………………………………………………………...16

Chapter Two…………………………………………………………………...42

Chapter Three………………………………………………………………….74

Conclusion……………………………………………………………………..103

Bibliography…………………………………………………………………...108

2 Acknowledgements

The completion of this thesis has been the culmination of a journey begun three years ago, when I was first introduced to Dr. Edward Barsky in Professor Fox’s Americans Abroad seminar. I would like to thank the many people who have helped make this project possible with their enduring encouragement and support.

I will begin by thanking my advisors, who have been so helpful every step of the way.

Professor Fox, thank you for inspiring me through your passion for Spanish Civil War history and for your dedication throughout the course of this project. I am also incredibly grateful to

Professor Chapman for agreeing to take on this project, and for her help untangling the complex political currents of the McCarthyist period. Both my advisors were incredibly giving of advice, time, and expertise, and this project would not have come together without them.

I would also like to thank Professor Siniawer, whose insightful comments and constant encouragement through the thesis seminar helped me immeasurably throughout the writing process. Thanks to Professor Merrill for reading drafts of the thesis and helping to improve my argument and focus. I am also indebted to my classmates in the thesis seminar, who were a constant source of encouragement and helpful criticism for the thesis. My experience in the

History Department at Williams both inspired me to pursue this thesis and invigorated me during its writing.

Without the unstinting support of my family and friends, I could not have completed this thesis. Mom, thanks for always being there and for providing a role model through your passion for learning and teaching. Dad, thanks for your continual support throughout this endeavor. To

Pak, Coco, Ro, and Maren, thanks for always being there to talk through ideas and for helping to

3 remind me of my passion for the project. Also, many thanks to other family and friends for their constant encouragement and sincere interest in the project.

Finally, I would like to thank the staff at the Tamiment Library at NYU, particularly

Michael Koncewicz, for their immense help during all phases of this project. Their dedicated stewardship of the memory of America’s involvement in the Spanish Civil War has made it possible for me to explore Barsky’s life.

4 Introduction

On June 6, 1950, New York City surgeon Dr. Edward K. Barsky became federal inmate number 85268, surrendering himself to prison authorities in Washington D.C. Dressed in a brown plaid suit with a yellow hat, red suspenders, and grey necktie, Barsky entered the penitentiary and began his sentence handed down for a conviction of contempt of Congress. He forfeited his clothing, fountain pen, and wrist watch and began a sentence of six months’ imprisonment.1 During this period of confinement, Barsky lost twenty-three pounds, with his only access with the outside world coming through two visiting hours a month.2 As Ernest

Hemingway wrote in a letter protesting Barsky’s conviction and incarceration, “Eddie [Barsky] is a saint. That’s where we put our saints in this country – in jail.”3

Why would the life of a surgeon elicit such a moniker from Hemingway, the rugged, mythical, flawed icon of American masculinity? Perhaps it is because Barsky’s life lends itself to a description mirroring the heroic tale of one of Hemingway’s literary protagonists. A citizen radicalized by the scenes of Depression-era New York. A heroic surgeon who operated under fire on a foreign battlefield for the cause of liberty. A stalwart activist who ardently campaigned for the cause of a doomed republic. A lonely voice who spoke in defiance of a government perpetrating a great miscarriage of the values it purportedly held dear. In abstract terms, these descriptions accurately depict the arc of Barsky’s narrative. Tall and spare, with a pencil-thin mustache, Barsky fit the part, whether in the street uniform of an urbane New York physician or

1 Prison Records: Statement of Sentence; Receipt of Personal Property; Edward K. Barsky Papers; ALBA.125; Box 5; Folder 3; Tamiment Library/Robert F. Wagner Labor Archives, Elmer Holmes Bobst Library, 70 Washington Square South, New York, NY 10012, New York University Libraries. From this point forwards, footnotes citing archival sources from the Edward K. Barsky Papers will be formatted with the title of the source followed by “Edward K. Barsky Papers; ALBA.125; Box Number; Folder Number” 2 New York State Board of Education, Committee on Grievances: Hearing Transcript; Edward K. Barsky Papers; ALBA.125; Box 4; Folder 1. 3 Letter from Hemingway to Milton Wolff excerpted in Barsky’s obituary. “Edward Barsky, Surgeon, Dies; Joined Spanish Republican Side,” New York Times, Page 28, February 13, 1975.

5 the white robes and mask of a surgeon at the front. Author and contemporary Howard Fast described him as “a lean, hawklike man, handsome, commanding.”4 Yet, despite these characteristics and the almost-mythic nature of his exploits, the surgeon was never enshrined in the pantheon of American idols, and was in fact punished for his commitment. Barsky was a

Communist. Is it possible for a Communist to also be remembered as a heroic American?

Instead of attaining exalted status, Barsky was exiled and excoriated. He not only temporarily lost his liberty, but also his livelihood. Barsky and his image were thrust into a political maelstrom due to his activism for the cause of Republican Spain during the Spanish

Civil War, exposing him in the early years of the Cold War to appropriation by both sides of the

American political divide. To sympathizers of the Left, like Hemingway, the surgeon was a

“saint,” a martyr whose sacrifice for the cause of Spain and bravery in the face of government persecution were proof of his virtue. For members of the House Un-American Activities

Committee (HUAC), a rabidly anti-communist congressional body aimed at squashing sedition,

Barsky was a threat to American security. Through these competing claims to Barsky’s life and memory, a more nuanced version of the man appears.

I hope to carry the subtleties of Barsky’s character through the thesis, utilizing a wide range of sources to explore the evolution of his political and professional identities. What comes across through the documents is the portrayal of a figure more man than “saint.” Barsky was gallant, steadfast, charismatic. Yet, he could also be cantankerous, impatient, and ambitious; a man who once forced his chauffeur out of the driver’s seat in a blizzard because he knew he could do better behind the wheel.5 In sketching a portrait of Barsky, I hope to understand what

4 Phillip Deery, Red Apple: Communism and McCarthyism in Cold War New York, (New York: Fordham University Press, 2014), 14-15. Deery quotes a recollection by the noted Communist author Howard Fast. 5 James Neugass, War is Beautiful, eds. Peter N. Carroll and Peter Glazer (New York: New Press, 2008), 95-96.

6 compelled a man to abandon his comfortable life in New York for the front in Spain. How did

Barsky’s politics evolve so that the Spanish Civil War became the defining cause of his life?

How did Barsky reconcile his identity as a surgeon and activist? Why did this political development become threatening to segments of American society? Why, when faced with persecution, did Barsky remain willing to face national anathema for his ideals?

Embedding Barsky’s narrative within the political currents of the mid-twentieth century also provides a lens through which to explore the complex and often contradictory shifts in

American policy and politics. Following Barsky through the crucible of Depression-era New

York emphasizes the flourishing of radical politics amidst a nation’s suffering and the deep- seated divides which threatened to tear apart the nation at the seams. The surgeon’s service in

Spain and the political controversy surrounding it exposes the betrayal of democracy by the

United States during the Spanish Civil War and the complicated position occupied by American veterans of the conflict when they returned home. Barsky’s persecution during the McCarthyist period reveals the nature of the perceived Communist threat during the early stages of the Cold

War and the anticommunist machinery aligned to combat it.

Biographical Information:

Edward K. Barsky was born into a medical family on June 6, 1897. His father was a leading New York surgeon who helped to found Beth Israel Hospital. Barsky would go on to attend city public schools, and matriculate at the City College of New York. He attended medical school at the Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons and did post-graduate

7 work in several European cities. Barsky began his surgical career in the hospital his father helped to found, starting as an intern in 1919.6

After slowly rising through the ranks of the surgical establishment in New York,

Barsky’s life was irrevocably altered by a political meeting in 1936, at which he heard an impassioned plea for aid to the Spanish Republic, whose lawfully-elected republican government was under siege by an army rebellion supported militarily by the Fascist dictatorships of Nazi

Germany and Italy.7 Spurred to support Spain in any way he could, Barsky helped to found the

American Medical Bureau to Aid Spanish Democracy (AMB), and organized a contingent of doctors, nurses, and support staff to establish hospitals in Spain with him at its head.8

In 1939, with defeat of the Republican forces imminent, Barsky departed Spain for New

York. Despite the collapse of democratic Spain, Barsky immediately set out to aid the refugees and victims of the Spanish Civil War. Although Barsky was prominent in several American aid organizations, his major commitment came through his leadership of the Joint Anti-Fascist

Refugee Committee (JAFRC), which organized fundraising and direct support for victims of the conflict as well as conducted political advocacy against the Fascist regime established by

General Francisco Franco in Spain after his victory in April 1939. However, the work of the

JAFRC and Barsky’s service in Spain exposed the organization to investigation by HUAC in

1945.9 The committee cast the JAFRC as a “communist front,” whose exterior humanitarian motivations were used to mask the organization’s true intention: inciting a movement to

6 Abraham Lincoln Brigade Archives. “Edward K. Barsky Biography,” accessed April 2, 2019. http://www.alba- valb.org/volunteers/edward-k.-barsky. 7 A Surgeon Goes to War manuscript copy; Edward K. Barsky Papers; ALBA.125; Box 5; Folder 14, Page 11. 8 Neugass, War is Beautiful, xiv. 9 “Edward K. Barsky Biography.”

8 overthrow the United States government.10 Barsky’s refusal to submit to the spurious claims of

HUAC caused him to be charged with contempt of Congress and imprisoned in 1950. Upon his release, Barsky’s persecution was culminated by a decision of the New York State Board of

Regents to suspend his medical license due to his prior conviction, despite an exemplary record of medical service. 11 By 1954, when Barsky’s license suspension was confirmed by the Supreme

Court, the surgeon had been subjected to internal exile due to his political beliefs.

Chronology:

In this thesis, I have decided to primarily limit my chronological focus to the time span from 1935, the year in which Barsky joined the Communist Party of the United States of

America (CPUSA), to 1954, the last major ruling concerning Barsky’s politics, Barsky v. Board of Regents. Although Barsky was active as a surgeon for almost six decades, the period spans the major events in the surgeon’s political evolution and persecution, foregrounded in his tireless activism for the cause of Republican Spain and its refugees. This period also coincides with the greatest wealth of primary sources on Barsky. I divide the project into three disparate chronological periods which comprise the chapters. The first details Barsky’s political evolution through the end of 1936, the second covers the surgeon’s relief mission to Spain from 1937 to

1939 and the final chapter describes his persecution due to his continued activism for the Spanish cause.

Primary Sources:

To make this thesis possible, I have been privileged to work with a wide-ranging base of primary sources, drawing heavily from the Edward K. Barsky Papers housed in the Abraham

10 Ellen Schrecker, The Age of McCarthyism: A Brief History with Documents, 2nd ed., (New York: Palgrave, 2002), 8-9. 11 “Edward K. Barsky Biography.”

9 Lincoln Brigade Archives at New York University’s Tamiment Library and Robert F. Wagner

Labor Archives.

Memoirs also comprise a significant foundation for my exploration of Barsky’s life.

However, the use of memoirs also necessitates an acknowledgement of their inherent limitations as historical sources. While they offer almost unparalleled access to historical figures and events, there are significant questions which surround bias, memory, and accuracy of events portrayed, which has led me to painstakingly corroborate the events described when possible. These considerations are particularly salient with A Surgeon Goes to War, Barsky’s unpublished memoir, which I utilize significantly in the thesis. The manuscript was co-written by Elizabeth

Waugh and is undated. After close reading of the memoir, I feel confident in dating the manuscript from late 1939 or early 1940, due to the timing of events which Barsky chronicles.

While Barsky mentions the German invasion of Poland as further evidence of Fascist aggression, he does not cite later events in World War II. This textual evidence seems to suggest that Barsky wrote the memoir only a few months after his return home to the United States from Spain.12 I have been unable to establish the reasons which prevented its publication, and also have not established concrete biographical details for Barsky’s co-writer. However, Barsky’s account is an invaluable source due to the access it affords to the surgeon’s motivations while also bringing to life the conflict in Spain. I also draw upon the recently published memoir of James Neugass,

War is Beautiful: An American Ambulance Driver in the Spanish Civil War. Neugass was an

American volunteer and Barsky’s primary driver in Spain.13 The connections between the two memoirs and their depictions of Spain has also been a valuable source of insight for the thesis.

12 A Surgeon Goes to War manuscript copy; Edward K. Barsky Papers; ALBA.125; Box 5; Folder 14. 13 Neugass, War is Beautiful.

10 One body of primary sources I used are government sources and files, which are particularly prominent in my third chapter. I have used the extensive FBI files collected on

Barsky and his relief organization, the JAFRC, to gain a more nuanced understanding of the government’s rationale for the surgeon’s investigation. The files, previously classified and heavily redacted, have been significant in offering an alternative perspective to Barsky’s narrative. These bureaucratic reports are complemented with the significant use of government records which detail Barsky’s testimony to Congress and the series of legal cases brought forward upon his behalf. Although my concern in this thesis is not the legal ramifications of

Barsky’s court cases, I have used these sources to show the mechanisms of anticommunist oppression during the early stages of the Cold War, as well as the differing narratives brought forth by supporters and government harassers.

The second body of primary sources I have utilized extensively in the thesis are associated with the various organizations which Barsky led and the causes which he participated in. Within this category, I have drawn prominently from written sources on the AMB and the

JAFRC, which have helped to show the ways in which Barsky shaped his public discourse to correspond to the changing political currents in the United States. These sources have also been instrumental in understanding the aims and character of the organizations which Barsky was heavily involved in. I have also used newspaper articles when possible to contextualize the public discourse and coverage surrounding important events in Barsky’s life.

However, my research on Barsky has also been defined by the sources I don’t have. This absence speaks both to the inherent difficulties of biography and in Barsky’s case, also a reminder of the fragility of his legacy. Despite the mythic events of his life, Barsky as a historical subject has been elusive. For much of his life, I have been unable to pierce Barsky’s

11 public persona to access inner motivations and attitudes toward events. A Surgeon Goes to War,

Barsky’s memoir, has been vital to penetrating this façade for his short span in Spain. For much of his life, however, it has not been possible to gain insight beyond concrete biographical details.

The decades of Barsky’s life bookending the chronological scope of this thesis are connected by the dearth of primary sources concerning them. Of Barsky’s upbringing and surgical training almost no trace exists in his papers, and it is only possible to begin to gain a more complete picture with the advent of his political infatuation with the cause of Spain. Although slightly more rich, there is a significant downturn in the primary sources available for the period after his persecution. The lack of sources from Barsky’s later life is a testament to the comprehensive nature of the surgeon’s harassment.

Historiographical Contribution:

The large chronological span of my thesis necessitated interaction with several disparate bodies of secondary literature, which was complicated by the paucity of extant sources concerned specifically with Barsky. Only one historian, Phillip Deery, has written with Barsky as a primary focus. He includes a chapter in Red Apple: Communism and McCarthyism in Cold

War New York dedicated to an analysis of Barsky’s persecution during the McCarthyist period.

However, Deery’s focus is squared on exploring the harassment of Barsky and the JAFRC to

“illuminate the character of political repression during the Cold War.”14 Although indebted to the painstaking research conducted by Deery on the Cold War era, my thesis has a significantly different focus and scope. I am concerned less with the mechanisms of Cold War persecution than with Barsky as a man, and the way in which the full arc of his narrative exposes the contradictions and shifts in United States politics. The thesis is both a political biography and a

14 Deery, Red Apple, 14-15.

12 study of Barsky’s motivations and beliefs, and I believe that this multi-faceted nature will help to add to existing historiographies.

Through my exploration of Barsky’s service in Spain and the formation of the American

Medical Bureau to Aid Spanish Democracy (AMB), of which the surgeon was chair, I have discovered significant holes in the historiography of American involvement in the Spanish Civil

War. While Barsky emerges as a bit player in scholarly works concerning the Spanish Civil War and the Abraham Lincoln Brigade, there is a pronounced lack of historical treatment of Barsky’s medical organization, the AMB. As Paul Preston, a noted British historian of modern Spain, writes in the preface to Salud, Linda Palfreeman’s work on British medical aid to the

Republicans in Spain, “The American contribution to the Republican Medical Services has still to find its historian.”15 I hope in some small way to have added to the historiography of the AMB in this thesis. Ancillary to my biographical exploration of Barsky, the thesis has also augmented the historiography of American relief in Spain. This project has also helped to expand the historiography of Spanish relief after the fall of Republican Spain through my exploration of the

JAFRC. My thesis primarily addresses the pronounced historiographical hole surrounding

Barsky’s life while also helping to broaden existing, yet underdeveloped bodies of literature investigating American involvement in the Spanish Civil War and its legacy in United States politics.

Chapter Summaries and Overview:

In the first chapter, I trace the transformation of Barsky’s politics in the crucible of

Depression-era New York and how this led to the surgeon’s commitment to sacrifice for his

15 Linda Palfreeman, Salud! British Volunteers in the Republican Medical Service During the Spanish Civil War: 1936-1939, (Portland: Sussex Academic Press, 2012), xiv.

13 beliefs on the battlefields of Spain. Through the lens of both domestic and international developments in the 1930’s, I chart Barsky’s shift toward progressive politics and his decision to join the Communist Party of the United States of America (CPUSA). Although written sources revealing Barsky’s political evolution and medical practice are largely non-existent during this period of his life, it is possible to track the surgeon through the turbulent social and political currents gripping New York. Why did Barsky, an established surgeon well into his middle age, decide to upend his stable profession to lead a dangerous medical relief mission to Spain? What was it specifically about Spain, among the litany of other causes championed by New York progressives? What does this decision, and the decision made by thousands of other volunteers, reveal about American politics during the Depression?

If the first chapter is a wide-angled view of Barsky’s political awakening in Depression- era New York, then the second chapter is a zoomed-in portrait of the surgeon in the operating theater. Due to the surgeon’s memoir, it is possible to minutely trace the crystallization of

Barsky’s political beliefs into unswerving support for democratic Spain and those who fought and suffered for it. Yet, in the bloody triage rooms of overcrowded hospitals, Barsky also develops an abhorrence for modern war and the human suffering wrought by it. Barsky’s retort to the horror of war is a commitment to science and medicine as the only means to alleviate misery. How did Barsky’s experiences in Spain reify the political ideals he used to legitimize his support of the Republic? How did Barsky utilize scientific innovation to ameliorate the conditions of war? How was the fate of the Spanish republic at the mercy of political realities in

American and Western Europe? I hope to utilize Barsky’s personal journey in Spain to emphasize the contradictions in American policy, as well as foreground the surgeon’s increasing commitment to the cause of the Republic.

14 The final chapter is similar to the first in that it examines Barsky from a greater distance, chronicling the surgeon’s continued commitment to Spain and his persecution by the United

States government. Through Barsky’s work with the JAFRC and other relief organizations, I hope to show that Barsky’s attitude toward Spain and his efforts to organize relief for the victims of the Spanish Civil War did not markedly change from the nature of his aid work in 1936.

However, despite Barsky’s resolute stance toward Spain, the American political landscape had shifted. What had changed in American politics to spur Barsky’s persecution and why did the surgeon emerge as a perceived threat? How did two different narratives of Barsky emerge in this period, and what does this reveal about the shifting perception of leftist politics? How does

Barsky’s fate speak to the persecution of other American Spanish Civil War veterans and activists?

15 Chapter One

Premature Anti-fascist: Barsky’s Politicization in Depression-Era New York

As the S.S. Paris edged out of New York harbor in January 1937, 39-year-old surgeon Dr. Edward Barsky laid in his bunk below-decks. Throngs on the crowded deck above clamored for a glimpse of the Statue of Liberty, but Barsky was content to finally rest after the frenzied preparations to prepare his medical outfit for departure. Headed for Spain, he could barely believe that he was on his way to the frontlines. As he recalled in his memoir, A Surgeon

Goes to War, “Nothing would have seemed more impossible to me three months before than that

I should be sailing away to a country at war at the head of a medical mission.”1 Although it seemed inconceivable to Barsky that he was departing to Spain, the nervousness he had felt during the preparations had faded into exhaustion. Barsky’s decision to leave the United States marked a crucial stage in his political awakening, a process that had been forged by the crucible of Depression-era politics in the turbulent confines of bustling New York City. As he lay in his bunk on the Paris, Barsky had sacrificed his stable lifestyle, livelihood, and occupation for his convictions, deciding that his skills as a surgeon were much better utilized on the battlefields of

Spain than in the confines of American hospitals. The doctor’s decision to upend his life forced him to evaluate the ethical and political ramifications of a volunteer surgeon’s role in a foreign war.

Barsky’s interest in the cause of the Spanish Civil War was forged amidst the economic and political turmoil which characterized the opening years of the 1930s. As a citizen in Depression-era New York, Barsky experienced first-hand the political turbulence spawned by suffering. The city became a center of radical politics and activism, spurred by economic

1 A Surgeon Goes to War, 10.

16 hardship as well as the strong connection between the city and international events. No organization was more attuned to the international politics of the interwar period than the

CPUSA. To comprehend Barsky’s decision to join the Communist Party, it is essential to contextualize his decision through an exploration of the history of American Communism.

Barsky’s association with progressive politics culminated in a commitment to the cause of the

Spanish Republic. The surgeon’s progression from Communist to battlefield surgeon is rooted in the history of political activism in New York, a movement intimately connected with the ascendancy of Fascist regimes on the world stage. This chapter contextualizes Barsky’s actions within the political environment of the 1930s, while also using the surgeon’s narrative to capture the challenges faced by the CPUSA in weathering shifts in domestic and international politics.

