Norman Gross

I came across this collection when I searched the Tamiment’s Finding Aids for photos. The finding aid said that this collection mainly concerned Nathan Gross’s life after the Spanish Civil War.

I thought it would be interesting to see the life of a volunteer after they returned from Spain. I had been hoping that the collection would contain letters, etc from his time in Spain and afterwards, so as to trace his life. However, the only thing in the collection directly related to his time in Spain was his Abraham Lincoln Brigade membership card.

In the collection, there were a lot of news clippings, pamphlets and brochures. One was a newspaper article that was a review of Peter Carroll’s The Odyssey of the Abraham Lincoln Brigade from 1994. There was also a playbill from 1986 of a Tribute to the Veterans of the Brigade at the Lincoln Center. There was a pamphlet from the Veterans of the Abraham Lincoln Brigade in 1981 advertising an event they had held protesting the government’s position towards El Salvador in 1981. Obviously, the Spanish Civil War remained an important part of Gross’s life. However, there was not much else that could be gathered from the collection.
The only interesting part of the collection was Gross’s death certificate. There was a section that asked whether the deceased has served in the American Armed Forces. No box was checked. At first I thought it was interesting, for the American government didn’t recognize the Abraham Lincoln Brigades as a faction of the American Army. However, afterwards, I found a certificate of Army Qualification. He had enlisted in May of 1941 and was ‘separated’ in August of 1945. So, somehow, the question of military service was just overlooked on his death certificate.

Other than that, there was not anything too interesting in the collection. There were some personal pictures of Gross and his wife, Elizabeth Savage, Elizabeth’s passport, and their wedding certificate. There was also an album that a man, Marvin Mondlin, had sent to Elizabeth in 1996. It was filled with pictures of New York and each picture had a description (for example: “This is where I buy my shoes.”). However, I do not know who Mondlin is (there was no other mention of him in the Tamiment archives when I searched on the internet), or his relation to Gross’s wife.

Children's Colonies

This collection consisted of photos from children’s colonies that were established during the Spanish Civil War by the Spanish Republic. While most of the pictures are from colonies in Spain, there are others from colonies that were established in France and England. The Finding Aid said that 200,000 of 60,000 refugees were children (!).

The photos show children playing basketball, climbing trees and exercising. There are photos of grand buildings in which the colonies were housed. The finding aid helped to explain this: many of the colonies were established in, “rural estates that had been abandoned by fascist sympathizers.” There were also photos of kids in the fields, sewing clothes, etc.

One of the estates.

The most interesting part of the collection was the selection of photos that had been used as propaganda for the Republic’s Children’s Aid organization.

Stamp of the Republic Children's Aid organization certifying that this photo was used as propaganda.

If we were to group the photos and look solely at the ones that were printed as propaganda, an interesting picture emerges. The selected photos show grand estates and laughing, happy children. There are pictures of spacious dining areas, children reading and rooms filled with toys. These pictures, I suppose, would have been used to present to the Spanish a favorable view of the Republic: the Republic was taking care of their children, and they were doing a wonderful job of it.

Various photos used for propaganda.

When comparing these pictures to others taken of the children, there are some discrepancies. Other photos show crowded living quarters, cramped dining halls and sleeping spaces. Looking closely at the picture of the children exercising, you see that some of the children aren’t wearing clothes. In the pictures of the boys working the fields, you notice the shoes they are wearing, barely more than cloth.

A picture used by the Republic showing a dining hall versus the picture on the right showing a more crowded hall.

Children working in the fields.

She is Alert Against Fascism

This is a poster that was put out by the Catalan UGT. It depicts an African-American woman, in uniform, with a weapon slung over her back. The words say, “She is alert against fascism.” The poster proudly boasts of the ‘universality’ of their cause, proudly displaying the two minorities that helped the fight against fascism: women and African-Americans. There is, however, a question of accuracy; for there is no record (that I know of) of African-American women participating in the cause, and the women that did participate, participated entirely (with one exception) in the medical field. No woman engaged in actual combat. The poster is effective in displaying a positive view of the Anti-Fascist forces. It was a universal cause, and the soldiers were shown as young and strong.
I also found the colors of the poster interesting: red, white and blue. These became the colors of freedom and independence after the American Revolution and the French Revolution. These were colors that everyone would recognize and associate with the struggle for freedom, the struggle that the Anti-Fascists were undertaking.