In the United States in general and more specifically in New York City, the Great

Depression was devastating, with unemployment figures reaching as high as 25 percent and thousands of families forced to rely on relief and other means to scrape by.2 After the stock market crash of 1929, the economic crisis was accompanied by a staggering rise in unemployment, causing immense suffering for American families. The calamity reached a crescendo in March 1933, with estimates of more than 15 million workers unemployed.3 Moving through the streets of New York in the early 1930’s, Barsky witnessed the horrors of the

Depression, perhaps on his daily commute to Beth Israel Hospital, where he steadily rose through the medical hierarchy to achieve the position of associate surgeon in 1934.4

2 Peter N. Carroll, “Introduction,” in Facing Fascism: New York and the Spanish Civil War, eds. Peter N. Carroll and James D. Fernandez (New York: Museum of the City of New York: NYU Press, 2007), 13. 3 Fraser M Ottanelli, The Communist Party of the United States: From the Depression to World War II (New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 1991), 28. 4 “Edward K. Barsky Biography.”

17 One prominent effect of the economic downturn was the intensifying politicization of

New York during the 1930s. Progressive political ideas became increasingly popular against the hopeless scenes of the Depression. One of the major benefactors of this awakening in leftist politics was the Communist Party of the United States of America (CPUSA). The Party had emerged from radical elements of the Socialist Party from 1917-1919.5 A symptom of growing political polarization after World War I, members of the nascent Communist Party and other leftist groups had been subject to intense scrutiny and persecution during the Big Red Scare. The scare was prompted by fears of an armed uprising which would threaten the United States government. These anxieties were fed by the success of the Russian Revolution and increasing class strife within the United States, as well as the formation of the CPUSA and the Communist

Labor Party. From 1919 to 1920, the government conducted a large crackdown on radical groups under the direction of Attorney General A. Mitchell Palmer, which led to the arrest of more than

6,000 suspected communists and a wave of anti-radical legislation at both the federal and state level. However, decreasing fears of communist revolution and a loss of political influence for

Palmer contributed to the conclusion of the first large-scale anti-communist crackdown.6 As the

1920’s progressed, the CPUSA largely struggled as competing ideological factions contributed to a state of disunity within the party.7

However, the party was primed for growth in the 1930’s. As the American economy collapsed, Peter Carroll argues in The Odyssey of the Abraham Lincoln Brigade that the

American Communist Party began to present a much wider appeal to the economically disenfranchised because they not only “condemn[ed] economic conditions but also… propos[ed]

5 Ottanelli, The Communist Party of the United States, 9. 6 M.J. Heale, American Anti-communism: Combating the Enemy Within: 1830-1970, (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1990), 60-78. 7 Ottanelli, The Communist Party of the United States, 9.

18 concrete alternatives.”8 Quickly after the crash of the stock market, the party was already advocating for unemployment benefits and other relief measures through mass protests in major cities across the country.9 Ideologically, the crash of the stock market fit neatly into a Marxist historical theory, which described an economic “third period” where unbalanced capitalistic expansion would cause rapid economic downfall and present an opportunity for a revolution led by the proletariat.10 Ideological interpretations were disseminated by the Communist

International (Comintern), which significantly shaped the policies of the CPUSA and its relationships with other political groups. With power concentrated mostly in the hands of the

Russians, the Comintern was a body which sought to spread the worldwide influence of communism through direct supervision of constituent communist parties in countries across the world. In the Heyday of American Communism, Harvey Khehr argues that “It was abroad, in

Moscow, that the decisive formulations were made which the Americans labored to apply to

American conditions.”11

Therefore, to understand the political shifts of the CPUSA, it is imperative to recognize the influence of the Comintern. The CPUSA largely worked to integrate directives from the Communist International with particular American conditions.12 Initial Comintern analysis through the lens of the “third period” saw fundamentally no difference between liberal democracy and fascism, as both governments were controlled by the bourgeoisie. This view held strong in the CPUSA through the spring of 1934, and was particularly manifested in opposition to the Socialist Party, which was accused of confusing workers by convincing them to fight for

8 Peter N. Carroll, The Odyssey of the Abraham Lincoln Brigade: Americans in the Spanish Civil War, (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1994), 36. 9 Carroll, The Odyssey of the Abraham Lincoln Brigade, 36. 10 Ottanelli, The Communist Party of the United States, 18-19. 11 Harvey Klehr, The Heyday of American Communism: The Depression Decade (New York: Basic Books, 1984), 11. 12 Ibid., 7-11.

19 predatory capitalist structures under the guise of socialism. This intense opprobrium was emblematized by the violent CPUSA break-up of a Socialist rally in Madison Square Garden, which was conducted by an estimated 5,000 party members led by Robert Minor and Clarence

Hathaway, editor of the Daily Worker.13 However, the course of the Party would be altered by shifts within both the Comintern and American domestic politics.

Amidst the backdrop of increasing politicization and economic strife across America, in 1932 the country elected New York Governor Franklin D. Roosevelt to the presidency, campaigning on a platform of “New Deal” policies and hope for economic recovery.14 In Europe, the turbulence caused by the economic downturn would have particularly devastating effects, as fascism proved to be an alluring platform for populist politicians promising rapid growth in both national economic conditions and prestige. In Germany, Adolf Hitler ascended to power as chancellor in January 1933, joining Benito Mussolini of Italy as leaders of fascist European states. On the date of Hitler’s acceptance of the German chancellorship, the New York Times wrote that the move had engendered “sentiments akin to joy around Italy.”15 Hitler’s rise to power in Germany and the continued fascist threat in Italy was the impetus for a major shift in ideology for worldwide Communists.

Although the Communists would see increasing Party involvement and support, the rising threat of fascism forced the CPUSA to re-orient its political message away from the militarism of the “third period.”16 The new political strategy devised by the Communists was called the Popular Front. As Ottanelli writes in “The New York City Left and the Spanish Civil

War,” the Popular Front was based in America on the concept of forming a “broad alliance with

13 Ottanelli, The Communist Party of the United States, 54-56. 14 Carroll, “Introduction,” 11. 15 “Italians Acclaim the Hitler Regime,” New York Times, Page 3, January, 31, 1933. 16 Ottanelli, The Communist Party of the United States, 49.

20 socialist and liberal forces in defense of democratic institutions against fascism.”17 The moderation of the policies of the CPUSA was a result of the desire to balance directives of the

Comintern with the institution of policies which would make the Party the most relevant to concerns on the national level.18 Domestically, strong anti-fascist sentiment at the grassroots level began to impact Communist ideology and spurred an evolution of the Party’s message. The organic shift of American Communist philosophies was supplemented by a commensurate shift in the Comintern. A radical change in policy was announced at the Seventh World Congress of the Communist International, held in Moscow from July 25 to August 20, 1935. In the keynote address, Georgi Dimitrov, the Comintern’s secretary general, advocated for the formation of a

“Popular Front,” uniting Communist, Socialist, and liberal democratic institutions to defeat fascism.19

Barsky joined the Communist Party in 1935, not long after the seismic shift of the

CPUSA toward the Popular Front.20 Although there are no sources which reveal Barsky’s rationale for joining the Party, perhaps he was impacted by the symbolism of the Popular Front.

One of the major immediate impacts of the new ideology was to mitigate the uneasiness felt by many native-born Americans, as the Party’s new inclusiveness embraced patriotic sentiment.

Before the Popular Front, many Americans had viewed Communism as a “foreign” ideology. By aligning the CPUSA with traditional American values and distancing the party from overt links with the Soviet Union, the Popular Front enabled many Americans, like Barsky, to connect with

17 Fraser M. Ottanelli, “The New York City Left and the Spanish Civil War,” in Facing Fascism: New York and the Spanish Civil War, eds. Peter N. Carroll and James D. Fernandez (New York: Museum of the City of New York: NYU Press, 2007), 64-65. 18 See Ottanelli, The Communist Party of the United States, 4. His analysis of the CPUSA differs from earlier histories in that it treats grass-roots Communist organizing and directives from the Comintern in concert, rather than as separate guiding principles. 19 Ibid., 83-85. 20 Deery, Red Apple, 13.

21 the Party through the foregrounding of fascist danger to world peace.21 Carroll argues that the

Popular Front allowed Americans to draw concrete connections between Mussolini, Hitler, and other fascist regimes in a philosophy of fascist world conquest, and to forge a more cohesive opposition to world fascism which would crystallize in the Spanish crisis.22

However, despite the clear threats of fascism perceived by many in America, including Barsky, there were considerable divisions of opinion concerning Hitler and Mussolini in New York. These divisions were spurred, in part, by the demographics of the city, home to an incredibly diverse population with intense reactions to international events.23 New York’s divergent political perspectives were due in large part to the scores of immigrants and ex- patriates who made up large parts of the city’s demographic. In the 1930 census, the foreign-born population of the five boroughs was almost 2.5 million, with the number of foreign-born in

Manhattan, where Barsky resided, tallying 689,506.24 The city was also home to a significant

Jewish minority, comprising the largest such community in the United States. In a report from the Demographic Study Committee of the Federation of Jewish Philanthropies in 1958, the authors estimated that in 1930, there were 1.825 million Jews in New York.25 The diverse population of the city led to inevitable polarization as events unfolded abroad. This polarization often erupted into intense tension between differing factions within the city.26 The accession to

21 Carroll, The Odyssey of the Abraham Lincoln Brigade, 50. 22 Ibid. 23 Mike Wallace, “New York and the World: The Global Context,” in Facing Fascism: New York and the Spanish Civil War, eds. Peter N. Carroll and James D. Fernandez (New York: Museum of the City of New York: NYU Press, 2007), 21-25. 24 Department of New York City Planning. “Foreign-Born Population, Census of 1930,” Accessed November 22, 2018. https://www1.nyc.gov/assets/planning/download/pdf/data-maps/nyc-population/historical- population/nyc_fb_pop_1900-2010.pdf 25 C. Morris Horowitz, Lawrence J. Kaplan, Hon. James Felt, “The Estimated Jewish Population of the New York Area 1900-1975,” The Demographic Study Committee of the Federation of Jewish Philanthropies, Jewish Databank. Accessed November 22, 2018. https://www.jewishdatabank.org/content/upload/bjdb/511/C-NY- New_York-1959-Main_Report.pdf 26 Wallace, “New York and the World,” 21.

22 power of Adolf Hitler in Germany was met with a mixed reaction by New Yorkers with connections to Germany. Although many protested the Nazis or stayed silent, the way in which

Hitler appeared to restore Germany to its pre-World War I glory was deeply appealing to ethnic

Germans. This was epitomized by the German Day celebration of 1935, held in Madison Square

Garden, broadcast directly to Germany and festooned with swastikas.27

However, any German-American support for Hitler’s regime was undercut by the massive up-swell of opposition which was levied by the city’s Jewish population. The first signs of protest against Hitler occurred not long after his accession to power. In March of 1933 a

Jewish War Veterans unit advocated for a nation-wide boycott on German goods. The radical action was endorsed by the American Jewish Congress, which solidified its support with a rally in Madison Square Garden, the home of massive political demonstrations. In the New York

Times on March 29, 1933, a reported three thousand Jews of Williamsburg in Brooklyn “adopted a resolution pledging themselves to boycott German goods until such time as the reported atrocities in Germany shall cease.”28 The process of community organization was mirrored across the city among Jewish communities. Although many Jewish citizens with deeper roots in

American society were hesitant to upset the status quo, which they felt could adversely impact relatives in Germany, the early mobilization against the Nazis quickly blossomed into a mass movement in New York. Protests and demonstrations gripped all five boroughs, and the insistent efforts of the boycotters even forced the city’s largest department stores to sever ties with

German companies.29 Many of the Jewish protesters looking for a way to fight the prejudice and trespasses of the Nazis would eventually come to bring their fight to Spain, the closest they could

27 Ibid., 22. 28 “Brooklyn Jews Protest,” New York Times, Page 8, March 29, 1933. 29 Wallace, “New York and the World,” 22.

23 get to taking the fight to Hitler. As a Jewish citizen of New York, Barsky was likely aware of the intense political mobilization against Hitler, and perhaps this contributed to the surgeon’s political awakening. As Abraham Lincoln volunteer Hyman Katz wrote in a November 1937 letter home to his mother from a Spanish hospital, “Seeing all these things – how fascism is grasping power in many countries… can’t you see that fascism is our own problem – that it may come to us as it came to other countries? And don’t you realize that we Jews will be the first to suffer if fascism comes?”30 Katz would perish only a few months later on the battlefield in

March 1938 at Belchite.31

Similar battle lines emerged in New York over the policies of Benito Mussolini, which pitted the city’s communities of Italian-Americans against various opposition groups, especially the city’s African-Americans. Many of the New Yorkers who originally protested the excesses of Mussolini would form the bedrock of nascent Spanish relief organizations. Mike

Wallace argues in “New York and the World: The Global Context” that Mussolini achieved a far greater degree of support in New York than Hitler, due in large part to the watered-down version of fascism peddled by the “Italian Bureau of Fascists Abroad.”32 Adulation for “Il Duce” was visible across the Italian-American communities of the city in parades and through portraits and other representations visible in homes, stores, and public gathering places.33 The strongest opposition in the Italian-American community toward the dictator’s policies came from laborers and progressives, but even these limited voices were for the most part silenced by Mussolini’s announcement of his intent to invade Ethiopia in 1934.

30 Wallace, “New York and the World,” 25. 31 Abraham Lincoln Brigade Archives. “Hyman Jacob Katz Biography,” accessed December 9, 2018. http://www.alba-valb.org/volunteers/hyman-jacob-katz 32 Wallace, “New York and the World,” 23. 33 Ibid.

24 As part of this attempt to restore the glories of Ancient Rome, Italians abroad were expected to lend their allegiance to the cause. Wallace argues that for New York’s Italians, regardless of political affiliation, this new imperial cause was a rallying cry hard to ignore.34

Another pivotal contribution to the growing unrest was the increasing political outrage of the city’s African-American community against fascist policies. The community took it as an attack on blacks across the globe. African-American groups across the political and intellectual spectrum were outraged. Thousands of New Yorkers expressed an interest in volunteering to support the beleaguered army of Ethiopia, but U.S. government opposition forced Ethiopian

Emperor Haile Selassie to end the solicitation of volunteers.35 CPUSA operatives leveraged the conflict in Ethiopia to intensify anti-fascist feeling among African-Americans in an effort to move them closer to the political constellation of the American Popular Front.36 The environment was one of organization and activism, and support for the African nation became widespread across racial boundaries.

The frenzied drive of New Yorkers to organize support for Ethiopia in 1935 would foreshadow the drive to help Spain. Organizations like American Aid for Ethiopia, the

Committee for Ethiopia, and the Medical Committee for the Defense of Ethiopia would all organize aid for the embattled country, stemming from trends of activism and political organization which would also be significant for Barsky in his push to send medical aid to

Spain.37 The conflict in Ethiopia was also a flash point for the increasingly radicalized youth of

New York forged by the conditions of the Depression. Many of them would later serve in Spain.

Protests erupted across the nation, including at the City College of New York, Barsky’s alma

34 Wallace, “New York and the World,” 24. 35 Ibid., 26. 36 Carroll, The Odyssey of the Abraham Lincoln Brigade, 54. 37 Wallace, “New York and the World,” 26.

25 mater, where future Lincoln Brigade fighter Wilfred Mendelson and 21 other students were expelled for protesting a team of Italian aviators appearing on campus.38 The crisis of Ethiopia foreshadowed an even greater response of New York to the next victim of fascist aggression. The increasing anti-fascist sentiment in New York engendered by the imperialism of Mussolini and the atrocities of Hitler’s regime, along with the increasing presence of American progressive politics in the form of the CPUSA, were well situated to seize upon the cause of Spain in 1936.

Ironically, the conflict in Spain was presaged by a political transition which would have been considered an unquestionable success by Barsky and other American progressives.

Compared to other Western European nations, Spain had modernized late and incompletely, leading to a profoundly divided society. By the end of the First World War, during which the country had retained neutrality, Spain was rife with social problems and controlled by a small, visible group of elites who had a stranglehold on the country’s wealth. The result of centuries of political factionalism and a seven-year military dictatorship under Miguel Primo de Rivera from

1923-1930, the Second Republic was formed in 1931.39 The experiment would be only Spain’s second brief attempt at democracy. However, despite the new parliamentarian government, Spain remained a nation where millions lived in abject poverty, attempting to survive through a feudal subsistence on the landed estates of the wealthy. Socially, the conservatism of the entrenched

Catholic Church still dominated, aligned with the wealthy landowners and top-heavy military organization against basic human rights such as suffrage for women, divorce, and the separation of church and state.40

38 Carroll, The Odyssey of the Abraham Lincoln Brigade, 54. 39 Fredrick B. Pike, “The Background to the Civil War in Spain and the U.S. Response to the War,” in The Spanish Civil War, 1936-1939: American Hemispheric Perspectives, eds. Mark Falcoff and Fredrick B. Pike (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1982), 11. 40 Cary Nelson, “Introduction,” in Madrid 1937: Letters of the Abraham Lincoln Brigade from the Spanish Civil War, eds. Jefferson Hendricks and Cary Nelson (New York: Routledge, 1996), 2-3.

26 Over the next five years, political and ideological competition would characterize the republic. A symptom of the political fragmentation of Spain came in the form of the Asturian strike of October 1934. The action was spurred by opposition of the Spanish Left to government policy, and devolved into an armed rebellion in the Northern region of Asturias, where striking workers seized control of industrial centers and towns and established provisionary governments.

The government response was quick and brutal, as General Francisco Franco led a response of

Moorish troops, airstrikes, and naval actions which quickly squashed resistance. 41 In the aftermath, Franco orchestrated a brutal suppression of the surviving miners. More than 15,000 strikers would be arrested across Spain, with many subjected to beatings and rarely, torture.42

The memory of Asturias would remain particularly salient for groups on the left. From leftist groups like the anarchists and communists, to the far-right fringes of the fascist Falange and the

Carlists, Spain remained hopelessly divided.43

Just before the military uprising that unleashed war, a progressive coalition government was elected in February of 1936. Known as the Popular Front, the new coalition was dominated by progressive political parties, especially the Socialists. The new government sought to erode the political power of the landed aristocracy, which continued to exert significant political power. Facets of this initiative included major reforms which re-distributed land and modernized education, as well as eroded the power of the military.44 In a dispatch from Spain by

William Carney in the New York Times on February 21, the writer cites secularization of education and labor legislation as the two most important items on the agenda. However, the

41 Helen Graham, The Spanish Republic at War: 1936-1939, (Cambridge: University of Cambridge Press, 2002), 57- 60. 42 Stanley G. Payne, The Collapse of the Spanish Republic, 1933-1936: Origins of the Civil War, (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2006), 89-91. 43 Pike, “The Background to the Civil War in Spain” and the U.S. Response to the War,” 9-18. 44 Carroll, The Odyssey of the Abraham Lincoln Brigade, 11.

27 coalition also planned to “demand the trial and punishment of the military and police officers who were allegedly ‘cruel and brutal’ in suppressing the Asturias revolt.”45

Almost immediately, opposition to the Popular Front emerged in conservative circles, especially the Spanish military. Although leading Spanish generals were removed from Spanish centers of power, the rumors of an impending coup came to fruition, as the generals staged a military rebellion beginning on July 18. Despite strong support for the elected government in mainland Spain, which allowed cities to initially limit the scope of the insurrection, backing for the rebellion did not disappear, even as several of the leading generals were trapped with their troops in North Africa. As Helen Graham writes in The Spanish Republic at War, “All those who supported Spain’s military rebels in 1936 had in common a fear of where change was leading – whether their fears were of material or psychological loss…or a mixture of these things.”46 The rebellion was an attempt to preserve a specific vision of Spanish society which seemed to be under threat from the Popular Front. The sputtering insurgency was propped up only with the help of outside powers, most notably with military aid from Italy and Germany. By providing the stranded Army of Africa, led by General Francisco Franco, with planes and ships to airlift them to Spain, Hitler and Mussolini rescued the nascent rebellion. Increasingly, the aid that propelled the rebel cause came from the fascist governments of Italy, Portugal and Germany, who responded with materièl and troops to the pleas of the Spanish generals, creating a lopsided military advantage.47

The entrance of the Italians and Germans into the conflict transformed a civil war into an international conflict. However, the nations of Western Europe decided on a course of

45 “Spain’s Left groups press their reforms,” New York Times, Page E5, February 2, 1936. 46 Graham, The Spanish Republic at War, 1. 47 Nelson, “Introduction,” 2-4.

28 cautious non-intervention in the escalating war in Spain. In England, much of the intelligentsia and working class supported the embattled Republican government and the ideals which it stood for. Nevertheless, Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain and his government, motivated by the memory of World War I and significant support for Franco among his Cabinet, pursued a course of strict neutrality.48 France, although initially contributing some materièl to the cause of the

Republicans, would ultimately align with the British. The direction pursued by the two nations was an official stance of non-intervention, which would disallow the provision of military aid to either side. In the agreement, adherence to the pact would be supervised by an international committee. Along with England and France, both Hitler’s Germany and Mussolini’s Italy would join the commitment to non-intervention, and continually flout the agreement, providing significant military aid to Franco. Careful to appease the militaristic regimes, England and

France stood pat.49

In the United States, the reaction to events in Spain was divided along religious and political lines which steered the nation toward outward neutrality. Viewing the values of the

Spanish Republic as aligning with traditional American ideals like the freedom of religion and the separation of church and state, American Protestants overwhelmingly supported the embattled Republican government. However, many American Catholics were quick to throw their support behind the Nationalists. This view was espoused by the Catholic hierarchy, which almost unanimously came out in public support for Franco. Catholics supported the rebel cause due to the secular reforms of the Popular Front, but also because of perceived religious prejudice in the United States. Many Catholics saw Protestant support for the Republic as a subtle religious attack on the Church in America. As Fredrick Pike argues, this led to some Catholics justifying

48 Nelson, “Introduction,” 3. 49 Neugass, War is Beautiful, xii.

29 their support for Franco by couching it in terms of a defense of American values: support for the rebels was a way to combat anarchism and communism.50 Adding to the impact of the vocal support of their leadership, most Catholics who spoke publicly on the war were Francoists. Pike writes that these public shows of support “strengthened the general impression that virtually all

American Catholics favored the Franco-led ‘crusade.’”51 This perception failed to account for the strong minority of Catholics who supported the Republic but were often afraid to challenge the

Church establishment.52

Public opinion in the United States by 1936 was strongly pitted against fascism and its expansion. Barsky’s aversion to the encroaching Fascist regimes was closely aligned with the dominant national sentiment. A theory of a domino effect of fascistic contagion spreading to

Latin America with the fall of democratic Spain was especially prevalent, as a strong link was assumed to exist between the government of Spain and governments in Central and South

America. This view was endorsed by important members of the State department, who believed that a Francoist victory would make the spread of fascism inevitable to Latin America.53 Another successful piece of propaganda was peddled by American Communists to sway public opinion toward the Republic. They argued that Franco symbolized a fascistic capitalistic conspiracy set on consolidating economic power and disenfranchising the middle classes in Spain. On the whole, American sympathies were aligned with the Republican cause. However, despite public opinion, there was still profound political resistance and skepticism toward American intervention.54

50 Pike, “The Background to the Civil War in Spain,” 21. 51 Ibid. 52 Ibid., 22. 53 Ibid., 29. 54 Ibid., 23-25.

30 The policy of the United States toward the Spanish conflict was informed by both political realities and the country’s history of isolationism in the 1930’s. Although President

Roosevelt was sympathetic to the cause of the Spanish Republic, the rest of his Democratic coalition was not.55 Any sympathy for the Spanish cause was also tempered by a deep-seated fear of entanglement in a broader European conflict, which would directly contradict American efforts to remain isolated from events overseas.56 In Freedom From Fear: The American People in Depression and War, David Kennedy emphasizes the pervasiveness of isolationist sentiment within the American public. The average U.S. citizen had no desire to meddle in the turbulent affairs of Europe.57 The decision to remain neutral in the conflict was also likely informed by the country’s diplomatic concerns about influence in the Western Hemisphere. Although several high-ranking State Department officials supported the Spanish Loyalists, others were concerned that the progressive elements of the Popular Front coalition in Spain, most significantly the

Communist Party contingent, were liable to take over the government and pose a legitimate threat to American corporate interests. In that scenario, American influence would also be threatened in Latin America. By 1936, the United States had invested nearly $3 billion in the region, but was increasingly worried about an anti-capitalist trend which had led to threatening conditions against American oil ventures in Mexico, Bolivia, Venezuela, and Peru. The administration was hopeful that by keeping a hands-off approach in Spain they could mitigate the risk of further antagonizing Latin American regimes, preserving foreign policy interests which

55 Carroll, “Introduction,” 13. 56 Pike, “The Background to the Civil War in Spain,” 28. 57 David M. Kennedy, Freedom From Fear: The American People in Depression and War, 1929-1945 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1999), 41-42.

31 were much more important and deeply-entrenched than the American commitment to Spanish democracy.58

Despite the polarized opinions within Roosevelt’s government, in January 1937 both the Senate and the House of Representatives approved neutrality toward Spain with the Spanish

Embargo Act, with only one congressman voting against the proposal, John T. Bernard of

Minnesota’s Farmer-Labor Party.59 The passage of the legislation was spurred by attempts to send American aircraft through Mexico to aid the Republic, which was considered a violation of the “moral” embargo despite being inside the letter of the law. Despite its claim to neutrality, the

Embargo Act of 1937 did not prevent large American corporations sympathetic to Franco from selling oil and other goods to the military rebels on credit.60 Thus, only Spain’s legal government was embargoed. For many Americans, including Barsky, the American response was a clear moral failure, and provided an even greater impetus to act on behalf of the beleaguered Republic.

The outbreak of war in Spain caused similar political polarization in New York, dividing the city along lines of support for either Franco or the elected government. While much of the Catholic community of the city firmly came down in support of Franco, epitomized by editor Patrick Scanlan’s vociferous support in the Brooklyn Tablet, the Diocese of Brooklyn’s official paper, condemnation of the military rebellion was met with even wider support.61 From the beginning of the conflict, a wide constellation of groups in New York fought to counter

America’s isolationist sentiment and provide aid for the Republican cause. Pillars of support in the city included “labor unions, anarchists, socialists, communists, liberals, intellectuals, African

58 Pike, “The Background to the Civil War in Spain,” 29. 59 See Pike, “The Background to the Civil War in Spain,” 28 and Carroll, The Odyssey of the Abraham Lincoln Brigade, 61. 60 Carroll, The Odyssey of the Abraham Lincoln Brigade, 62. 61 Patrick J. McNamara, “Pro-Franco Sentiment and Activity in New York City,” in Facing Fascism: New York and the Spanish Civil War, eds. Peter N. Carroll and James D. Fernandez (New York: Museum of the City of New York: NYU Press, 2007), 95-96.

32 Americans, and various immigrant groups”62 Although each group had different rationales for supporting the Republic, the combined effort of the groups contributed to the frenzied environment of political activism in New York City. Requests for aid were transmitted repeatedly through the embassy of the Republic in Washington, and often brought in person by

Ambassador Fernando de los Rios.63 From Spain, the first needs articulated were for common staples, including non-perishable food, and medical supplies. The call for medicine, ambulances, and surgical supplies was accompanied by an urgent plea for medical personnel: doctors, surgeons, nurses, and ambulance drivers were all desperately needed.64

The response to Spain was centered in New York, and the city would become the home of each of the primary aid organizations. It only took ten days after the outbreak of the war for organizations to begin to meet in New York.65 The first relief organizations to form in 1936 were the Labor’s Red Cross, followed by the American Friends for Spanish Democracy (AFSD).

Gotham provided both the leaders of these organizations, like Barsky, but also the grass-roots organizers who participated in protests, filled Madison Square Garden to the rafters for political rallies, and arranged fundraisers in their neighborhoods, homes, and workplaces.66 New York in

1936, unlike any other city in America, was gripped by the Spanish conflict and a moral charge to confront the spread of fascism. Barsky’s actions would occur within this activist context. The surgeon would support his attitude toward Spain through a philosophy which emphasized the parallels of the Spanish Civil War with American history and values.

62 Eric R. Smith, “New York’s Aid to the Spanish Republic,” in Facing Fascism: New York and the Spanish Civil War, eds. Peter N. Carroll and James D. Fernandez (New York: Museum of the City of New York: NYU Press, 2007), 44. 63 Ibid., 43. 64 Ibid., 44. 65 Carroll, The Odyssey of the Abraham Lincoln Brigade, 60. 66 Smith, “New York’s Aid to the Spanish Republic,” 44.

33 Perhaps unsurprisingly, it was at a Madison Square Garden rally in 1936 where

Edward Barsky first felt compelled to act. In his memoir, A Surgeon Goes to War, he recalled his political interest crystallizing after hearing from two envoys sent by the Spanish government to plead for aid. At the rally, Barsky heard from a female Spanish lawyer and a Basque Catholic priest. For the surgeon, the two speakers distilled the conflict in Spain to a clear moral contrast between the two sides. He wrote, “A peaceful government made up of many factions trying to balance itself, trying to restore a measure of social justice, had been attacked by a perjured army, by generals who had first sworn alliance to the government and then enlisted foreign help against it.”67 In this passionate excerpt, Barsky foregrounded his support for progressive ideals and the work of the Popular Front in attempting to mitigate some of Spain’s enduring inequities. The conflict in Spain was black and white for Barsky, with the traitorous generals of the military rebellion representing a clear betrayal of the constitution of the Spanish Republic. Yet, the quote also reveals a certain degree of fashioning by Barsky, especially in his emphasis of the virtues of the Popular Front government. Barsky did not mention the leading role of Communists and anarchists in the government, which would remain a recurring theme in his memoir. Although the surgeon was a registered Communist, this affiliation is completely submerged in his memoir.

Barsky’s increasing interest in Spain resulted in the germ of an organization which would grow to become the American Medical Bureau to Aid Spanish Democracy (AMB). Along with a group of other politically motivated doctors and inspired by previous American medical aid missions, Barsky helped to form the AMB during a meeting at the home of Dr. Louis Miller in

October 1936.68 However, Barsky’s original commitment to the cause did not include a desire to journey abroad himself. The surgeon was reluctant to upend his life in New York. The original

67 A Surgeon Goes to War, 11. 68 Ibid., 12.

34 members of the AMB were focused on marshalling aid and medical supplies for the Republican cause. The end goal for the group was the formation of a medical unit. Despite the group consisting of “professional people,” in Barsky’s words, the cause of the AMB attracted massive amounts of fundraising support from across the nation.69

The group raised more than a million dollars by the end of 1936, which enabled the provisioning of a well-supplied medical unit. The AMB pamphlet “One Year in Spain: A Picture

Story of American Doctors and Nurses” boasts that the Americans in Spain had brought over the largest amount of ambulances of any country, including two donated by Ernest Hemingway. The pamphlet advertised that the ambulances were donated by “universities, faculties and students, professionals of all groups,” including fully supplied ambulances from Harvard, Yale, N.Y.U.,

Hopkins, and Swarthmore among others.70 The cause of Spain was also alluring to American writers, artists, and actors, including significant support from Hollywood figures. They formed the Writers and Artists Committee to Aid Spanish Democracy, which was funded with support from the League of American Writers, Motion Picture Artists Committee, and the American

Artists Congress.71 Through concerted campaigning efforts, Barsky and the members of the

AMB drummed up significant support for the cause across the country. As Spanish Ambassador

Fernando de los Rios wrote about the AMB,

Spain will never forget the effective, praise-worthy, and most noble help rendered to us in this hour without precedent in the history of Spain by those men who have responded to the urge of this humanitarian task, entirely distinguished, generous, filled with sheer idealism and with moral courage. Such is the task undertaken by the Medical Bureau to Aid Spanish Democracy.72

69 Ibid., 13. 70 “One Year in Spain” American Medical Bureau to Aid Spanish Democracy Pamphlet; Edward K. Barsky Papers; ALBA.125; Box 2; Folder 8. 71 Ibid. 72 Ibid.

35 However, as the outfit moved closer to departure by the end of 1936, the biggest issue was finding doctors and nurses willing to set up the first field hospitals in Spain.73

For Barsky, the initial struggle to find willing volunteers for service abroad challenged his conceptions of his own life as a surgeon in New York. It was not easy for doctors, nurses, and other personnel to forgo their livelihoods and risk their lives to go to Spain. He recalls, “To come with us these people were in some cases to give their health; some gave their lives; in all cases they gave their jobs.”74 Much like the other volunteers, Barsky’s own decision to lead the mission forced him to re-consider his identity. The surgeon’s position as head of the Purchasing

Committee for the AMB had already forced him to move beyond the medical realm to the role of a politically-motivated organizer. Before the AMB, Barsky remarked that he had been living the life of a “typical New Yorker,” consumed with work. However, looking back in retrospect about his activities in Spain, he could only scoff at the idea of being overworked before the war.75

When the suggestion was broached to Barsky soon before the expected date of the sailing that he would be an excellent candidate to lead the mission, Barsky recalled being shocked by his willingness to accept, yet also conscious that this desire had existed all along. The cause of Spain seemed to awaken a dormant fervor in Barsky, and he approached the impending departure of the outfit with nervous excitement. Despite committing fully to organizing aid, it had never occurred to him that he would set off to be a surgeon on the frontlines.

Barsky’s willingness to lead the mission was due to both political and humanitarian concerns. The uprising of the Spanish generals was a clear betrayal of the Spanish people and an attack on American ideals of democracy and liberty. The moral outrage of the Spanish rebellion

73 A Surgeon Goes to War, 13. 74 A Surgeon Goes to War, 14. 75 A Surgeon Goes to War, 10.

36 and the demonstrated lack of adequate medical care was a clear cause for direct action. Barsky wrote,

They fought for freedom. Not only the sort of freedom which was won for the United States of America when in 1778 the British fleet sailed away from the port of New York eastward down Long Island Sound -- not as much freedom as that. In Spain they only wanted liberty to think each according to his conscience, not to starve in fertile fields untilled, to live un-menaced by secret police. This modest liberty, this democracy which the Spaniards had won legally at the polls without civil war, seemed as valuable to me as it did to them. Why should it be taken by force, foreign force?76

Barsky’s political views toward Spain were clearly impacted by the language and message of the

CPUSA and its Popular Front policies. As Party leader and 1936 Communist presidential candidate Earl Browder framed the party’s ideological shift: “Communism is Twentieth-Century

Americanism,” a message which would prove immensely popular and available to Americans.77

One of the essential tools for bringing Communism to the mainstream was the employment of

American values and American historical images within political messaging. Barsky employed both of these strategies in communicating his support for Spain. By placing the Spanish Civil

War in the context of an “American” struggle, the Revolutionary War, he essentially connected the defense of Spanish liberties with American liberties. Through the language of anti-fascism and the easily-accessible symbols of American historical memory, Barsky and others could hope to overcome the latent isolationist sentiment and engender feelings of support for the Spanish cause. Another popular rallying point used by the Popular Front, as well as non-Communist organizations, was the connection of the Spanish conflict to the American Civil War. This image was particularly significant because it evoked the symbolic rebellion against a country’s elected

76 A Surgeon Goes to War, 12. 77 Pike, “The Background to the Civil War in Spain,” 9-18.

37 government, similar to the South’s role in the Civil War. From this perspective, the United

States’ decision to remain neutral was a clear moral failure.78

Barsky’s motivations for his service to Spain stemmed not only from a political interest in the Spanish cause, but also an interest in the humanitarian use of science to counteract the development of modern war. In the foreword to “A Surgeon Goes to War,” he philosophizes about the nature of the surgeon as both a weapon and a tool for healing. At once, the surgeon is a highly trained military asset, with the express purpose of saving lives and healing bodies for ultimate return to the front. Barsky was forced to realize that the application of the surgeon’s abilities did not stop once the soldier was healed: the expectation was that the surgeon would help the soldier back onto the killing fields. Many of the men whom Barsky treated would not return. As Barsky wrote, “[The surgeon’s] skill is thus militarily essential.”79

However, the surgeon could also be viewed as a tool for good in a maelstrom of violence and death. In a modern war revolutionized by advances in technology, the advances in medicine could be used to stem the human toll of the war. The surgeon writes, “The agony of present day war must be relieved by that use of our science, its positive use, its humane use. We will cling to our art of healing if only because it can prove that we are not beasts. We need to be reminded that man has also studied the art of life.”80 Barsky clearly viewed surgery as a calling to use science and knowledge to save lives on both sides of the war, even within the setting of armed conflict.

The scientific aspect of Barsky’s profession would be clear throughout his time in Spain, as he sought to use evidence-based medicine to address some of the issues he saw on the

78 Carroll, The Odyssey of the Abraham Lincoln Brigade, 73. 79 A Surgeon Goes to War, Foreword. 80 A Surgeon Goes to War, Foreword.

38 battlefield. The decision to go to Spain was motivated by Barsky’s feeling that there was a clear moral reason to support the beleaguered Spanish democracy, as well as to use the skills he had as a surgeon to make a scientific stand against the horrors of modern war.

Departure for the hastily-assembled outfit had not been a surety. The morning before the sailing of the Paris, the AMB was still three thousand dollars short, funds which were needed to secure third-class passages and food for the journey. A last-minute fundraiser was organized at the Manhattan Opera House, attended by the Spanish consul. A collection was taken which would determine the fate of the mission, as Barsky and the other volunteers stood with their fresh new uniforms at the front of the room. Miraculously, the collection had resulted in almost 5,000 dollars, a sign of the strong support for the mission of the American Medical Bureau.81 After hours of frenzied preparation and packing, the team was finally ready to embark. On the Paris,

Barsky would sail at the head of a contingent of “five doctors, eight nurses, a druggist, a bacteriologist, two ambulance drivers, and a translator.”82 The next stop for the team would be the front. As the ship steamed out of port, Barsky’s greatest concern was not the looming conflict in Spain but a gift he had received from a medical friend on the docks: a flask containing six grams of morphine, an item which he knew would be invaluable in the maelstrom of battle yet presented an incredible risk as illegal contraband.83 The vial of morphine would be a harbinger of what lay ahead for the surgeon in Spain.

81 A Surgeon Goes to War, 17. 82 Carroll, The Odyssey of the Abraham Lincoln Brigade, 71. 83 A Surgeon Goes to War, 18.

39

Courtesy of Tamiment Library, New York University.

40 Barsky (center) in a group of AMB volunteers. The other four members are unidentified. Courtesy of Tamiment Library, New York University.

41 Chapter Two

Surgeon under Fire: Politics and Medicine on the Frontlines of Spain

Barsky’s politics, worldview, and attitude toward the medical profession were profoundly shaped by his almost two-year involvement with the Spanish Civil War. As he recalled in his memoir, “War is psychologically like hell, supernatural like it, and also, as we have been taught to expect, full of good company.”1 Serving in frontline hospitals for most of the conflict, Barsky was exposed to horrific conditions and constant danger which fundamentally changed his views on modern war, medicine, and politics.

Barsky’s political evolution was intimately connected with his political awakening in

1930s New York, and the surgeon’s time in Spain spurred him to make the plight of the Republic the defining cause of his life. Through Barsky’s experience in Spain, the rationale for his decision to leave the United States at the head of the AMB was reified by a deeper understanding of the history and social conditions of the country. Barsky’s increasing political commitment over the course of the conflict can be traced in his memoir, A Surgeon Goes to War. Through his witnessing of the human cost of war and the abject poverty of the Spanish countryside, Barsky’s politics became inextricably linked with his medicine. Modern science was seen by Barsky as a way to counteract the brutality of modern war and as a tool to begin dismantling the centuries of deprivation wrought upon the Spanish peasantry.2 Spain provided Barsky with a complete education in suffering, and his views on war culminated in a distinct anti-war sentiment with a revulsion for the brute martial tactics of Italy and Nazi Germany. Barsky’s only solace as he left a ruined Spain was a hope that his meticulous scientific observations on wartime trauma and

1 A Surgeon Goes to War, 108. 2 A Surgeon Goes to War, Foreword.

42 surgery would help save lives in civilian practice, but ultimately be inutile in a future world without war. The connection between medicine and politics forged by Barsky in Spain would come to define his identity as a surgeon, citizen, and activist.

Barsky’s political and scientific evolutions were not necessarily concurrent and were largely predicated by the unique situations in which Barsky found himself during the war. This chapter is divided into three chronological sections which correspond to distinct periods of his involvement in Spain. The first section spans from Barsky’s arrival in Europe on the Paris until his recall from Spain by the New York office of the American Medical Bureau (AMB) in the summer of 1937.3 It was during this frenzied period that Barsky established the original

American hospitals and first experienced the horrors of war. In these initial months in Spain,

Barsky began to apply his scientific and organizational background to provide the best possible care at the front. He was immediately forced to abandon his conceptions of military surgery gained from a close study of the First World War and re-adapt to the realities of a modern conflict.4 While the first months in Spain were occupied for Barsky with almost non-stop medical duties, a brief interlude away from the constant work and enemy fire at the front allowed him to further examine the politics of Spain. On a speaking tour of the United States from July to

October 1937, Barsky was able to fully consider the ramifications of the conflict in Spain, which served to redouble his commitment to the Republican cause.5 The final section of this chapter covers his return to Spain through his withdrawal in January 1939, as Fascist forces began to consolidate their hold over the country. Operating in mobile hospitals at the frontlines of some of the bloodiest battles of the war at Teruel and Belchite and continuing in his posting as head of

3 “Edward K. Barsky Biography.” For a description of Barsky’s callback to New York, see A Surgeon Goes to War, 200. 4 A Surgeon Goes to War, Foreword. 5 A Surgeon Goes to War, 198.

43 the Sanitary Service of the International Brigades, Barsky’s politics and scientific focus became intertwined. His message is paradoxically both bleak and optimistic. Through A Surgeon Goes to

War, Barsky hoped to transmit the misery and destruction of modern war while also positing that the use of science to ease suffering and explore the human condition represented the only way to confront it.6 Tracing Barsky’s personal development will further elucidate his self-conceptions as a surgeon.

Medical Innovation at the Front: January-June 1937

The first contingent of the American Medical Bureau to Aid Spanish Democracy departed from New York in January 1937, a short three weeks after 96 members of the Abraham

Lincoln Brigade had also left for the front.7 On the Paris, Barsky sailed at the head of a contingent of “five doctors, eight nurses, a druggist, a bacteriologist, two ambulance drivers, and a translator.”8 Alongside Barsky, the four other doctors of the outfit also hailed from New York.