Marjorie Polon

It is interesting to see the bonds that these men (volunteers fighting in Spain) formed with Marjorie Polon, a girl that they did not know outside of their war-time correspondence with her. They relied on her to give news of home and hold relaxed, casual conversations. In fact, in one letter, Harry Hackman requests that she just write letters about her plans for the future, her family, “just plain, everyday troubles and experiences.”
Many of the men asked her to send things: cigarettes, books, photographs. Harry writes a letter in which he lists 10 men, a brief description of each man, and requests that she send them all cigarettes. He requests that she not refer to them as heroes and that her part in helping the anti-fascist efforts is by maintaining correspondence, and that, “[she] can help by writing more interesting letters.” How lonely it must have been on the front, that they were willing to maintain such frequent correspondence with an unknown girl. However, this was their link to home, their chance to see what was going on in the country they had left. They relied so much on her letters that Harry tells her to get more involved and to involve her friends, encouraging her to find someone to write in Spanish so that more soldiers can receive letters from her. Bill Bailey wrote to Marjorie, requesting that she write to him as well.
I guess it is the same idea that we continue to advocate today. We are encouraged to write Christmas cards and send care packages to the soldiers fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan. When fighting in a foreign land, it must be comforting to know that people at home recognize and appreciate your efforts.

After the War

It is interesting to hear the veteran’s reflections on the results of the war. It is evident, in watching their testimonials that the passion that had initially convinced them to enlist is still there.
These veterans returned to the United States to see Franco’s victory splashed across the New York Times and news reels. As one volunteer describes, they were heartbroken. They were especially sad, argues one veteran, because they knew, “some of the consequences for [their] friends in Spain.” They felt guilty because they had had the luxury of going home. Others, those still in Spain, ran the risk of being, “dragged out onto the streets, and shot in cold blood,” as others had.
These veterans, today, still harbor a lot of the anger they undoubtedly felt when Franco won. Anger at Franco, anger at the American government. One veteran happily recalls his trip back to Spain. He explains that soldiers, when mad at each other, would threaten to ‘piss on each other’s graves.’ That is exactly what he did. He poured a vile of his urine in Franco’s Cathedral. Another talks, angrily, of how the government, “should have done more to help with the war, they could have done more.”
The war, he argues, “wasn’t history, [it] was a tragedy.”

The Bonds between the Volunteers

During the time of the Spanish Civil War, when soldiers left overseas, few knew when their next correspondence home would be. These soldiers uprooted their lives, left behind everything, for a new country, a new culture, without any promise of hearing from home.
This complete upheaval of their lives and their strong beliefs/anti-fascism sentiments is what led the soldiers to form strong bonds. It started almost immediately (it seems). When describing the climb across the Pyrenees Mountains to reach Spain, Jack Shafran talks about how the soldiers were told to look to the guy in front of them. Shafran says, however, that, “everyone was looking at the guy in front of them and the guy behind them…trying to maintain contact.”
These men didn’t know each other before the war, but on the front, in Spain, they had no one else. They relied on the friendships they made with each other to get them through the fighting, the war, the loss. These were the only relationships they had. The reliance that these soldiers had on these relationships was problematic for obvious reasons. Many soldiers saw their own die.
Abe Smorodin talks about the death of one of his friends, a soldier he had once, “been beside.” They were both of different brigades: Smorodin was in the Mac-Paps and Jack Freedman (the other soldier) was in the Abraham Lincoln Brigades. Smorodin recalls how Freedman’s death was particularly hard. He had been on his way to visit Freedman, when he learned that Freedman had died just hours earlier. Despite not being on the front, a fragmented piece of artillery had pierced his brain.
As the Director of the Tamiment Library, Michael Nash, mentioned, the veterans didn’t seem to keep in touch; it seems strange that these men wouldn’t keep in touch with the people who had been their only support systems during such a difficult time in their lives. Maybe it was returning home, old habits, and old friends. Or, maybe it was the embarrassment over the loss. Regardless, it was evident that, for the short while that they were in Spain, the volunteers became each others’ family.

1.

In letters to his friends, Jospeh Kleiman, encourages them to protest the stance of the American government, asking them to work towards amending the Neutrality Act. His efforts to involve his friends in the fight against the fascists lend to the idea mentioned in Eric Smith’s, “New York’s Aid to the Spanish Republic”: the Spanish Civil War brought about a, “culture of resistance.” This idea of resistance was possibly further fueled by volunteers such as Kleiman, who wrote to friends about the strength of Franco’s forces, requesting that their help. Those who didn’t fight in Spain, fought at home: protesting, fundraising, and creating awareness.

Other volunteers wrote home about monotonous days and tedious tasks. In letters to family, violence was rarely mentioned. Rather, there was talk of the weather, a recent haircut, and the lack of interesting activity on the front. This causes one to wonder what the perception of the war was at home. Very few people knew the plight of the soldiers who fought against the fascist forces. Although people knew the horrors of war, the letters presented a skewed view of what was happening on the ground in Spain.

Going through the letters of some of the volunteers provided an interesting perspective on the information the average American was receiving about the war. The idea of resistance was getting stronger, and many volunteers thought it an important aspect of the war: fighting against the neutrality of the American government would lend to a stronger stance against Franco.