The group was comprised of Dr. Eduardo Odio Perez, “a former head of the Department of

Sanitation of Havana,” Dr. Allan Howard Sorrell, Dr. Philip Goland, and Dr. Nathan Bloom.9

Each physician brought unique expertise to the front. Other significant personnel embedded in the first group included Fredericka Martin, who left her position as night supervisor at Crotona

Park Hospital in New York to become the head charge nurse at the first American base hospital.10 Also prominent was Mildred Rackley, an accomplished artist and interpreter who would come to occupy an invaluable role as organizer and administrator for the Americans in

6 A Surgeon Goes to War, 198. 7 Jefferson Hendricks and Cary Nelson, eds., Madrid 1937: Letters of the Abraham Lincoln Brigade from the Spanish Civil War (New York: Routledge, 1996), 233. 8 Carroll, The Odyssey of the Abraham Lincoln Brigade, 71. 9 Arthur H. Landis, The Abraham Lincoln Brigade, (New York: Citadel Press, 1967), 148. 10 Hendricks and Nelson, Madrid 1937, 233.

44 Spain. The letters sent home by American volunteers vividly describe the privations faced at the front, yet also the indomitable spirit and dedication of medical volunteers which would indelibly shape Barsky’s political and professional evolution. Embarked along with the personnel were requisite supplies to provision a fifty-bed hospital.11 After a brief stop in Paris, the outfit traveled to the Spanish frontier along with John Langdon Davies, a prominent British author, where they were received with much fanfare. Framed by the Pyrenees on one side and the dazzling

Mediterranean on the other, the natural beauty of Spain seemed to belie the presence of war.12

However, it was not long after Barsky’s arrival in Valencia that the picturesque notion of

Spanish tranquility was abruptly shattered.

Barsky and the American Medical Bureau (AMB) traveled to Spain to support the

International Brigades and their defense of the Spanish Republic.13 The International Brigades were a group of volunteer soldiers recruited from across the world by the Communist

International (Comintern) to defend the democratically-elected Spanish Republic against a military uprising. In a resolution on August 18, 1936, the Comintern formally established the recruitment of a volunteer army, initially spearheaded by Maurice Thorez of the French

Communist Party.14 More than 35,000 volunteers from fifty-two countries signed on with the

Brigades.15 In the United States, the CPUSA began recruiting volunteers in the fall of 1936, with the first group sailing to Europe in late December. Ultimately, almost 3,000 American volunteers would serve in Spain, where they would come to be widely known as the Abraham Lincoln

Brigade.16 Although proponents of the Abraham Lincoln Brigade emphasized diversity within

11 Landis, The Abraham Lincoln Brigade, 148. 12 Landis, The Abraham Lincoln Brigade, 150. 13 Carroll, The Odyssey of the Abraham Lincoln Brigade, 103. 14 Palfreeman, Salud!, 50. 15 Ottanelli, The Communist Party of the United States, 175. 16 Ibid.

45 the ranks, the vast majority of the recruits came from urban backgrounds, with around twenty percent originating from New York City. The majority were blue-collar workers with strong international connections, perhaps explaining their stance against encroaching fascism. Although perceptions of the unit cast the volunteers as naïve youths, the statistics show that the average demographic of the Lincoln enlistee was significantly older. The median age of the Lincolns was over 27 years old, with 36 percent of the volunteers aged over 30. Many of the volunteers were recruited through the Communist Party and identified themselves as Party members.17 The

Lincolns were also the first completely integrated American military unit, and Oliver Law would serve for a stint as commander of the battalion, the “first black officer to command white troops in an American army.”18 Along with the headquarters of the International Brigades, the

International Brigades Medical Services (SSI) were also launched at Albacete. Barsky would work closely with the Chief Medical Officer of the SSI, Bulgarian Dr. Zvetan Angelov

Kristanov, nom de guérre Oskar Telge.19 It would be within the SSI framework that the

American medical unit under the direction of Barsky would operate.

Like the groundbreaking composition of the Abraham Lincoln Brigades, Barsky’s organization of the AMB gave both women and under-represented minorities an opportunity to act on their political beliefs. Throughout the duration of the American medical unit’s time in

Spain, women were integral in the operation of hospitals and the care of injured and ill patients.

Barsky hired a nurse named Salaria Kea, an African-American who had been denied work by the

American Red Cross.20 Kea had been an ardent campaigner for the cause of Ethiopia, and connected the excesses of European fascist regimes with the oppression of African-Americans in

17 Carroll, The Odyssey of the Abraham Lincoln Brigade, 11-16. 18 Nicholas Coni, Medicine and Warfare: Spain, 1936-1939, (New York: Taylor and Francis, 2008), 131. 19 Palfreeman, Salud! 55-56. 20 Carroll, The Odyssey of the Abraham Lincoln Brigade, 69.

46 the United States.21 Dr. Frances Vanzant, a gastroenterologist and native Texan, also joined the medical outfit and served as the lone female doctor on the staff.22 Testimonies of several of the nurses who joined the AMB were recorded in Into the Fire: American Woman in the Spanish

Civil War, a documentary emphasizing the central role of women in the American effort to aid the Republic. Many of the nurses recalled gradually becoming politicized during the 1930s, as well as a sense of moral outrage against the US embargo on Republican Spain.23 Barsky would laud the contribution of American nurses to care in Spain.

Barsky arrived in Spain with the notion that he would find established International

Brigade hospitals to support.24 However, both this belief and the illusion of established rules in the conflict were swiftly proved false, as the SSI was still struggling to organize an effective medical system to support troops at the front. In fact, it became abundantly clear that the hospital which Barsky had been ordered to co-operate with in Madrid simply did not exist. As Barsky described, “In Spain we found that this hospital was a pure fantasy.”25 After a meeting with leading Republican army officer General Miaja in Barcelona, Barsky led the medical corps toward the International Brigade Headquarters at Albacete, a region close to the heaviest fighting involving the Abraham Lincoln Brigade, where they received a telegram with their first formal orders, to “set up one hundred bed emergency hospital and be ready to receive patients in forty- eight hours.”26

21 “Salaria Kea’s Spanish Memoirs,” The Volunteer. Accessed April 7, 2019. http://www.albavolunteer.org/2011/12/salaria-keas-spanish-memoirs/ 22 Carroll, The Odyssey of the Abraham Lincoln Brigade, 178. 23 Into the Fire - American Women in the Spanish Civil War. (2007; First Run Features). Accessed April 7, 2019, film. 24 Carroll, The Odyssey of the Abraham Lincoln Brigade, 103. 25 A Surgeon Goes to War, 22. 26 Coni, Medicine and Warfare: Spain, 1936-1939, 129, and A Surgeon Goes to War, 26.

47 The site for the first American hospital in Spain was at El Romeral, along the Madrid-

Valencia road and close to the site of the major Nationalist offensive at Jarama.27 Attempting to sever communications between Madrid and Valencia, the Francoist troops were fought to a standstill in a bloody stalemate, leading to tremendous casualties on both sides.28 The conditions in which the American unit established the first hospital were emblematic of the resourcefulness and ingenuity vital for success on the front. The location chosen was a new schoolhouse, which despite its recent construction lacked running water, a telephone, and was only connected to a very weak source of electricity.29 Cognizant of the impending influx of wounded American troops, the outfit engaged in frenzied around-the-clock preparations to transform the schoolhouse into a 75-bed hospital. In a letter sent home to the AMB offices in New York, Mildred Rackley recounted the feverish planning. With the support of the local Popular Front alcalde (mayor), the outfit was granted the full support of the village’s manpower in fitting out the hospital.

Thousands of laborers were drawn from the surrounding fields to repair the roads leading to the hospital, and skilled electricians, masons, and carpenters prepared the interior space to receive patients.30 Realizing both of the unit’s indispensable sterilizers had been misplaced on the journey to Spain, the group was forced to improvise, with chauffeur and mechanic Carl Rahman hastily repairing a unit found relegated to the waste of a nearby Spanish hospital.31 In only two days, the team of fifteen had completed a serviceable 75 bed military hospital, transforming a basic schoolhouse into a facility replete with operating theaters, sanitary facilities, and newly- built telephone communications.32

27 Landis, The Abraham Lincoln Brigade, 151. 28 Palfreeman, Salud! 86-90. 29 Carroll, The Odyssey of the Abraham Lincoln Brigade, 103. 30 Hendricks and Nelson, Madrid 1937, 238-9. 31 Carroll, The Odyssey of the Abraham Lincoln Brigade, 103; A Surgeon Goes to War, 29. 32 Carroll, The Odyssey of the Abraham Lincoln Brigade, 104.

48 The first ambulance from the Jarama front arrived at El Romeral carrying almost twenty- five wounded, victims of the fighting on February 27th, igniting a renewed flurry of activity at the hospital where initial preparations had just been completed. It would be the first of seven ambulances to arrive on the first day of hospital operations.33 As Barsky described, “The faces of the soldiers were gray, their torn clothes the color of Earth. The wounds were of types we had never seen before: ghastly ones of the skull, the abdomen, the extremities, parts of legs and arms blown off – skull fractures – a limb all out of shape with a broken shaft of bone sticking out of a red gash.”34 Beginning with a skull case, Barsky and his operating staff worked for forty hours nonstop, pausing only during stolen minutes to grab quick cups of coffee.35 In the bitter cold of the operating room, where proper heating had not yet been installed, Barsky struggled to keep hold of the icy instruments, his hands so chapped and cold from scrubbing before surgery that he was afraid of becoming unsterile by breaking his own skin.36

A situation which emphasized the precariousness of the front occurred during Barsky’s first forty-hour shift. Operating on a young Spanish boy with a kidney destroyed by shrapnel, the surgeon was at the most delicate stage of the operation when the theatre went black. An air raid had cut electricity, and the backup battery-powered lamp had failed. As Barsky described,

“‘Nobody move,’ I said…I reached out for a clamp in the dark, clamped the pedicle, and went on with the operation in the darkness.”37 While the Spanish boy made a full recovery, many of the gravely wounded were beyond the aid of surgery.38 Barsky estimated that in the first ten days of

33 Carroll, The Odyssey of the Abraham Lincoln Brigade, 104; Landis, The Abraham Lincoln Brigade, 152. 34 A Surgeon Goes to War, 4. 35 A Surgeon Goes to War, 6. See a further description in Carroll, The Odyssey of the Abraham Lincoln Brigade, 104. 36 A Surgeon Goes to War, 4. 37 A Surgeon Goes to War, 33. 38 Ibid.

49 operating at Romeral, 50% of the unit’s patients ultimately perished.39 There were as many as

15,000 casualties on the Republican side in the battle.40 The three International Brigade hospitals, including the converted schoolhouse at El Romeral, treated an estimated 2,500 wounded during the first few days of fighting.41 As Barsky recalled in his memoir, the wounded spanned a variety of nationalities, from Americans, French, Germans, to native Spaniards.42 The hospital served any who needed medical assistance.

For Barsky, the only way to cope with the constant stream of wounded was to suppress his feelings of moral outrage through a singular focus on the task at hand. As he wrote,

We could not give vent to our feelings of pity, anger or horror. We could not afford to speculate on war, its terror, its misery…I don’t mean to say we became hard-hearted. In moments of rest we consumed ourselves with sorrow. But we had to keep ourselves efficient. As long as I stayed in Spain, after that first experience, I took each case as a task; a task which required every bit of my skill and judgement and whatever courage I had.43

Barsky’s outrage stemmed especially from his experiences with Nationalist violence, which often did not discriminate between soldiers and non-combatants. It has been claimed that the

Spanish Civil War was the first conflict during which civilian casualties outnumbered those of military belligerents.44 The callous attitudes of the Nationalists toward customary standards of war had been apparent to Barsky since he first stepped foot in the war zone. He learned immediately that traditional rules of war did not apply. As he wrote, “In my innocence I had supposed that the Red Cross would be respected. I had not yet known that ambulances and hospitals were preferred targets of our enemy. In Spain, no soldier would willingly enter an

39 A Surgeon Goes to War, 35. 40 Palfreeman, Salud! 90. 41 Ibid. 42 A Surgeon Goes to War, 4. 43 A Surgeon Goes to War, 8. 44 Palfreeman, Salud! 1.

50 ambulance with a red cross.”45 As Barsky spent more time with the victims of the senseless violence at the front, he increasingly resorted to his work in the operating theater to assuage his outrage.

Each individual surgery represented for Barsky a tangible way to improve the outcomes for wounded soldiers. During his first few months in Spain, politics became secondary to medical improvement and innovation. Barsky’s medical focus in Spain was based on two central tenets: the proper organization of a military medical service and the improvement of surgical practices in times of wartime trauma. Nicholas Coni writes in Medicine and Warfare: Spain,

1936-1939, that “medical science flourished during the Spanish Civil War.”46 He argues that the science of medicine significantly advanced during the conflict, especially in the treatment of traumatic injuries, blood transfusion, medical management of disease, and military hospital organization.47

Through observation and experimentation, Barsky sought to improve upon the existing apparatus of military medical care. Barsky noticed that the conditions of patients arriving at the front-line hospitals were much more dire than necessary. As the action at Jarama waned, he decided to “look into the aspect of military organization.”48 Barsky found that at the outbreak of the conflict there had been little to no proper organization, which echoes Coni’s description of the medical response to war in Spain as “woefully ill-prepared.”49 For Barsky, the largest concern was the battalion medical corps, as for each company there were at most five medics,

45 A Surgeon Goes to War, 21. 46 Coni, Medicine and Warfare, 131. 47 Nicholas Coni, “Medicine and the Spanish Civil War,” Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine 95, no. 3 (2002): 147-150. 48 A Surgeon Goes to War, 36. 49 Coni, Medicine and Warfare, 119. See Palfreeman, Salud! 52 for a description of the large Spanish medical defection to the Nationalist side at the outbreak of the conflict.

51 often with only one of them having received actual medical training.50 Although Barsky cites the incredible bravery of these medics in battle, the under-manned corps often were unable to stabilize and transport serious cases quickly enough to front-line hospitals. For Barsky, the solution was to bring the front-line hospital to the wounded. This was achieved through the innovation of the “auto-chir,” an operating room on wheels which allowed surgeons to perform surgeries much closer to the front, significantly decreasing waiting times before surgery and limiting the potential for infections. As the surgeon described, “The auto-chirs donated by

French sympathizers were traveling surgeries and operating rooms combined… In the best equipped hospital more efficient equipment could not have been provided.”51 Barsky heralded the auto-chir, citing that its development “revolutionizes our previous conception of front line surgery.”52 Coni argues that the significance of the auto-chir stemmed from its reduction of the

“wound-to-surgery interval,” allowing the almost-instantaneous set-up of a fully-functioning operating unit.53

Barsky’s focus on military organization was not limited to efficiency, but also emphasized a strong focus on mental health. As Barsky wrote, “Militarily, the doctor in modern war is most important. We found that no unit, not even a unit of shock troops, could maintain proper fighting morale if it were not assured that there was a good medical corps in back of it.”54

Therefore, the institution of a cohesive medical system of organization was militarily essential.

However, for soldiers to remain confident in their medical corps, the battalion doctor could not become a combatant. The doctor had to remain a medical professional, not a soldier.55 By

50 A Surgeon Goes to War, 37. 51 A Surgeon Goes to War, 111-112. 52 A Surgeon Goes to War, 97. 53 Coni, “Medicine and the Spanish Civil War,” 111. 54 A Surgeon Goes to War, 44. 55 A Surgeon Goes to War, 43.

52 shortening the time between injury and definitive treatment, Barsky hoped to improve “mental hygiene,” which would have a direct correspondence with the morale of the troops at the front.56

In using this term, Barsky alluded to both the fighting shape of a unit as well as the individual dispositions of embedded soldiers. Another innovative way to improve the morale of the troops was the institution of convalescent hospitals, like the one at Castillejo, which allowed soldiers to quickly rejoin the battlefield.57 However, a surgeon who worked for both the Republican and

Nationalist sides during the conflict maintained that while the surgeons on the government side were more gifted, evacuation from the front to field hospitals was more efficiently conducted by the rebels.58 Barsky worked to ameliorate delays in care by recognizing that within the existing medical structure small adjustments could make a significant impact on care.59

Along with improving medical organization on the battlefield, Barsky also sought to improve surgical outcomes. As Barsky recalled a fellow physician commenting in the first days of his time at the front, wartime medicine “is not yet an exact science, it is an art.”60 The injuries faced by soldiers and civilians were wide-ranging and ghastly. As Barsky wrote, “We doctors and nurses and people working in the hospital saw so clearly and so vividly just what happened to that bullet and what happened to this man who faltered and fell to the ground before the machine gun bullets. We always felt so close to the very essentials of war – so close to the horrors and the death.”61 The surgeon became accustomed to the peculiar behavior of bullets and their travel through soldier’s bodies, as well as the horrific damage caused by deformed projectiles. Yet, the trauma from bullets paled in comparison with the wounds caused by mortars

56 A Surgeon Goes to War, 73. 57 A Surgeon Goes to War, 96. 58 Coni, “Medicine and the Spanish Civil War,” 147-150. 59 A Surgeon Goes to War, 39. 60 A Surgeon Goes to War, 7. 61 A Surgeon Goes to War, 296.

53 and shrapnel, which had the potential to cause “tremendous destruction of tissue which often results in very severe infections.”62 Each genre of injury forced the surgeon and his team to devise distinct protocols to improve outcomes for the wounded.

Barsky’s contributions to wartime medicine in Spain stemmed both from his ingenuity in using the materials at hand as well as his meticulous observations on patients, which led to the innovation of new surgical methods. In a chapter in A Surgeon Goes to War titled “Some Notes on Surgical Practices,” he detailed his ideas about different types of traumatic injuries. He helped to pioneer techniques to deal with open chest wounds, and made observations about the treatment of complex fractures which emphasized the need to keep traumatic wounds open in order to prevent infection. He also discovered that the outcome of fractures was improved with the earliest possible application of a plaster cast, which was also discovered by other doctors in

Spain and would be one of the greatest legacies of medical science to come from the Spanish

Civil War.63 Barsky’s observations and improvements on surgical technique brought about vast improvements in the treatment of serious wounds in Spain.64

However, perhaps the most significant advance in medicine during the Spanish Civil War was the popularization of blood transfusion methods. The conflict saw the innovation of the blood bank, as well as the widespread use of transplanted blood during procedures at mobile hospitals. In Barsky’s surgical team, each member was blood-typed and often gave blood to assist wounded patients in the operating room. Barsky’s focus on the medical aspects of his work in Spain allowed him to reside on the forefront of medical innovation. As Barsky wrote, “The methods which we improved in Spain can at best merely point the way toward some improved

62 A Surgeon Goes to War, 177-179. 63 A Surgeon Goes to War, 193-194. 64 Coni, Medicine and Warfare: Spain, 68.

54 techniques in war surgery. Or better, they might point the way to a slightly improved technique of civilian practice, for war surgery like war itself will soon be, I hope, obsolete.”65

While the impact of wartime medical innovations on civilian practice can be hard to discern, the advances which Barsky helped to pioneer had a direct impact on later battlefields. As

Linda Palfreeman argues in Salud!: British Volunteers in the Republican Medical Service During the Spanish Civil War, “many of the medical advances made during the Spanish Civil War became crucial just a year or so later, in the treatment of casualties among both soldiers and civilians during the Second World War.”66 These direct connections mirror the observations of

Barsky concerning blood transfusion, wound care, and the increasing bureaucratization of medical organization, especially with front-line hospitals. As Palfreeman writes, “The most important development, in surgical terms, was that of the use of the ‘Closed Method’ or ‘Spanish

Method’ in the treatment of fracture wounds.”67 This method corresponded very closely with

Barsky’s final notes on the treatment of compound fractures which appear in his memoir. The surgical techniques devised in Spain would be widely adopted and save lives on the battlefields of World War II.68 As Coni writes, “experience emphasized the necessity for rapid surgical intervention, and thus for locating mobile field hospitals as close to the line of fire as possible…and developed excellent military medical services that would provide the basis for those in the Second World War and the Korean and Vietnam Wars.”69 He specifically connects the mobile hospitals which Barsky helped to develop in Spain with the Mobile Army Surgical

Hospital (MASH) popularized in the American conflicts in Korea and Vietnam.70 Although

65A Surgeon Goes to War, 198. 66 Palfreeman, Salud! 2. 67 Ibid., 219. 68 Ibid., 2. 69 Coni, Medicine and Warfare: Spain, 222. 70 Ibid., 112.

55 Barsky hoped that his medical innovations would not be necessary in a world without war, his healing on the battlefield would help to counteract later bloodshed.

In the spring of 1937, Barsky led the expansion of American medical activities in Spain to include two new hospitals. The first was built in the hamlet of Tarancón around March 10, and the second was opened at Villa Paz, a palatial re-purposed manor which had formerly been an estate of the Spanish Bourbon monarchs. The hospitals, like El Romeral, were established close to the Madrid-Valencia road, and continued to receive waves of casualties as the Nationalists attempted to retake Madrid.71 The position of the hospital at Tarancón subjected it to almost constant bombardment. Barsky described it as “one of those places the enemy just seemed to like to bomb each day before breakfast.”72 However, despite the constant aerial attacks, the medical team was able to establish a garage for the American ambulances and a mechanical laundry service, ultimately leading Barsky to conclude that the hospital “became almost modern.”73

As spring faded into scorching summer, Barsky moved his focus to the southern Cordoba front, where he led a mobile medical unit to the town of Pozoblanco.74 As Coni describes, “By the end of June the Americans numbered 113 physicians, nurses, and ambulance drivers and were operating a mobile general hospital, a dental hospital, and four base hospitals near Madrid in which noncombatants as well as combatants were treated.”75 However, Barsky’s time in

Pozoblanco was interrupted by a telegram from the New York office of the American Medical

Bureau (AMB), requesting that Barsky attend an international conference on aid for Spain in

Paris.76 With a chauffeur in tow who soon became too ill to drive, Barsky set out on the long

71 Landis, The Abraham Lincoln Brigade, 151. 72 A Surgeon Goes to War, 76. 73 A Surgeon Goes to War, 89. 74 Landis, The Abraham Lincoln Brigade, 159. 75 Coni, Medicine and Warfare: Spain, 1936-1939, 129. 76 A Surgeon Goes to War, 199-200.

56 overland journey from Pozoblanco to Perpignan, the gateway to France and an outer world largely focused away from the tragedy in Spain.77

Political Awakening

As Barsky wrote, “I had to leave Spain to understand it.”78 Away from the constant exigencies of life on the frontlines, the surgeon reassessed his experiences in Spain and imbued them with greater political meaning. Although Barsky had come to Spain a strong supporter of progressive causes and a staunch defender of the elected Spanish Republic, his time away allowed him to further develop a specific interest in the political history of Spain and the legacy of inequality which had defined the nation. The result of Barsky’s growing politicization was an intensification of his support for Spanish freedom and an end to the centuries of oppression by the Church and landed aristocracy which had contributed to a profoundly unequal society.

On the long road from Southern Spain to France, Barsky would occasionally pick up foreign correspondents in need of a lift, and their conversations, along with a heightened awareness of the scenes around him, awoke in Barsky a renewed political consciousness. As

Barsky wrote, “It was no longer through a glass darkly, but face to face with me after that first trip to the outside world which occurred after my first months of service. Abuses which I had been suspecting, causes of basic ill health were to be made clear to me, in that first glance at the

Spain which had been all around us. We had been too enthralled to look at it.”79 When removed from battle, Barsky fully realized the destitution and poverty of the Spanish countryside.

However, he also was awed by the incredible spirit of the people, which was not broken by their

77 A Surgeon Goes to War, 201-202. 78 A Surgeon Goes to War, 199. 79 Ibid.

57 condition of poverty. As he wrote about a small Spanish village, “For the first time I saw starvation.”80 Yet, despite their hardships, the surgeon was awed by the generosity and friendliness shown toward him and rest of the outfit, who welcomed the foreigners as their own.81

Scenes across the country provided concrete proof of the political causes which legitimized the fight to preserve the elected Spanish government. In his memoir, Barsky castigates the role of the Catholic church in repressing education and enforcing strict class boundaries. The surgeon blamed the Catholic Church for the rampant illiteracy of the Spanish population. He also cited an anecdote of two Socialist doctors expelled for allegedly revealing the secrets of birth control to the people, their attempts at public health initiatives deemed heresy.82 As Barsky’s awareness of the centuries of systematic oppression faced by Spaniards increased, so too did his dedication to upholding the values of the Spanish Republic at all costs.

Although the popularity of Catholicism had declined in Spain by the 1930s, the Church still had a substantial impact on life. Universities were no longer under the sway of the Catholic hierarchy, but the Church in practice controlled Spanish education. The lack of adequate schools left many young Spanish children without proper instruction and helped to contribute to the rampant illiteracy in rural areas. In 1930, even in the national capital of Madrid more than 80,000 children did not attend school.83 Attitudes toward the Church differed substantially by region. As

Helen Graham describes in The Spanish Republic at War, the Church in the north of Spain fostered close relationships within communities, leading to the populace forming a view of the church as a benevolent presence in society. However, the social conditions of the south,

80 A Surgeon Goes to War, 121. 81 A Surgeon Goes to War, 128. 82 A Surgeon Goes to War, 208. 83 Hugh Thomas, The Spanish Civil War, (New York: Harper, 1961), 31-36.

58 dominated by large landowners including the Church, fostered a greater anti-clerical bent.84 In both regions, however, the church continued to dominate aspects of society at the start of the

Civil War. For progressives like Barsky, the Church’s hold on society was clearly impeding the democratization of the Spanish people and their access to education and other basic freedoms.

Barsky was also dismayed by the entrenched social structure which he found throughout rural Spain. Citing stories he heard from correspondents and other foreigners as well as his own personal anecdotes, he created an argument which emphasized the historical subjugation of the majority by a predatory and absent class of elites. He employed the example of Estremadura, an incredibly destitute region of Spain where the citizens suffered from hunger and preventable diseases. Yet, Estremadura was also the home of vast estates, owned by absentee landlords who kept their lands patrolled against poaching on the pain of death.85 As a medical doctor, the poverty and malnourishment of people in rural Spain proved to Barsky the righteousness of the

Republican cause. As Barsky wrote, “How could the Spaniards fight so bravely when they had been starved from birth? … I hoped that I had been gentle with those poor wounded but if I had known all this I would have been more gentle still. It seemed to me then that those desperate boys were fighting for all that was good against all that was bad.”86 The deep respect felt by

Barsky toward the Spanish people amidst their struggle for freedom was echoed by Hank Rubin, a UCLA student who left California to serve as a medic for the AMB. As he wrote in his memoir, Spain’s Cause was Mine, “Most of all, I had also learned, in a most profound way, to respect the people of Spain.”87

84 Graham, The Spanish Republic at War, 3-5. 85 A Surgeon Goes to War, 207-208. 86 A Surgeon Goes to War, 208. 87 Hank Rubin, Spain’s Cause Was Mine: A Memoir of an American Medic in the Spanish Civil War, (Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1997), 145.

59 The images of aristocratic exploitation which Barsky evoked in his memoir were characteristic of the reality in much of rural Spain. As Graham argues, the low levels of demographic mobility between rural areas created strong social stability, with the “rural majority…also highly atomized, living in villages and hamlets.”88 In the North and the central

Spanish plateau, the rural lower classes consisted of mostly smallholding peasants and tenant farmers.89 In contrast, the South of Spain, including Estremadura and Andalusia, had significantly different landholding conditions. Most of the arable land had been historically granted to the nobility and the Church, and tilled by landless day laborers.90 Embodied in the form of the Civil Guard, the rural police, the government and the aristocracy stood for rural exploitation.91

Although Barsky’s descriptions of the Spanish countryside in A Surgeon Goes to War connect closely with the image of rural Spain created by other secondary literature, it must be acknowledged that Barsky likely hoped to use his memoir to advocate for his political positions.

Yet, it is curious that Barsky never mentions Communism or his affiliation with the Party. This fact is perhaps revelatory of the inherent self-fashioning in Barsky’s memoir. By eliding any mentions of left-wing politics, Barsky perhaps was hoping to make his story acceptable to a wider American audience. Another reading of the absence is that Barsky potentially became disillusioned with Communism through his experiences in Spain, even if his support for progressive causes, informed by his experiences on the ground, flourished. Regardless of

Barsky’s rationale for omitting Communism in his narrative, it is important to acknowledge the

88 Graham, The Spanish Republic at War, 3. 89 Ibid., 3. 90 Stanley G. Payne, The Spanish Revolution, (New York: Norton, 1970), 4-5. 91 Graham, The Spanish Republic at War, 3-5.

60 significant, and sometimes unsavory, role of Communism and political commissars within the

International Brigades.

The CPUSA assigned veteran Party cadres to American units in Spain.92 James Neugass, an American writer and Barsky’s chauffeur, whose diary contains a vivid account of life in the medical unit, recounts the case of two deserters from January 1938, sentenced to death by a court martial, prosecuted by a seasoned Communist political commissar.93 However, Communist veterans from the Abraham Lincoln Brigade, including Steve Nelson, a fellow commissar, emphasized upon returning home to the United States that the Lincolns had no revolutionary intentions. Their sole aim was to support the beleaguered Republican government.94 This position was emphasized by Rubin. The position of the Party was secondary in both his rationale for coming to Spain and in the administration of the medical services in Spain. As he wrote, “In my evaluation…the role of the Communist Party wasn’t much of a factor.”95

Away from the internecine politics of the Brigades, the freedoms at stake in the conflict were reified in the site of the American hospital at Villa Paz. For Barsky and other members of the American Medical Bureau, the villa was proof of the inequality and political complexities which had defined Spanish life for centuries. Barsky described the manor as the summer palace of the Infantas of Spain, an “enchanting place” swathed in gardens and majestic in scale.96

Barsky could not help but compare the luxuries enjoyed by the Infanta and her guests to the squalor of the surrounding farms and villages, which only furthered his indignation. Neugass recalled an act of rebellion by the peasants, who dynamited the roof of the prison in which the

92 Carroll, The Odyssey of the Abraham Lincoln Brigade, 127. 93 Neugass, War is Beautiful, 119-120. 94 Carroll, The Odyssey of the Abraham Lincoln Brigade, 130-131. 95 Rubin, Spain’s Cause Was Mine, 146-147. 96 A Surgeon Goes to War, 93.

61 Infanta had “locked up those of her peasants she judged had offended herself or society.”97

Aristocratic rule having been abolished, Villa Paz became a beacon of hope for villagers in the region who sought medical care. As Neugass sarcastically noted, “Meanwhile, peasants come to us from all Cuenca province with the ills which have afflicted them for centuries, expecting miracles.”98 The arrival of an American hospital was never only significant for soldiers at the front. Both Barsky and Neugass used the symbol of the Villa Paz as a way to emphasize their support for the dismantling of Spain’s rigid class boundaries. As Neugass somberly questioned in his diary, “What crime did these peasants commit? What is their guilt? Why did their Pope turn against them?”99 For both the villagers and the members of the medical outfit, many of whom shared a dedication to progressive causes or ascribed to Communism, the institution of a hospital in the site of oppression was an incredibly powerful symbol.

Suffering with inflammatory jaundice which had developed over the course of the long drive, Barsky arrived at the conference in Paris bedraggled, exhausted, and violently ill.100

Although he had fantasized about bathing in the comparatively luxurious bathrooms of Paris and indulging in food which he had not eaten since before coming to Spain, Barsky realized that he was too worn out for anything but a nap.101 During the conference, aid groups from across the world worked to optimize the flow of aid to Republican Spain, an effort which left Barsky feeling “cheered and inspired.”102 As he wrote in his memoir, “When one is war-weary…there is nothing which so restores sanity and hope as seeing a number of people from diverse

97 Neugass, War is Beautiful, 18. 98 Ibid., 29. 99 Ibid., 103. 100 A Surgeon Goes to War, 211. 101 A Surgeon Goes to War, 202, 210. 102 A Surgeon Goes to War, 212.

62 nationalities get together…and try to do their best for another nation whom they believe to be fighting for their own ideals.”103

Once home in the United States, Barsky embarked on a four-month speaking tour of the country, drumming up support for the cause in Spain and the American Medical Bureau. Perhaps the most significant result of the trip was the formation of the U.S. West Coast Medical Unit for

Spain, which was led by esteemed thoracic surgeon Dr. Leo Eloesser, professor of surgery at

Stanford University Medical School.104 The culmination of the time away from Spain for Barsky was encapsulated in a mass meeting in support of the American Medical Bureau at Madison

Square Garden, of which Barsky was introduced as the keynote speaker. After working for much of the steam back to the United States on the text of a speech for the rally, Barsky was awed at the size of the crowd packed into Madison Square Garden. Nervous and bristling at the state of his carefully-worked remarks, which had been edited for brevity, Barsky mounted the dais. As he described, “Muttering the worst curses I knew I climbed up to the platform. I clung to a little table which was mercifully there with a pitcher of water and a glass on it…Then I heard a new kind of horrible noise. My brother said afterward that I had looked up at the ceiling as if I were waiting for bombs to drop. Then I understood what that noise was. It was the enthusiastic applause of twenty thousand people. I guess the speech went over all right; after all, I just talked about our work, and especially about our nurses.”105

Although Barsky’s focus away from Spain had oriented toward politics, the necessities of the front were not far from hand. While touring the United States, Barsky submitted exact

103 A Surgeon Goes to War, 212. 104 Landis, The Abraham Lincoln Brigade, 339. 105 A Surgeon Goes to War, 214-215.

63 specifications and commissioned the construction of a new auto-chir for the front, which would be brought with him to Spain.106

Medicine, Politics, and the Death of a Republic

As Barsky wrote of a particularly heavy wave of casualties in early 1938, “I used to think that if everyone in the world could glimpse that triage room for just one moment that there would be no more war. But a surgeon cannot think things like that too often.”107 As it became increasingly clear that the Republicans had no chance of securing victory, Barsky faced a mounting sense of failure. No matter how hard he worked, he could not save everyone.108 It was in this climate of impending defeat and constant danger in which Barsky formulated his definition of modern war and his commitment to end it. As a surgeon, his experiences in Spain convinced him of the preventable misery of war, yet also the ways in which medical science flourished during conflict. This inescapable duality haunts Barsky’s memoir. Yet, for Barsky, one legacy of Spain was simple: the ultimate righteousness of the Republican cause. Continuing to aid the victims of the conflict would remain a central focus of the surgeon’s life beyond the battlefield.

Barsky returned to Spain in November 1937, about a month before the last of the

Republican victories on the battlefield. Independent of aid from the International Brigades, the

Spanish Republicans captured the provincial capital of Teruel, a frigid mountain outpost which would prove to be the site of some of the war’s most bitter fighting.109 However, for supporters of the Republican cause, the news was a giant boost to morale, especially as it came around the

106Landis, The Abraham Lincoln Brigade, 159. 107 A Surgeon Goes to War, 144. (The emphasis on triage is Barsky’s.) 108 A Surgeon Goes to War, 275. 109 Carroll, The Odyssey of the Abraham Lincoln Brigade, 166.

64 holidays. As Peter Carroll describes in The Odyssey of the Abraham Lincoln Brigade: Americans in the Spanish Civil War, “Most considered it an omen of imminent victory: the Spanish people’s army would quickly rid the country of Franco and his fascist allies.”110 However, these feelings of joy would be short-lived, as Barsky and the American unit were summoned toward Teruel to prepare to receive wounded from a fierce Nationalist counter-attack.

As Barsky wrote, “When the orders came, we knew that we were to go over the mountains of Aragon up to Teruel. The Spaniards who were helping in the hospital said we would never get there, they seemed to believe that we would get snow-bound in the high sierras and freeze to death.”111 The Spanish advice would prove prescient, as the advance toward Teruel devolved into chaos.112 Climbing switchback turns and high mountain passes on precarious roads, the drivers were forced to use snow to cool overheating radiators.113 Descending, the surgeon’s ambulance continually slid off the road, the lack of a windshield wiper forcing Barsky to shout directions at Neugass, the chauffeur, with his head out the passenger window. Showing his trademark spunk and cantankerousness, Barsky demanded control of the vehicle. As he wrote, “Finally, I decided no matter how good a driver my chauffeur was that I was a better one.

I took the wheel.” Neugass remembered the drive slightly differently, “B. [Barsky] gets his arm in front of my eyes at just the wrong time.”114 Later that morning, Neugass became too tired to drive any further. As Neugass captured Barsky’s acerbic wit in his diary,

I handed the wheel over to the Major. ‘I’m a surgeon and he’s supposed to be a driver,’ I heard him say, as my eyelids sank inexorably as the jaws of a hydraulic press. ‘I watch the road for him while he drives. Now that I’m doing his work, he has to sleep.’ Good. B.

110 Carroll, The Odyssey of the Abraham Lincoln Brigade, 166. 111 A Surgeon Goes to War, 123. 112 Landis, The Abraham Lincoln Brigade, 356. 113 A Surgeon Goes to War, 125. 114 Neugass, War is Beautiful, 95.

65 was in form. The situation could not be hopeless. But some day I’ll lose my temper and teach that cantankerous Boy Scout how to smile.115

Finally, the unit made it to the front, establishing a field hospital and surgical unit close to Teruel.116 The arrival of the first batch of wounded would lead to Barsky establishing a new personal record: fifty hours straight in the operating room.117 The mobile front-line unit was established by the surgeon at Cuevas Labradas.118 Situated dangerously close to the front, Barsky and his colleagues operated for weeks around the clock as the Nationalists fought to re-capture the city of Teruel and abolish the Republican gains.119

During the first week of March 1938, fascist forces launched a tremendous offensive on the Loyalist contingent in the Aragon, beginning the Great Retreats, named because of the mad scramble of International Brigade soldiers and Spanish refugees to reach the far bank of the Ebro

River and safety.120 As the Nationalist offensive began to gain steam, tearing gaping holes in the

Loyalist defenses, the mobile hospitals in which Barsky treated the wounded became increasingly precarious and dangerous. Driving through the countryside, Barsky’s ambulance was strafed by a Nationalist bomber flying so low that Barsky could glimpse the face of the pilot.

Both doctor and chauffeur were forced to dive into a roadside culvert, cowering until the imperious German bomber winged away. As he advised, “Never stay on a road or near your car when a plane is passing. Remember this thing which is very important; when you do…make sure you are perpendicular to the route of the plane and then as the machine gun bullets sweep at you, you will offer the smallest possible target.”121

115 Neugass, War is Beautiful, 96. 116 Neugass, War is Beautiful, 108. 117 A Surgeon Goes to War, 137. 118 Landis, The Abraham Lincoln Brigade, 358. 119 A Surgeon Goes to War, 143-146. 120 Carroll, The Odyssey of the Abraham Lincoln Brigade, 171-174. 121 A Surgeon Goes to War, 214-215. (The underlined section is Barsky’s emphasis.)

66 The mobile hospital was exposed to almost-continuous bombing, and Barsky ordered the construction of zig-zag trenches to protect from bombardment.122 All time outside of the operating theater was spent by Barsky and the other members of the unit in the trenches.123 A frightening moment occurred when a direct hit was made on the hospital, immediately killing a chauffeur, two patients, and injuring a nurse.124 Barsky, buried with dirt in the trench, rushed to the operating room, where fellow surgeon Dr. Freedman had continued to operate throughout the blast. However, nurse Helen Freeman had suffered a skull fracture from the explosion, with shrapnel almost tearing off her arm. Managing to save her arm through an emergency surgery,

Barsky decided not to evacuate Freeman, fearing a massacre by the Fascists if the lines were broken.125 The bombing would be a portent of impending defeat, as the Americans were soon forced to evacuate the mobile hospital, joining the masses attempting to reach the rear.126

Amidst the chaos of the retreats, Barsky was appointed Surgeon-in-chief of the

International Sanitary Service, arriving at headquarters in Barcelona on March 18.127 The surgeon was tasked with the upkeep and administration of all twenty-two International Brigade hospitals in Spain, as well as a sanitation department, ambulance garage, and water control. As

Barsky wrote, “Every conceivable medical military detail was centered in my office.”128 The position was complicated by the rapid Nationalist advance which mandated the evacuation of many International hospitals in the South of Spain. One morning, Barsky received a phone call

122 Adam Hochschild, Spain in our Hearts: Americans in the Spanish Civil War, 1936-1939, (New York: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt 2016), 286. 123 A Surgeon Goes to War, 62. 124 Hochschild, Spain in our Hearts, 286. 125 A Surgeon Goes to War, 166-167. 126 A Surgeon Goes to War, 168-169. 127 A Surgeon Goes to War, 216. 128 A Surgeon Goes to War, 222.

67 which mandated the evacuation of almost 4,000 International Brigade wounded to Barcelona.

Barsky was tasked with establishing hospitals for these patients in 96 hours.129

In that time period, Barsky was able to find locations, gather supplies, and establish nascent hospital administrations who would ready them for patients. As Arthur Landis describes in The Abraham Lincoln Brigade, “The American hospitals, specifically, were at Vich, Mataro, and S’Agaro. Dr. Eloesser headed the main unit at Vich – a deserted monastery with as many as

1,500 beds.”130 Although each of the hospitals faced unique difficulties, Barsky was largely able to keep their operations running smoothly. As Barsky wrote, “In spite of every difficulty that one could dream of: overcrowding, understaffing, with confusion in every department from the kitchen almost up to the operating room, there quickly emerged seven efficient and well-running hospitals, but not without headaches and heartaches, and days of continuous work without sleep and insufficient food.”131

On March 22, 1938 Neugass, suffering from shrapnel in his neck, scalp, and back, asked

Barsky for his permission to leave Spain, hoping to return home to write about what he had seen in the war. He recorded Barsky’s response: “O.K., I’ll send you out. But who the hell is going to send me out?”132 Neugass did not think that the surgeon looked well. He wrote, “The Major

[Barsky] is not very well. He lives and fulfills the obligations of his new job, not on the little bread and the few oranges his stomach will retain, not on the many cigarettes he smokes, but on the power of his will.”133 As Barsky framed his malaise, “I was not only extremely worn out but

I got to seeing again and again our dead patients. No surgeon can bear to lose a life…the sense of

129 A Surgeon Goes to War, 226. 130 Landis, The Abraham Lincoln Brigade, 495. 131 A Surgeon Goes to War, 272. 132 Neugass, War is Beautiful, 300. 133 Ibid.

68 guilt would haunt me and in spite of myself I would live over certain operations which I thought had been forgotten.”134 Sensing Barsky’s need for rejuvenation, the surgeon’s staff sent him off on a forced long weekend, with Mildred Rackley provided as a chaperone to ensure that Barsky would not secret away back to the city. The destination was the monastery at Montserrat, nestled in the craggy peaks just outside of Barcelona. Hosted by a Spanish Quaker, Barsky spent the days talking about Spanish history, further emphasizing to him the centuries of oppression faced by the people. Was there any hope for change?135

Barsky found his answer in the memory of two wounded Spaniards at Teruel. Barsky had been called to the triage area to decide which man was in most urgent need for surgery. Although both cases were similarly grim, the surgeon chose one of the boys to go first into the theater. As

Barsky described,

The boy who was to go first looked at me and with a remnant of swagger and command, tossed his head towards his comrade. ‘Take him, Doctor, he’s the worst.’…Then he smiled. ‘That way we’ll both get back to the front quicker.’ That sort of thing I had not seen once but many times. In this case, the boy who had spoke to me had been without attention to his wounds for twenty hours, he had been jounced over forty kilometers of icy roads, he was starved, thirsty, he had lost much blood. ‘You won’t be able to beat this sort of spirit forever,’ I said. ‘No,’ said my friend [the Spanish Quaker], ‘it is only that the fight is long.’136

As Republican Spain teetered on the brink of collapse, Barsky was forced to confront a final problem: the total evacuation of the severely wounded International soldiers from Spain. As

Landis describes, “The procedure for returning these men to their respective countries involved the submitting to the French government [of] a list of those to be evacuated, with a request for

134 A Surgeon Goes to War, 260. 135 A Surgeon Goes to War, 260-272. 136 A Surgeon Goes to War, 272

69 transit permits.”137 Barsky’s initial list of 500 patients was approved, but upon the date of their evacuation were almost doomed by a windy speech by a Republican dignitary. As the troops sat at the railhead, Fascist bombers appeared overhead, forcing the train filled with wounded to hide in a tunnel for hours. However, the train finally was able to elude the bombers and steam into

France.138 As Barsky wrote, “It was one of the best things I ever did, one of the things I am most proud of.”139 However, the French government would not be as facilitating with further batches of wounded Internationals, beginning a protracted struggle to repatriate as many wounded as possible.140

Throughout his time as a witness to the conflict, Barsky had begun to develop a definition of modern war which crystallized during his experiences in Barcelona. There, he witnessed the almost-continuous bombardment of the city during the early months of 1938. As Coni writes,

“Spain provided the world’s first experience of massive bombardment of major centers of population.”141 During the first half of 1938, 2,116 civilians died, with half of those killed children.142 As Barsky lamented, “In Spain the children were particularly unprepared for the new part children play in war. Bullets are for men but bombs are for children.”143 In modern war, there was increasingly no distinction between soldiers and non-combatants, and the impact of conflict reached far beyond traditional notions of the battlefield. For Barsky, three characteristics formed the basis of the distinction. They were the increasing connectedness between civilians and events on the battlefield, an expansion of isolated conflict to total war, and the increasing influence of wartime propaganda. These three characteristics signified the shift of war from a

137 Landis, The Abraham Lincoln Brigade, 495. 138 Ibid., 496. 139 A Surgeon Goes to War, 296. 140. Landis, The Abraham Lincoln Brigade, 496. 141 Coni, Medicine and Warfare: Spain, 51. 142 Ibid. 143 A Surgeon Goes to War, 275.

70 purely physical entity to a psychological one, which could extend far beyond the conclusion of actual conflict.144

The psychological impact was increased by the cruelty of the tactics, especially by the

Nationalist side. As Landis describes the brutality of Fascists toward the wounded, “The practice of bombing and butchering International wounded, and the destruction of ambulances and hospitals in general, had long been considered ‘great sport’ by the Rebel high command.”145

Thus, the surgeon was even more essential in modern war, as a way to counter the optimization of killing represented by the arms on the battlefield. As the foreword of A Surgeon Goes to War reads, “Modern war has brought a savagery to the world which might be called new because of the mechanized deadliness of its implements, but must be called old because of the primitive cruelty with which these have been used. Perhaps never before has the healing art of the surgeon been more needed or given with more cool effectiveness.”146 Barsky hoped that no one else would have to face the horrors of this new “modern” war, but those notions would be disabused one year later with the Nazi invasion of Poland in 1939.

As Barsky walked the streets of Barcelona, reflecting upon his time in Spain, he wrote

“The Spanish experience has proved to me that this determination, this valor, this heritage, is a common heritage of all people in their struggle toward a better life.”147 He would continue in his post as the head of the Sanitary Services of the International Brigades until January 1939, which coincided with the departure of the final foreign volunteers from Spain. The city of Barcelona would fall on January 26, and the rest of Spain would capitulate on April 1. Franco, and fascism

144 A Surgeon Goes to War, 295-296. 145 Landis, The Abraham Lincoln Brigade, 496. 146 A Surgeon Goes to War, Foreword 2. 147A Surgeon Goes to War, 298.

71 had won.148 Yet, despite defeat, the dedication of many of the members of the International

Brigades did not waver. As Carroll writes, “The ordeal of Spain, the loss of so many friends and comrades, inevitably followed the veterans long after they had returned home.”149 Although the impending defeat led Rubin to question the sacrifices of the volunteers in Spain, his ultimate conclusion was that the fight, although ending in defeat, was worthy. He wrote, “Under the circumstances, it was hard to believe that my comrades had not died in vain. Yet I also knew that the battle in Spain had been necessary and worthwhile, that the struggle for decency in the world would and must continue…I knew, too, that…I would be a part of that movement.”150 For

Barsky, the plight of Spain and its victims would remain a central focus upon his return home to the United States.

However, despite his continued fervor for the cause of the Republicans and the refugees of the conflict, Barsky was overwhelmed by the human cost of war. The surgeon’s experience in

Spain had forged a distinctive anti-war sentiment, which he felt compelled to pass on. As he wrote, “One war has ended; new wars have begun and yet we still cannot imagine that thing which is the reality of war…I feel that when men and women realize what war is, what it means to all concerned, wars will cease. I am conscious that many have said this before: it is the eternal message of those who return.”151

148 Palfreeman, Salud! xx-xxi. 149 Carroll, The Odyssey of the Abraham Lincoln Brigade, x. 150 Rubin, Spain’s Cause Was Mine, 146. 151 A Surgeon Goes to War, 289.

72

Barsky in Teruel. Courtesy of Tamiment Library, New York University.

73 Chapter Three

“Martyr of an American Saint”: Progressivism and Persecution in the Age of

McCarthy

Justice William O. Douglas wrote in his 1954 dissenting opinion to Barsky v. Board of

Regents, “When a doctor cannot save lives in America because he is opposed to Franco in Spain, it is time to call a halt and look critically at the neurosis that has possessed us.”1 The failure of

Barsky v. Board of Regents represented the nadir of Barsky’s life and career. After public calumny, congressional hearings, and imprisonment, the decision of the court upholding the revocation of Barsky’s medical license was the final step in his public persecution. Barsky’s right to practice had been jeopardized by his leadership of the Joint Anti-Fascist Refugee

Committee (JAFRC), a Spanish aid committee formed due to his passion for the Republican cause. The committee, sympathetic to Communist causes, had been labeled as subversive by the

House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC). The story of the surgeon’s activism and downfall reveals not only the complexities of Barsky’s identity as a surgeon and activist, but also the complexities and contradictions of American politics as World War slipped into Cold War.

The divide between the HUAC representation of Barsky and the image created by his legacy of activism and engagement reveal the intricate political currents swirling in the United

States at the outset of the Cold War. Facing a protean landscape of shifting foreign alignments after 1939, and with the encroaching threat of world communism replacing fascism, America’s politics shifted to one pole. Rising domestic anticommunist sentiment began with a conservative revolt against the liberalism of New Deal policies and resulted in the Little Red Scare, a wave of

1 Barsky v. Board of Regents of the University of the State of New York (US Supreme Court): Opinion & Dissent; ALBA.125; Box 4; Folder 7.

74 repression and legislation against left-leaning groups. However, this growing movement was stunted by the United States alliance with Stalin, which diminished the focus on persecuting

American Communists. However, this simmering resentment was unleashed with the re- alignment of world politics and the beginning of the Cold War in 1945, ushering in a wave of domestic anticommunism that would become known as McCarthyism. Anticommunism assumed a role at the center of American politics, and Barsky would come squarely within the focus of its crosshairs.2 How did Barsky’s politics evolve from his time in Spain and how did they correspond with shifts in American foreign policy? Why did Barsky and the JAFRC loom as such a threat to American anticommunists? The short answer is that Barsky’s organization was sympathetic to causes supported by the Communist Party and included members of the Party in leading positions. Yet, this alone does not explain the singular nature of the surgeon’s persecution. The oppression of Barsky was also a form of retribution: an atonement for

American embarrassment in Spain, a myopic response to a misunderstood Communist threat, and a symptom of the unbridgeable chasm at the heart of American politics.

The first section of this chapter traces Barsky’s political activism upon his return from

Spain. Through his indefatigable leadership of Spanish relief efforts to aid Republic refugees and prisoners, Barsky kept the cause of Spain as the central focus of his life. Barsky was forced to wage a constant battle in balancing the JAFRC’s desire to deliver the most effective possible aid to stranded Republicans with the complex ebbs and flows of American foreign and domestic policy. Rather than any fundamental opposition to the organization’s relief activities, Barsky and the JAFRC were persecuted because of their political activism, labeled as “propaganda” by

HUAC. The second section of this chapter will examine Barsky’s two persecutions: the first his

2 Schrecker, The Age of McCarthyism, 20.

75 conviction and imprisonment due to contempt of Congress, and the second the revocation of his medical license by the New York State Board of Regents. In both instances, Barsky’s right to practice as a physician was jeopardized by his political views. In both sections, I contextualize

Barsky’s activism and persecution within the changing American political landscape. The activism of Barsky and the JAFRC did not change, but was engulfed by a wave of anticommunist sentiment which was not concerned with the nuances of groups supporting causes deemed un-American.

Through this chapter, the elucidation of Barsky’s activism and persecution emphasizes the complexities and contradictions of U.S. politics as the country moved from World War II to the Cold War. The work of the JAFRC is superimposed upon a turbulent political background, which moves from the Little Red Scare, to tacit acceptance of Communism during World War II, to strong backlash at the outset of McCarthyism. Tracing the oppression of Barsky and the

JAFRC reveals the methods of anticommunist retribution and highlights the contradictions which honeycombed McCarthyist persecution.

Spain Undying: Political Activism

In a 1947 speech for the Joint Anti-Fascist Refugee Committee (JAFRC) celebrating the anniversary of the founding of the Spanish Republic, Barsky orated, “The Spanish Republicans in exile are the heroic symbol of the forces which will save the world from its own destruction.

They are our conscience and our inspiration…To break faith with them now is to break faith with our own belief in democracy…Let us never fail them or we fail ourselves.”3 In Spain, Barsky

3 JAFRC: Address by Barsky: Commemoration of the Spanish Republic; Edward K. Barsky Papers; ALBA.125; Box 1; Folder 15.

76 had come to fully understand the significance of the Republic and the centuries of oppression faced by the Spanish people under the festering vestiges of feudal rule. Through his observations and interactions in the towns and villages he traveled through as a surgeon on the frontlines, the cause of Spain became Barsky’s central focus. Despite Republican defeat on the battlefield and the resultant excesses of the Franco regime, the surgeon’s passion for the cause did not diminish.

Beginning in 1942, Barsky re-aligned his activism towards aid to the Republican refugees and the political prisoners of Franco’s regime as leader of the Joint Anti-Fascist Refugee Committee

(JAFRC).

At the end of the Spanish Civil War, a wave of repression ensued as the victorious Fascist rebels under the command of Franco sought to consolidate power over the country. In The

Spanish Holocaust, Paul Preston estimates that 20,000 Republicans were executed at the end of war, with untold numbers of other survivors destined to languish in concentration camps or forced to flee the country as refugees.4 The former Republicans were preposterously cast by

Franco and the new regime as part of a “Jewish-Bolshevik-Masonic conspiracy,” legitimizing the employment of the administrative bureaucracy to carry out a program of terror. Using sham trials and denunciations, as well as a range of quasi-official extrajudicial avenues, Franco and the new ruling military junta cracked down on the vanquished. They argued that there was no potential for reconciliation. Aside from punishment through judicial processes, Republicans were also imprisoned and confined to work and concentration camps, where many died from malnutrition and rampant outbreaks of disease.5 In 1942, three years after the end of the war, there were still

241,000 political prisoners languishing in Spanish prisons.6

4 Paul Preston, The Spanish Holocaust: Inquisition and Extermination in Twentieth Century Spain, (New York: W.W. Norton and Company, 2012), xii-xiii. 5 Preston, The Spanish Holocaust, 470-481. 6 Hugh Thomas, The Spanish Civil War, (New York: Harper and Row, 1961), 607-608.

77 The fortunate were able to flee from Spain across the Pyrenees to France or catch one of the few marine transports which braved the Francoist blockade as the Fascist forces made their final assault on Barcelona and Madrid.7 More than 500,000 refugees arrived in France in 1939 to face terrible privations in refugee camps.8 In My Mission to Spain, a memoir written by Claude

Bowers, the United States Ambassador to Spain for the duration of the Civil War, he describes the horrors which faced those lucky enough to escape across the frontier to France. Upon arrival, the fleeing Loyalist soldiers and families, now refugees, were confined to hastily-prepared refugee sites which closely resembled concentration camps. He writes, “Thousands of old men, women, and children, with Loyalist soldiers, were confined in camps in France unfit for human habitation. The camps of St. Cyprien and Argelte, great stretches of sand enclosed by barbed wire, had no shelter of any kind.”9 Six months after the capitulation of Spain, an estimated

15,000 prisoners had perished in the French camps.10 After the invasion of France by Germany in 1940, many of the interned Loyalists were transferred to Nazi work and concentration camps.

Thousands would go on to perish, with a large proportion of the victims succumbing at the

Mauthausen death camp. Many Spaniards who escaped imprisonment in France joined the

French resistance, where they were treated with special brutality at the hands of the Gestapo if captured. Another significant group, numbering as many as 30,000, were incarcerated in camps in North Africa.11 The plight of the Spanish Civil War’s final victims would become the focal point of Barsky’s activism as the battle for democracy in Spain had ended.

7 Preston, The Spanish Holocaust, 470-481. 8 Deery, Red Apple, 14. 9 Claude Bowers, My Mission to Spain, (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1954), 408-409. 10 Sebastiaan Faber, Exile and Cultural Hegemony: Spanish Intellectuals in Mexico, 1939-1975, (Nashville: Vanderbilt University Press, 2002), 16. 11 Deery, Red Apple, 14.

78 The horrific treatment of Republicans and refugees at the end of the Civil War was accompanied by a continued lack of diplomatic support from the United States. After the final victory of Franco, symbolized by the ignominious fall of Madrid, Bowers was recalled to

Washington. Senior officials in the State Department worried that his continued presence in

Spain would jeopardize the country’s efforts to establish formal diplomatic relations with the

Franco regime. Upon his return to the United States upon the Queen Mary, Bowers was called into the White House residence to meet with President Franklin Roosevelt. As Bowers recalled,

“I found President Roosevelt seated at his desk in the White House residence, more serious and graver than I had ever seen him before…Before I could sit down or utter a word, he said: ‘We have made a mistake; you have been right all along.’”12 Although there were considerable rifts in the State Department concerning the United States’ stance of non-intervention, there was no significant opposition mounted in Congress toward the formal recognition of Franco’s regime.13

The “moral” embargo enacted by the United States had not succeeded in keeping foreign powers from becoming embroiled in a major war in Spain; it had merely sealed the doom of the Spanish

Republic. Indeed, it was the embargo which gave almost free access to the Fascist powers of

Italy and Germany to intervene in Spain without significant opposition. As F. Jay Taylor writes in The United States and the Spanish Civil War, United States policy “made inevitable the humiliating appeasement of Franco during the Second World War. It created in Spain a den of fascism which has continued to plague the body politic of Europe long after the Axis

12 Bowers, My Mission to Spain, 411-422. 13 F. Jay Taylor, The United States and the Spanish Civil War: 1936-1939, (New York: Bookman Associates, 1956), 197-207. Both Bowers and Taylor wrote at the height of McCarthyist persecution in the mid-1950s. These writers would have certainly been impacted by the political climate in which they wrote, so it is perhaps worthwhile to digress for a moment and explore their politics. Bowers also wrote the introduction for Taylor’s book, which suggests that the two men likely shared similar political views on Spain. There is a distinct sympathy for the cause of Republican Spain and criticism for the lack of tangible American support. This stance suggests an internationalist view on foreign politics and perhaps greater sympathy for the victims of McCarthyist persecution.

79 dictatorships were removed from the scene.”14 However, for FDR, the most important aspect of policy toward Spain was to pursue the course which would ensure the most rapid victory over

Germany and the Axis powers as well as to shore up his political capital ahead of the 1940 re- election campaign. FDR needed the support of the prominent Catholic lobby to ensure victory in the upcoming race.15 The establishment of diplomatic relations with Francoist Spain, despite the realization of America’s catastrophic dalliance with appeasement, was abhorrent to Barsky and other Americans who had fought in Spain.

Veterans, including Barsky, returning from Spain were faced with a wave of increasing anticommunist sentiment which erupted in the late 1930s. Supporters of the Republic would be some of the earliest casualties of the hunt for American subversives. Even before the final capitulation of democratic Spain, the alleged ties between American veterans and the Communist

Party had begun to be investigated by a new congressional committee chaired by Representative

Martin Dies, a Democrat from Texas. The committee would become known as the House

Committee on Un-American Activity (HUAC), and had been established amidst a wider conservative backlash to the New Deal. Using public hearings, Dies loudly proclaimed the presence of significant Communist influence in the labor movement and also in New Deal programs.16 The position of communism and the Popular Front in American politics had been diminished by the alignment of Soviet Russia with Nazi Germany in the Molotov-Ribbentrop

Pact, which allowed easy casting of American Communists as complicit supporters of Nazi aggression. The result of this increasing anticommunist fervor was an increasing passage of

14 Taylor, The United States and the Spanish Civil War, 208-209. 15 Dominic Tierney, FDR and the Spanish Civil War, (Durham: Duke University Press, 2007), 141-142, 156-157. 16 Kennedy, Freedom From Fear, 349.

80 espionage and sedition legislation directed against communists. The era between 1939 and 1941 would become known as the Little Red Scare.17

The attention of HUAC was drawn toward the cause of Spain by the reported ties which existed between the Abraham Lincoln Brigade and the Communist Party. Testimony given by

Abraham Lincoln Brigade deserters Abraham Sobel and Alvin Halpern placed greater scrutiny on Republican veterans and supporters. The two men claimed extensive Communist Party control over the Lincoln Brigade in Spain. These sentiments were echoed by a handful of other deserters, who were also concerned by the undue influence of the Party and Soviet Russia over

Loyalist activities in Spain.18 In 1940, HUAC called forth three other Abraham Lincoln Brigade veterans to further testify on this issue before Congress. The repression was accompanied by a raid on the national headquarters of the Veterans of the Abraham Lincoln Brigade (VALB) in

Manhattan.19 As Eric Smith describes in American Relief Aid and the Spanish Civil War, “Once again extrapolation from Spanish events in these testimonies was to impart meaning for prosecutors in a search to unveil what was perceived as a communist monolith where spies and

Spanish Republican sympathizers were indistinguishable.”20 However, much of the testimony offered by the witnesses was exaggerated and inaccurate, and roundly dismissed by other

Lincoln and American medical volunteers.21 An obituary for Dies written in the New York

Times in 1972 reported the immediate backlash toward HUAC early in its tenure, which caused

17 Heale, American Anticommunism, 122-124. 18 Carroll, The Odyssey of the Abraham Lincoln Brigade, 232-233. 19 Steven H. Jaffe, “Legacies of the Spanish Civil War in New York,” in Facing Fascism: New York and the Spanish Civil War, eds. Peter N. Carroll and James D. Fernandez (New York: Museum of the City of New York: NYU Press, 2007), 173-176. 20 Eric Smith, American Relief Aid and the Spanish Civil War, (Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 2013), 115- 116. 21 Carroll, The Odyssey of the Abraham Lincoln Brigade, 232-233.

81 FDR to label the organization as “un-American.”22 The committee presented a large problem for the FDR administration, as it garnered massive support from the public. Beyond setting Congress against the White House, the original Dies List of 1,121 suspected communists in the government was a major annoyance. Although most of the suspected subversives were not censured, the incident was proof of the burgeoning anticommunist sentiment in the United

States, and was accompanied by questioning of other organizations.23 The early questioning of

Spanish Civil War veterans by HUAC and the apparent links between the Abraham Lincoln

Brigade and the Communist Party would enhance the perception of supporters of Republican

Spain as politically questionable. HUAC spearheaded the investigation of many other

Republican sympathizers in the following years, including Barsky.24

The Little Red Scare which began in 1938 did not emerge as a fully-fledged anticommunist crusade only because of the German invasion of Russia in 1941, which severed the Nazi-Soviet pact. As the Soviets were forced to align with the Allies for survival, American

Communists could point to a new domestic Popular Front supporting the policies of FDR. The president was willing to overlook some of the excesses of the Party in Russia to shore up the perception of an essential ally, and American Communists would play important roles in many of the defense manufacturing sectors central to the war effort.25

As the world descended into the Second World War, Barsky’s political activism on behalf of Republican Spain did not die along with the Loyalist cause, culminating in the formation of the JAFRC. Amidst the shifting American political background, Barsky helped to

22 “Ex-Rep. Martin Dies, 71, is Dead; Led Un-American Activities Unit,” New York Times, Page 1, November 15, 1972. 23 Ellen Schrecker, Many are the Crimes: McCarthyism in America, (Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1998), 110-114. 24 “Ex-Rep. Martin Dies, 71, is Dead.” 25 Heale, American Anticommunism, 130-132.

82 initiate significant relief efforts for Spanish refugees through the Joint Anti-Fascist Refugee

Committee, which emerged from a tangled web of various aid organizations that had supported the efforts of the Republic during the Civil War. Smith describes an American public in 1939 which supported the Spanish Republic and opposed the spread of fascism, but was willing to stay neutral and hope that fascism never reached American shores.26

However, not all segments of American society were satisfied with isolationism. An organization known as the Spanish Refugee Relief Campaign (SRRC), established by former elements of Republican support groups, was formed in 1939 and grew out of the North American

Committee to Aid Spanish Democracy. Barsky had helped to found the American Medical

Bureau to Aid Spanish Democracy in 1936, which like the North American Committee was under the auspices of the American Friends for Spanish Democracy.27 It is unclear what role, if any, Barsky played in the SRRC and its activities. Smith argues that the JAFRC, the organization which Barsky would come to lead, was born out of a revolt of the Communist elements in the

SRRC toward the administration of the organization and the focus of their relief efforts.28 In an

FBI report filed on May 26, 1942, the special agent writing the report (whose name is redacted) cited a desire among communist elements in the SRRC to denounce the French for their treatment of refugees as the impetus for the disintegration.29 The name JAFRC was spawned out of several iterations, which included the United American Spanish Aid Committee, American

Committee to Save Refugees, and American Rescue Ship Mission.30 Barsky had also served as

26 Smith, American Relief Aid and the Spanish Civil War, 99-101. 27 Smith, “New York’s Aid to the Spanish Republic,” in Facing Fascism: New York and the Spanish Civil War, eds. Peter N. Carroll and James D. Fernandez (New York: Museum of the City of New York: NYU Press, 2007), 44. 28 Eric Smith, American Relief Aid and the Spanish Civil War, (Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 2013), 99- 101. 29 FBI special report filed to New York, NY. May 26, 1942. 3179 file 100-3642. FBI files were provided by the the Bureau through an FOIA request for subject files corresponding to Barsky. 30 Smith, American Relief Aid and the Spanish Civil War, 108-109.

83 chairman of the United American Spanish Aid Committee, which from FBI reports appears to have been active from at least late 1940 until the formation of the JAFRC.31 The organization was founded on March 11, 1942.32 As Phillip Deery writes in Red Apple: Communism and

McCarthyism in Cold War New York about the surgeon’s commitment to the cause, “Barsky, with his direct experience behind him but his visceral attachment to Spain intact – became preoccupied with the plight of these Spanish refugees.”33 It is clear that from the moment of his return to American soil Barsky was consumed with helping captured and refugee Republicans however possible.

The activities of the JAFRC were centered on aid for Spanish refugees and continuing political activism against the Franco regime. In a 1944 organizational history of the JAFRC, the committee cites total disbursements of aid totaling $273,487.48, with more than 91 cents of each dollar received going directly to aid activities. The organization boasted 10 chapters in some of

America’s largest cities, which helped to organize fundraising drives and reported to the New

York office.34 Barsky served as national chairman. As Dr. Hugh Cabot, a physician from the

Boston suburbs, wrote in a letter to Barsky after watching him speak at a fundraising rally, “You have not only the courage to carry out your convictions but the very rare ability to make them come alive for other people. In other words, you are not only a doer but a prophet.”35

Barsky was central to the activities of the organization, serving as an influential speaker and organizer. The organization raised funds through mass meetings, banquet dinners, radio broadcasts, and direct correspondence requesting aid. Events sponsored by the committee

31 FBI special report filed to Chicago, IL. January, 31, 1941. 3179 file 100-1540. 32 Deery, Red Apple, 14-15. 33 Ibid. 34 JAFRC: Organizational History; ALBA.125; Edward K. Barsky Papers; Box 1; Folder 31.

35 JAFRC: Correspondence, Letter from Dr. Hugh Cabot; Edward K. Barsky Papers; ALBA.125; Box 1; Folder 19.

84 included a Century of the Common Man Dinner in 1942 and an annual Fiesta Republicana which commemorated the founding of the Spanish Republic.36 The broad scope and influential figures associated with the movement, including prominent academics and physicians, complemented the clarion call of Spanish need to help the organization accrue large successes in fundraising. The JAFRC reported that it had received more than 75,000 individual contributions from 1942-1944. In its fundraising efforts, the committee sought to remain within official

American governmental structures. The JAFRC was officially recognized during World War II by FDR’s War Relief Control Board. The organization was also granted tax-exempt status by the

Department of the Treasury.37 These overtures to legitimacy were echoed by the stated aims of the organization, which emphasized the aid as being central to helping the American war effort.

Perhaps, however, these legitimate connections to organs close to the FDR administration exposed the organization to censure from HUAC, a committee dominated by conservative opponents to the New Deal.38

The relief activities of the JAFRC aided Republican refugees and former Loyalist fighters wherever their journeys had ended after fleeing from Spain. The organization funded initiatives which spanned continents, with a particular focus on Spanish refugees across Europe, North

Africa, and Mexico. In France and North Africa, the organization distributed relief through the

Unitarian Service Committee and a Quaker group called the American Friends Service

Committee. The committee sent over loads of clothing, medicine, and food to support the refugees, who were facing massive shortages of essential goods.39 In North Africa, the committee

36JAFRC: Financial Records; ALBA.125; Edward K. Barsky Papers; Box 1; Folder 24. 37 Deery, Red Apple, 14-15. 38 Kennedy, Freedom From Fear, 349. 39 Deery, Red Apple, 14-15.

85 supported relief groups established in Casablanca, Oran, Algiers, and Tunis, which were established to assist Spanish refugees. These organizations, known as Amicales, were officially supported by the State Department. The JAFRC sent 5,000 dollars a month in cooperation with the Department of the Treasury and the State Department which was used directly for medical care and treatment of refugees as well as support for children’s and family services. The JAFRC also worked to support refugees in other European countries where they had settled after fleeing

Spain, including Switzerland and Portugal. Funds were allocated to organizations in those countries providing medical care and basic services to International Brigade volunteers and

Spanish refugees. 40

Mexico was one of the few countries willing to embrace refugees from Spain, and the

JAFRC was heavily involved in aiding refugee migration from Europe to Mexico and providing services for those who finally arrived. In 1938, the Mexican government announced a willingness to welcome as many as sixty thousand Spanish refugees, and this promise was later extended to include all Spanish refugees, provided that their transportation was paid for.41 As

Patricia Fagen writes in Exiles and Citizens: Spanish Republicans in Mexico, Spanish immigrants were welcomed with open arms, making Mexico the “major center of Spanish exile life and culture.”42 Barsky was directly involved with State Department representatives in helping to move Spanish refugees to Mexico.43 In addition, the JAFRC pursued several initiatives to assist Spanish refugees in Mexico beginning with their inception in 1942. One project was the funding of a rest home outside of Mexico City. Another was the Luis Vives

40 JAFRC: Organizational History. 41 Faber, Exile and Cultural Hegemony, 16. 42 Patricia W. Fagen, Exiles and Citizens: Spanish Republicans in Mexico, (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1973), 25-39. 43 JAFRC: Correspondence, Letter from Dr. Hugh Cabot.

86 Institute, which was a school for the children of Spanish and anti-fascist refugees. The JAFRC also built a hospital staffed by Spanish doctors which comprised both outpatient and surgical services.44 In 1945, the hospital would be renamed the Edward K. Barsky Sanatorium.45 The choice to name the hospital after Barsky signified the leading role of his activism in directing the organization, as well as a tribute to the dedication of the surgeon to political activism and relief on the behalf of Republican refugees.

The attempts of the JAFRC to secure the freedom of political prisoners was accompanied by strong condemnation of the Franco regime and the existing political ties between the United

States and fascist Spain. The condemnation used the language of wartime political messaging to connect the appeal for Spain with broader anti-fascist rhetoric. Barsky’s speeches and written appeals from 1942-1946 sought to attract a broader audience for Spanish relief through the utilization of patriotic imagery.

Through the organization’s political activism and connection to Lincoln Brigade veterans, the JAFRC came under significant domestic surveillance. From available FBI files declassified through the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA), it is clear that the JAFRC was considered a threat to American security from its inception. Part of this stemmed from a belief that the elements who formed the JAFRC were Communist and had transformed the organization into a communist “front.”46 An FBI report submitted in New York City on August 24, 1944 reveals the extensive research conducted by the bureau on Barsky, his background, and his activities with Spanish relief organizations.47 The meticulous nature of the research is astounding. From a report on Barsky’s credit rating from the Credit Bureau of Greater New York

44 JAFRC: Organizational History. 45 Deery, Red Apple, 15. 46 FBI special report filed to New York, NY. May 26, 1942. 3179, file 100-25849. 47 FBI special report filed to New York, NY. May 26, 1942. file 100-25849.

87 (good) to a detailed recording of a conversation with a member of the Columbia university registrar’s office concerning his academic records, FBI agents were painstaking in their construction of a detailed dossier on Barsky. However, there is no concrete evidence which connected Barsky to any subversive activities. In fact, the image of Barsky that emerges from the

FBI files closely mirrors that of the JAFRC files: an ardent supporter of Spanish refugees who combined his appeals for aid with continued political lobbying for the removal of the Franco regime. The conclusion of the report was to continue surveillance of Barsky’s activities with the aid of six confidential sources.

A follow-up report from the Bureau’s New York Field Office on February 24, 1945 did not substantiate any concrete links between Barsky’s role as chairman of the JAFRC and the

Communist Party. The file cited Barsky’s cordial relationships with prominent known

Communists in New York and attendance at social functions frequented by Party members as proof of the surgeon’s sympathy for the cause. Further action against Barsky cited at the conclusion of the report included a mail cover on correspondence to his residence and a search of his bank account for financial links to Communist organizations. It is also notable that at this point the Bureau had consistently started labeling the JAFRC as a Communist Front organization.48 The suspicion surrounding Barsky and his activities with the JAFRC was compounded by an increasing fear within the FBI of the danger of Abraham Lincoln Brigade veterans. Director J. Edgar Hoover was particularly convinced by the conspiracy against the organization. As Deery writes, “He was convinced, by two different ‘confidential’ sources, that veterans of the closely associated Abraham Lincoln Brigade…would ‘lead the vanguard of the revolution in this country.’ Funds raised by the JAFRC, ostensibly for Spaniards’ relief, would

48 FBI special report filed to New York, NY. February 24, 1945. File 100-25849.

88 assist that goal.”49 The increasing hysteria within the FBI toward the activities of the JAFRC, along with the anticommunist obsession of J. Edgar Hoover, was likely one of the driving forces behind HUAC’s subpoena of Barsky.50 Hoover believed that Communist subversion could occur in any type of organization, and that the intelligence and secrecy of Party members masked the danger of the organization. The only way to prevent sedition was constant vigilance and an acknowledgement of the constant danger of the Communist threat.51

Perhaps cognizant of the political threat due to the JAFRC’s political stances and activism, Barsky focused on the way in which helping refugees and former International Brigade fighters would add to the strength of the World War II anti-fascist contingent rather than limiting the focus to Republican Spain. In a mailer on May 15, 1942, Barsky uses imagery which connects the plight of the Spanish refugees with the heroism of American soldiers on the battlefields of Bataan and Corregidor. As he wrote of the Spanish, “Their one WILL – their one desire – is to fight again.”52 The emphasis is placed on activism in the context of the American war effort. A year later, in a speech delivered to the Convention of Solidarity with the Spanish

People held in Mexico City, Barsky connected the fight for Republican Spain to an early effort to stop Nazism, citing the Spanish cause as the “cause of world democracy.”53 Although it was clear that victory awaited the Allies, Barsky still emphasized the role of the Spanish refugees in securing the capitulation of the Axis powers. However, as the need to couch political demands in terms of the Allied war effort waned, Barsky’s tone shifted toward a direct assault against the legitimacy of Franco’s regime.

49 Deery, Red Apple, 17. 50 Ibid. 51 Schrecker, Many are the Crimes: McCarthyism in America, 141-144. 52 JAFRC: Correspondence, 1942 Mailer; Edward K. Barsky Papers; ALBA.125; Box 1; Folder 19. 53JAFRC: Address by Barsky at Mexico City Convention; Edward K. Barsky Papers; ALBA.125; Box 1; Folder 10.

89 In a speech to the Newspaper Guild of New York on January 23, 1945, Barsky delivered a strong denunciation of the insidious links between America and the Spanish regime. As he began, “Of course we should break relations with Franco Spain – and lose no time about it!”54

One of the strategies deployed by the JAFRC and its supporters to legitimize their activities within the American wartime narrative was to frame a narrative which emphasized the danger of a fascist Spain to the cause of the Allies. In the same speech, Barsky legitimized the severing of diplomatic relations with “neutral” Francoist Spain by drawing upon the image of Allied casualties caused by continued tacit support of Spain.55

Upon Allied victory in World War II, the JAFRC was forced to change its strategies.

Much of Barsky’s effort in speeches concentrated on attempting to connect the Franco regime with worldwide domination and Fascist expansion. On September 24, 1945, after the conclusion of the war, the JAFRC held a fundraising rally at Madison Square Garden where Barsky delivered a stirring address. In the speech, Barsky extolled the virtues of the Spanish Republicans while also decrying the democracy which had been stolen by Franco and his supporters. As he spoke, “For a world of security, justice, and peace, Franco must go!”56 The overt political message of the JAFRC changed from 1942-1945, but retained an overarching focus on helping the Spanish Republicans at any cost. As Barsky described the JAFRC’s activism, “The work that the committee does is a matter of life or death.”57

Barsky’s activism with the JAFRC would expose him to persecution by strengthening anticommunist elements in the government, spearheaded by Hoover’s FBI and HUAC, who both

54 Barsky, Edward: Address on Foreign Relations with Spain (Free Speech Forum of the Newspaper Guild); Edward K. Barsky Papers; ALBA.125; Box 1; Folder 4. (The emphasis is Barsky’s.) 55 Ibid. 56 JAFRC: Address by Barsky (Madison Square Garden); Edward K. Barsky Papers; ALBA.125; Box 1; Folder 13. 57 Ibid.

90 viewed the organization and its activities as a “front” for Communist activity. The surgeon’s persecution, decried by other members of the medical profession, would further expose the thorny relationship between politics, activism, and medicine.

Persecution

In 1951, Barsky’s right to practice medicine came under siege from the New York Board of Education. As Barsky’s lawyer wrote in his defense, citing the surgeon’s activities with the

JAFRC, “Respondent [Barsky] submits that in acting in a voluntary capacity in connection with said organization, he participated in the alleviation and suffering of human beings…In so doing, he feels he acted in the best traditions of his profession and in the spirit of the oath of

Hippocrates.”58 Barsky’s philanthropy and political activism did not change from 1942 to 1945, the year which marked the start of his persecution. Neither did the activities of the JAFRC, which retained their sole focus on philanthropic aid for Spanish refugees. Throughout this period, Barsky and the JAFRC were concentrated on relief activities to support Spain. Yet, in the same time frame, the American political context changed completely, which would allow an organization sanctioned by FDR’s War Relief Board to move squarely into the crosshairs of anticommunist persecution. The decade-long saga of anticommunist oppression would align the might of the U.S. government against Barsky and his organization, eventually succeeding in exiling him from his passion and profession because of his political beliefs.

Barsky was subpoenaed by HUAC on December 10, 1945 to appear along with JAFRC executive secretary Helen Bryan before the committee.59 By 1945, the committee had

58New York State Board of Education, Committee on Grievances: Hearing Transcript. 59 Deery, Red Apple: Communism and McCarthyism in Cold War New York, 15.

91 transformed into a body whose primary identity was an instrument of Republican persecution.60

HUAC had come to view the JAFRC as a “communist front.” As Schrecker describes in The Age of McCarthyism, a “front” was defined as an organization associated in some way with the

American Communist party which was “often, but not always, established to carry out a program that promoted causes the Party supported.”61 These groups tended to appeal to and attract members and supporters from outside the Communist Party, which would be termed by anticommunists as “fellow travelers.” It was feared that these non-communists obscured the real mission of the front organizations: strict adherence to Moscow and revolutionary overthrow of the American government.62 As J. Parnell Thomas said of the JAFRC, “This Joint Anti-Fascist

Refugee Committee is, beyond any doubt, a Communist-front organization, under the domination of the Communist Party and the worldwide communist movement.”63 However, the committee would not find the substantive evidence of Communist activities within the JAFRC which they sought.

The investigation of the JAFRC by HUAC was prompted in part by the emergence of the

Cold War, which allowed anticommunism in the United States to attain a central political role.

Increasing tension with the Soviet Union which accompanied the end of the war in Europe presaged a new international conflict which would force anticommunism to the center of national politics in 1945. The looming conflict with the Soviet Union highlighted the perceived threat of

Communism in the United States. As Ellen Schrecker writes, “The cold war transformed domestic communism from a meter of political opinion to one of national security.”64 However,

60 Heale, American Anticommunism, 124. 61 Schrecker, The Age of McCarthyism, 276. 62 Schrecker, The Age of McCarthyism, 8-9. 63 JAFRC: HUAC: Congressional Record; Edward K. Barsky Papers; ALBA.125; Box 1; Folder 29, Page 2803. 64 Schrecker, The Age of McCarthyism: A Brief History with Documents, 20.

92 many of the government structures central to repression during McCarthyism, including HUAC, were holdovers from the 1930’s. Despite continuing questions as to the evidentiary basis of Dies’ charges against suspected subversives and communists, he would serve as chairman of HUAC until 1945. In the same year, a Congressional vote led by John Rankin of Mississippi would institute HUAC as a permanent committee.65 The work of HUAC was aided by anticommunist activists like J. Edgar Hoover, who had long been convinced of the subversive threat of communism. The views of these anticommunists found a ready audience in the political establishment, who had little knowledge of the actual nuances of the American left. 66 As

Schrecker writes, “Stereotypes prevailed, turning individual Communists into alien beings whose destruction was, therefore, easy to justify. Because these stereotypes were not totally divorced from reality, they were widely accepted. But they failed to convey the complicated and contradictory nature of a political movement that was both subservient to the Kremlin and genuinely dedicated to a wide range of social reforms, a movement whose adherents sometimes toed the party line and sometimes did not even receive it.”67 As the Cold War began, a majority of the country was ready to abandon central civil liberties for the greater good, which was perceived to be in danger from the threat of encroaching international Communism.68

The realities of American politics and foreign policy also helped to shape the American response to Barsky’s activism. Throughout World War II, the United States had maintained cordial diplomatic relations with Spain in the hopes of preventing the country from joining the war. The United States and FDR attempted to use economic concessions and benefits to keep

Spain out of the war. This was particularly necessary from 1939-1941, as Franco Spain enjoyed

65 “Ex-Rep. Martin Dies, 71, is Dead.” 66 Schrecker, Many are the Crimes: McCarthyism in America, xv. 67 Ibid., xiii. 68 Ibid., xi.

93 close relations with the Axis powers and the balance of events in Europe seemed to strongly favor an imminent Fascist victory.69 Despite its outward neutrality, Franco Spain was essentially a German satellite. The Nazis boasted the largest embassy in the world in Madrid, as well as had

30 consulates in cities across Spain. Franco also made large economic cessions to Hitler and provided a submarine refueling base for German U-boats. Spanish neutrality was only superficial, but preventing the full entrance of Franco on the side of the Axis was essential. As

Axis fortunes declined throughout the later years of the war, it became increasingly likely that

Franco would opt to stay out of the war, although the leader had strong personal sympathies toward the Fascists. 70 Despite FDR’s realization of the necessity of keeping Franco in check during the War, he still intended to right the wrongs created by his Spanish policies during the

Civil War and attempt to depose Franco after the war. However, this course was disrupted by

Roosevelt’s death in April 1945. The beginning of the Cold War, with Truman now president, would force a strategic re-alignment. Franco’s Spain would be wooed as an important bulwark against Communist advance. Although Truman shared many of the same sympathies concerning

Republican Spain, support for action against Franco waned as the importance of a pro-Western

Franco Spain in the Western alliance system became clear. The cause of the Republic attained exalted status when considered through the lens of anti-fascism and World War II, but the broad political coalition which characterized the Spanish Republic assumed a dangerous meaning when viewed in the context of the Cold War.71

The increasing stature of the Franco regime in American policy was reinforced by the power of the Roman Catholic lobby in Washington, which was appalled by the political stances

69 Tierney, FDR and the Spanish Civil War,142-144. 70 Soledad Fox, review of Franco and Hitler: Spain, Germany, and World War II, by Stanley G. Payne, American Historical Review 114, no. 3 (2009): 825-826. 71 Tierney, FDR and the Spanish Civil War, 142-147.

94 of Barsky and the JAFRC. The lobby was represented by prominent politicians who were rabidly opposed to the Republican cause, including several members of HUAC. The direct impetus for the congressional subpoena seems to have come from a speaker whom Barsky invited to speak at a September 1945 Madison Square Garden fundraising rally for the JAFRC and Spanish refugees. The speaker was Harold Laski, a professor at the London School of Economics and chairman of the British Labour Party. Although a Socialist, Laski spoke disparagingly about the

Catholic church in Spain, which raised the ire of American Catholics and members of HUAC, who labeled him as a Communist.72 One Congressman, J. Parnell Thomas, a Republican from

New Jersey, would fascinatingly call Laski a “Red Fascist” during a HUAC session.73 Barsky’s written invitation to Laski, however, focuses only on the JAFRC’s relief efforts for Republican refugees, not any political message.74 The initiation of persecution for the JAFRC seems to have been due to the political activism of the organization rather than a backlash against its relief activities, and was deeply connected to the country’s solidifying ties with Franco.75 As HUAC

Chairman John S. Wood of Georgia would intone during the proceedings, “It was found that a large portion of the propaganda that was being disseminated by this organization was of a subversive character.”76

Barsky’s record of service in Spain would become a major evidentiary point for the committee purporting to prove the subversive activities of the JAFRC. Chairman Wood would legitimize the committee’s claims against the surgeon, “We found and have evidence before our committee that Dr. Barsky, who is the titular head of this organization, went to Spain during the

72 Deery, Red Apple, 17. 73 JAFRC: HUAC: Congressional Record. 74 JAFRC: Correspondence, Letter to Professor Harold J. Laski; Edward K. Barsky Papers; ALBA.125; Box 1; Folder 19. 75Carroll, The Odyssey of the Abraham Lincoln Brigade,, 285-286. 76 JAFRC: HUAC: Congressional Record.

95 Spanish Revolution and was in charge of a hospital in Spain. The hospital was organized on the model of the Soviet Republic. He referred to himself as the commissar and the employees of that organization were required to address each other as comrades.”77 HUAC attempted to cast

Barsky as a Communist completely subjective to the Moscow line. The surgeon was also accused of taking advantage of well-meaning professional doctors and nurses and furnishing them unwitting as volunteers for Communist hospitals in Spain.78 Much of the information cited by the committee was provided by Martha Mitchell, a disgruntled former American volunteer who served as an assistant to oral surgeon Dr. John Posner. In testimony to HUAC on January

23, 1946, Mitchell faced questioning from the committee on her time in Spain and her perceptions of Barsky. Displaying the lack of knowledge held by members of the committee about the American mission in Spain, Congressman John Rankin asked Mitchell, “What time in

1941 did you go over there?”79 One of the committee members corrected the mistaken congressman, stating that the American medical contingent arrived in Spain four years earlier, in

1937. One of Mitchell’s main claims disparaging the American Medical Bureau was that funds were being misallocated to support Communist causes in Spain. However, documentary evidence disputes this assertion.80 From Mitchell’s testimony it seems more likely that she did not fully grasp or acknowledge the nuances of the structure of American aid in Spain. Mitchell and Dr. Posner were both shocked by the presence of Communists and the existence of political commissars in field hospitals, a reality which would not likely have been disputed by Barsky.

Many of the spurious allegations against Barsky also seem to possibly stem from professional

77 JAFRC: HUAC: Congressional Record, 2801. 78 JAFRC: HUAC: Congressional Record, 2802. 79 Barsky, et al. v. United States of America: US Court of Appeals: Joint Appendix to Briefs, Vol. I; Edward K. Barsky Papers; ALBA.125; Box 3; Folder 1. 80 Smith, American Relief Aid and the Spanish Civil War, 114.

96 tension which existed between Mitchell’s supervisor Posner, and other members of the AMB.81

Regardless of the veracity of Mitchell’s testimony, it significantly influenced HUAC’s perception of Barsky and the cause of Spain.

HUAC asked Barsky and the JAFRC for access to financial and organizational records, which comprised a detailed list of the identities and contact information for the organization’s supporters.82 After requesting a postponement, Barsky appeared before the congressional committee, where he answered to the request of HUAC to produce all relevant sources regarding the organization. Barsky maintained in his testimony that the JAFRC was an organization focused only on relief and that it was not guilty of any un-American activities. The surgeon also cited a decision of the organization’s executive board, which did not give him the permission to dispense with organizational records to the committee. 83 Deery argues in Red Apple:

Communism and McCarthyism in Cold War New York, that the JAFRC refused to submit the records for three reasons. The first was that many of the records requested by the committee had already been extensively reviewed by the War Relief Control Board when approving the

JAFRC’s application for tax-exempt status. The second was that the JAFRC, along with many other segments of American society in 1946, considered the activities of HUAC to be blatantly unconstitutional. The third, and perhaps the most significant for Barsky and the executive board, was the danger to Republican supporters and refugees in Europe who could be persecuted if their identities were released as part of a wider JAFRC investigation. The organization was also leery of revealing the names of domestic supporters, who could have faced internal repression.84

81 Barsky, et al. v. United States of America: US Court of Appeals: Joint Appendix to Briefs, Vol. I. 82 Carroll, The Odyssey of the Abraham Lincoln Brigade, 285-286. 83 JAFRC: HUAC: Congressional Record; Edward K. Barsky Papers, 2800. 84 Deery, Red Apple, 20.

97 For Barsky, speaking in a 1969 interview with Richard Avedon, the legendary American portraitist, and writer Doon Arbus, the decision to defy the committee was simple, and was rooted in a much deeper aversion to HUAC and their methods.

’Cause when you go before the Un-American Activities Committee…you’re not just a man – or a woman – picked out of the air. You’re somebody…who has something to do with…something. And that something should be a matter of principle to you. The Un- American Activities Committee had no principles. They were just a bunch of bastards, ya see. They were un-American. So when I was up there any they asked me questions…I wouldn’t answer ‘em…See, if I would dream of going in there and cooperating with the Un-American Activities Committee…I would have to go out and hide myself from…anybody I know…or knew me. I would feel a traitor to everything…I had done and…betraying everyone who had supported me. Well, that helps you to…stand up. And you are not alone. There’s a lot of other people with you. The struggle itself steels you to do what you know is right.85

For Barsky, the decision not to cooperate with HUAC was rooted in a stark dichotomy of right and wrong, and a firm belief that the committee was blaspheming unalienable American rights.

The logic for defying HUAC, then, was similar to that of his decision to volunteer for the cause of the Spanish Republic. Barsky’s defiance would be met with strong punishment from the government.

Due to the refusal of Barsky to provide the records, he was cited for contempt of

Congress, and subpoenas were served to the other 17 members of the executive board of the

JAFRC.86 However, the committee would not find any “smoking gun” which implicated the

JAFRC in subversive activities.87 With a landslide majority vote of 339-4 in the full body of the

Congress, Barsky was cited for contempt.88 Not long after, the rest of the executive committee would also be indicted. On June 27, 1947, after a mere one hour and five minutes of

85 Doon Arbus and Richard Avedon, The Sixties, (New York: Random House, 1999), 206-207. 86 JAFRC: HUAC: Congressional Record. 87 Deery, Red Apple, 22-23. 88 JAFRC: HUAC; Edward K. Barsky Papers; ALBA.125; Box 1; Folder 28.

98 deliberations, the jury convicted the entire executive board of the JAFRC of contempt of

Congress in Washington District Court. Barsky was sentenced to six months’ imprisonment in a

“common jail” and a $500 fine on July 16, 1947.89 He launched a spirited legal defense, but despite a protracted fight of over three years, his conviction was upheld.90 However, in a dissenting opinion to one of Barsky’s unsuccessful court appeals, Circuit Court of Appeals Judge

Henry Edgerton condemned the conviction, holding that the persecution by HUAC violated central individual constitutional rights, most importantly the first amendment.91 Congressman

Leo Isaacson, in remarks delivered on the floor of Congress, called the persecution of the committee a “shabby legal fiction,” an example of the HUAC’s intention to “pillory thousands of decent Americans for daring to be generous to the first victims of fascist attack.”92

Barsky began his incarceration on June 7, 1950, becoming federal Prisoner No. 18907.

He would be imprisoned at the federal penitentiary in Petersburg, Virginia.93 In Washington, a line of Lincoln Brigade protesters filed past the White House fence, holding signs which read

“No Jail for Franco’s Foes.”94 Truman, however, would not be swayed. In a later defense before the New York State Board of Education, Barsky’s lawyer would detail the suffering which

Barsky endured in prison. As the statement of Barsky’s defense reads,

Thereupon, respondent [Barsky], who had never been convicted of any offense whatsoever, who had never even been charged with any offense whatsoever, and who has never been charged with any infraction before this body, suffered the indignity, the physical and mental anguish of actual physical confinement for five months…Respondent was confined in an institution far away from his wife and child; he

89 JAFRC: HUAC. 90 Carroll, The Odyssey of the Abraham Lincoln Brigade, 286. 91 Deery, Red Apple, 26-27. 92 Congressman Leo Isaacson Remarks on the House Un-American Activities Committee, 1948; Edward K. Barsky Papers; ALBA.125; Box 1; Folder 28 93 Deery, Red Apple, 27-28. 94 Carroll, The Odyssey of the Abraham Lincoln Brigade, 293.

99 was permitted two visiting hours a month; he lost twenty-three pounds during his imprisonment.95

After his privations in prison and the backlash against the JAFRC due to HUAC, Barsky resigned completely from the organization in early 1951, two months after he was released from the penitentiary.96

Barsky’s conviction of contempt of Congress spurred New York State medical authorities to begin proceedings to revoke his medical license, the final injustice for the surgeon. The state presented a case to the Committee on Grievances stating that Barsky was not eligible to practice medicine due to his lawful conviction for contempt of Congress, which was solidified by his time in prison. In the petition, authored by Joseph McCullough, an inspector for the New York Board of Education, “the authorization and license heretofore granted to Dr. Edward K. Barsky to practice medicine in the state of New York should be revoked and cancelled.”97 Barsky and his counsel brought forth a vigorous defense against the charges, which highlighted the philanthropic work of the JAFRC as well as his impeccable professional record.98 Despite the fact that Barsky was not guilty of anything approaching medical malfeasance and his crime did not signify a moral failing, the Committee on Grievances suspended Barsky’s license for six months.99

The decision of the Board of Regents would represent the nadir for Barsky. Despite a sterling professional reputation as a surgeon, his political dedication had deprived him of his right to practice as a surgeon. In the extensive legal battle to follow, Barsky would highlight this contradiction. The case would be appealed all the way to the Supreme Court. One of the most

95 New York State Board of Education, Committee on Grievances: Hearing Transcript. 96 Deery, 29. 97 New York State Board of Education, Committee on Grievances: Hearing Transcript. 98 Ibid. 99 Deery, Red Apple, 31.

100 striking characteristics of Barsky’s legal defense was the groundswell of support from the medical profession. Thousands of physicians united to file an Amici Curiae petition on his behalf, citing his impeccable qualities as a surgeon and citizen.100 The nation’s highest court ruled to uphold the surgeon’s sanction. In a 6-3 decision, the Supreme Court declared that the state of New York did have “ample legal ground” to suspend Barsky’s license to practice.101 In a second dissenting opinion, Justice Black wrote, “The right to practice is…a very precious part of the liberty of an individual physician or surgeon. It may mean more than any property. Such a right is protected from arbitrary infringement by the Constitution.” Douglas’ opinion argued that the New York State Board of Regents violated two tenets of the Constitution, with Barsky being judged only on his alleged ties to communist leanings, representing a trespass on his rights. As he wrote, “Dr. Barsky’s license to practice medicine has been suspended, not because he was a criminal, not because he was a Communist, not because he was a “subversive”, but because he had certain unpopular ideas and…was an officer of the Joint Anti-Fascist Refugee

Committee.”102

HUAC, in close coordination with the FBI and with the help of the courts and local authorities, had effectively sentenced Barsky to internal exile, unable to practice medicine and unable to pursue activism for Spain due to the unpopularity of his political ideals. In a broad sense, the JAFRC was a “communist front” organization. Members of the executive board were part of the Party, and the aims of the group roughly aligned with Communist aims. However, the salacious claims of HUAC which accused the JAFRC of helping to plot the overthrow of the

100 Barsky vs. Board of Regents of the University of the State of New York: Amici Curiae Brief, 1953; Edward K. Barsky Papers; ALBA.125; Box 4; Folder 5 101 “Curb on Barsky as Doctor Valid,” New York Times, April 26, 1954. 102 Barsky v. Board of Regents of the University of the State of New York (US Supreme Court): Opinion & Dissent; ALBA.125; Box 4; Folder 7

101 United States government are not supported by the documentary evidence. The JAFRC’s activities and message did not change from 1943, when it was legitimized by the War Relief

Control Board, to 1946, when Barsky was subpoenaed to appear before Congress. The difference was the American political climate. The rise of anticommunism with the Cold War overlooked the nuances of left wing politics, using questionable tactics to substantiate political suspicions.

However, for Barsky and the JAFRC, the legal basis of their persecution was somewhat irrelevant. The weight of government persecution destroyed the organization and also the career and livelihood of Barsky.

102 Conclusion

In 1969, legendary American portraitist Richard Avedon captured a photo of Barsky.

Known for his arresting portraits of some of America’s greatest icons, Avedon’s striking black and white photograph of Barsky depicts the surgeon in his senescence. Like many of his later portraits, Avedon’s description of Barsky resembles a mug shot, with its lack of ornamentation and unflinching frontality. However, the artist also creates a deep connection with the subject.1

Dressed in a dark suit, Barsky stares past the camera, his posture upright but his eyes betraying a profound weariness. Viewing Avedon’s portrait of Barsky as a mug shot also opens up fascinating interpretations. This mug comes decades after Barsky’s arrest, long after the surgeon’s sentence had theoretically been served. Yet, in Avedon’s image, Barsky still appears to carry the weight of his persecution. As Hemingway’s casting of Barsky as a “saint” would imply, the surgeon’s oppression was viewed as irrevocable.2 However, Barsky’s tale is more a story of reclamation and overcoming than of defeat. Although Barsky sacrificed heavily for his beliefs due to McCarthyist harassment, the surgeon was uncowed, and continued to fight for progressive causes for the remainder of his life.

On October 25, 1954, Barsky’s medical license was re-instated by the New York State

Board of Regents and the Commissioner of Education, Lewis A. Wilson.3 For the remainder of his life, Barsky continued to meld a life of surgery with political activism. The restoration of

Barsky’s license occurred roughly at the same time as the grip of McCarthyism began to loosen, and by the end of the 1950s the movement had lost much of its popularity and influence.4 This

1 Maria Morris Hambourg and Mia Fineman, “Avedon’s Endgame” in Richard Avedon Portraits (New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art and Harry N. Abrams Inc., 2002). 2 Edward Barsky, Surgeon, Dies.” 3 NYS Department of Education, Board of Regents: Termination of Suspension; Edward K. Barsky Papers; ALBA.125; Box 4; Folder 11. 4 Schrecker, Age of McCarthyism, 78-79.

103 development also helped spur a growth in progressive activism in the 1960s, which Barsky contributed to. After his medical license was restored, Barsky returned to Beth Israel Hospital, where he had worked for the entirety of his career, as a consulting surgeon. His specialty, in tune with his commitment to progressive ideals, were surgical cases involving workmen’s compensation.5 His political dedication also extended to a number of progressive causes. He continued to support organized labor in New York City, and was directly involved with the

District Council 65 as a “security plan panel physician.”6 He also was involved in labor action at

Beth Israel Hospital, participating in a strike in 1962 to recognize the union status of hospital workers.7

Through his work with the Medical Committee on Human Rights (MCHR) at the vanguard of the civil rights movement, Barsky also participated in a cause which mirrored the ideals of his medical outreach to Spain. There are certain striking similarities between the spirit of activism in the 1930s, which saw the flourishing of left-wing causes amidst national turmoil, and the movements which Barsky was part of in the 1960s. The MCHR sought to provide essential medical services to civil rights workers operating in hostile Southern communities.

Founded in 1964 to aid workers in Mississippi, the organization was extended to provide services to civil rights drives across the South, where volunteers both aided civil rights volunteers and worked on community health projects for underserved populations.8 Barsky served on the original executive board of the organization.9 Along with his civil rights activism,

5 Deery, Red Apple, 32-33. 6 “Edward K. Barsky Biography.” 7 Deery, Red Apple, 36. 8 Medical Committee For Human Rights; Edward K. Barsky Papers; ALBA.125; Box 2; Folder 34. 9 John Dittmer, The Good Doctors: The Medical Committee for Human Rights and the Struggle for Social Justice in Health Care (Jackson, University Press of Mississippi, 2017).

104 the surgeon also participated in protests against the Vietnam War, and continued in a consulting role at Beth Israel until his death.10

However, Spain would remain his life’s defining cause. As Barsky would recount in an interview with Avedon, “Spain and the work with the Joint Anti-Fascist Refugee Committee – I don’t know if you remember that; that was before your time – but that work and the things around it meant something to me. And you got to have something in life. Something must mean something to you.”11 Yet, Barsky would not live to see the free Spain he fought and advocated for, passing away on February, 11, 1975.12 Nine months later, he was followed by Franco and the collapse of fascist Spain.13

The lack of scholarship on Barsky speaks to the complicated position of the Spanish Civil

War in American history and memory. The lack of emphasis on American involvement in the

Spanish Civil War in mainstream narratives may be associated with the complicated relationship which existed between the decades-long Franco dictatorship in Spain and the United States government. In a Cold War environment dominated by fears of Communist expansion, the U.S. prioritized adding Franco to the Western system of defense over the excesses of his regime. After an initial period of diplomatic condemnation following World War II, Spain was gradually welcomed into the Western alliance. In 1953, the US and Spain finalized an agreement which would allow the construction of American military bases on Spanish soil in return for economic and military aid.14 As Boris N. Liedtke writes in Embracing a Dictatorship, “Military convictions had clearly overruled America’s democratic and liberal convictions.”15 The

10 Deery, Red Apple, 37. 11 Arbus and Avedon, The Sixties, 206-207. 12 “Edward Barsky, Surgeon, Dies.” 13 “Franco is Dead in Madrid at 82,” New York Times, Page 1, November 20, 1975. 14 Boris N. Liedtke, Embracing a Dictatorship: US Relations with Spain, 1945-1953, (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1998), 1-3, 204-213. 15 Liedtke, Embracing a Dictatorship, 213.

105 rapprochement with Franco Spain and the continued targeting of veterans of the Spanish conflict by McCarthyist machinery reflects a fraught American narrative of the Spanish Civil War.

A few anecdotes illustrate the complicated legacies of the Spanish Civil War. James

Neugass, Barsky’s ambulance driver, writer, and memoirist, returned to New York from Spain in

1938, where his landlord and FBI informant tried to evict him and his family after discovering that he had fought in Spain. Neugass died in 1949, before the brunt of McCarthyist persecution.16

He told his children that his shrapnel scars were due to a skiing accident. His memoir, War is

Beautiful, would also remain unpublished for fifty years, the only copy vanishing before it was discovered decades later in 2002 in a Vermont bookstore.17 Hank Rubin, fellow member of the

American medical unit, waited until 1965 to apply for a passport, hesitant after hearing stories of countless Lincoln veterans denied by the State department.18 And in Thompson Memorial

Chapel, the name of Williams’ lone casualty of the Spanish Civil War, Barton Carter ’37, is mixed with the ranks of the World War II fallen. Killed during the Great Retreats of 1938 as a member of the English Brigade, Carter also helped to provision an orphanage for Spanish children in the town of Puigcerda.19 Surrounded top and bottom by names of students and alumni who perished in Burma, Germany, and the Philippines, Carter’s place of death is listed as

Calaceite Spain. Only the date, April 9, 1938, fully distinguishes him from the World War II fallen. The positioning raises questions about Carter’s memorialization and the memory of the

Spanish Civil War. These situations speak to the complex legacy of the Spanish Civil War in the

16 Hochschild, Spain in our Hearts, 356. 17 Neugass, War is Beautiful, xvi-xviii. 18 Rubin, Spain’s Cause Was Mine, 152. 19 Nicholas H. Wright, “Radicalization of a Boston Son”, The Volunteer. Accessed April 10, 2019. http://www.albavolunteer.org/2011/12/the-radicalization-of-a-boston-son-of-wealth/

106 United States, in both the character of political repercussions faced by veterans and the complicated effect of this conflict on the legacy and memory of the Republican cause.

Although the service of Barsky and many other veterans of the Spanish Civil War was complicated by their contested position in American politics, Spain was the cause which formed the central element of their lives. The struggle was fraught with political contradictions and opened veterans and supporters of the Spanish Republic to persecution. Yet, despite the political condemnation, most held steadfast to the ideals which prompted their service in Spain.20 As

Barsky put it, “We knew we were right. It was a very simple thing as far as we were concerned.

It was the simplest thing. You didn’t have to be a magician – or a god – to know that.” 21

20 Carroll, The Odyssey of the Abraham Lincoln Brigade, 212. 21 Arbus and Avedon, The Sixties, 206-207.

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