On September 23, 1938, Republican Spain’s Prime Minister, Dr. Juan Negrin, issued an “Order of the Day” dissolving the five International Brigades. In the Order, Dr. Negrin wanted to show the world that the tragic and infamous Non-Intervention Pact, sponsored and signed by the major powers, was one-sided and unfair and that Germany and Italy ignored it within weeks after they signed it.
Negrin believed that if he sent the International Brigades home, the democracies would demand that the Italian and German soldiers aiding Franco would also be made to leave Spain. Negrin was mistaken. The foreign fascists did not leave; the Spanish Republic was defeated six months later.
The People’s Front was created by and for the Workers’ International Solidarity movement. It will forever be inscribed in the pages of history as the first group to oppose fascism by armed opposition. There are no longer any foreign volunteers in the Republican Army, but the world will forever remember these workers who were the first to take up arms against fascism.
People have come to the aid of others to help in the struggle for freedom throughout history. Their enthusiasm and bravery inspired others. In 1830, Lord Byron, the English poet, fell in combat, fighting for Greece’s struggle for independence from Turkey. Lafayette and Van Buren aided the North Americans in their battle for independence. But those were singular men and singular acts. Between 1936-1939, streamed into the Spanish Republic from 52 countries.
Lord Byron, the English poet, arrived in Greece as a freedom fighter. He came to fight on behalf of that tiny country’s freedom as it fought against Turkish rule. Lafayette and Van Buren did the same, helping the North Americans as they battled England for independence. But they were singular men and singular acts. What made the Spanish Civil War unique was the methodical help given by 40,000 men and women who streamed into Spain from 53 nations, between 1936-1939, representing every level of society, every political party, and every social ideology. No such event has ever before been recorded.
The first group of “Internationalists”, as they were originally referred to in Republican Spain, began arriving in number in September 1936, although some came as early as August. These people did not fully understand the issues, nor did they speak the language, but they placed themselves within the ranks of the volunteer workers, students, and intellectuals that comprised the Spanish militias. These Internationalists fought at San Sebastian, Irun, Curiña, and Toledo. They and the Asturian “dynamiters”, unarmed except for hand grenades, defended Casa de Campo, Parque del Oeste, Ciudad Universitaria de Madrid, Puente Caral, El Escorial, and Huesca in the first battles of the war. These men were the first to volunteer to fight for Republican Spain: French, Polish, and German emigres from France and… Jews.
They were in Barcelona to take part in and support the workers’ sports Olympiad, scheduled to start on July 18, 1936. Hundreds of European athletes, delegates, and guests assembled for a major counter-demonstration against Hitler’s Olympics, celebrating proletarian sportsmanship, youthful energy, and the joy of life. On the evening of July 17, 1936, approximately 300 Jews—from Belgian, Parisian, and Austrian athletic groups and French working-class Jewish schools—boarded a train departing from France. As they traveled through Spain’s fertile and welcoming landscape, they sang and shouted their happiness. They felt unified with the workers and socialist and communist youth—animated by the spirit of the People’s Front.
On the morning of July 18th, they heard gunshots, explosions, and artillery fire. The barracks near the hills of Alburquerque were under attack. The Confederacion Nacional de Trabajo (CNT) and Partido Socialista Unificado de Catalunya (PSUC), two workers’ syndicates, quickly organized militias and captured the rebel garrisons.
The visiting children and teenagers were sent back to France and defense arrangements were immediately organized. German Jews who had previously emigrated to Spain joined Jewish athletes from Belgium, Paris, Nancy, and Mandated Palestine to defend Barcelona.
So began the armed Jewish opposition to fascism.
Many Jewish athletes from Belgium, Paris, Nancy, and the Land of Israel (then known as “Palestine”) remained in Barcelona. They were the first Jews to join the Catalunya Libertad International Brigade. Also joining were the German emigrants who found themselves in Republican Spain after the fall of the Gil Robles regime, which had brutally suppressed the Asturian miners’ revolt in 1934 and was overthrown by the Popular Front government in 1936.
The divisions were:
Catalunya Libertad – the first Poles and Frenchmen; the Thaelmann Centuria – the first Jews and Germans; the Durutti Battalion (named after the great anarchist activist, Jose Buenaventura Durutti, who would fall in battle near Jarama in early 1937. (Some in Spain believe Durutti was assassinated by anarchists who were unable to forgive Durutti’s extension of friendship to the People’s Front.)
What possessed these young Jewish workers, vigorous young girls, middle-aged and even elderly Jewish men and women to leave their homes in Hungary, Mandated Palestine, Poland, Bukovina, and Bessarabia and travel to the maelstrom that was the Spanish Civil War? In his foreword to Los Judeos–Luchadores de la Libertad [Jewish Freedom Fighters in Spain], (Madrid, October 1937), written by [Gina Medem], the author of this article, the Italian antifascist, Luigi Gallo, Inspector General for the International Brigades, provides a brief explanation:
I remember it as if it had happened yesterday. An intense young man with black hair entered my office. This occurred in the early days when Jewish volunteers first started coming to the International Brigade base in Albacete. Good-looking, charming, and determined, he had gathered a group of 15 Jewish volunteers and led them proudly through the streets of Albacete. He now spoke on their behalf.
He wanted to know whether the Brigade leadership would allow Jews to organize an independent military unit within the International Brigades. “We want to show the world what Jews can do. The fascists accuse us of cowardice and of being parasites. We want to show the world that we fight like heroes,” he said.
I understood and agreed with his feelings and political motivation. I told him that Andre Marty, the brilliant organizer of the International Brigades, and I would inform our Jewish volunteers they were free to form a new Jewish unit if they so wished.
The young comrade left me with tears of joy on his face, happy to be given the opportunity to avenge the vulgar slander and lies spread by fascists about his people … Unfortunately, the comrade’s wish was not immediately realized. The difficulties of language, the danger during those first few days, and the disorganization of our forces didn’t allow us to proceed. He and his 15 young men from Paris set off for Madrid. I arrived a week later and looked forward to meeting him again, but I learned he was killed during the first days of the battle at Ciudad Universitaria. He died bravely and showed the world Jewish heroism. I still see his face.
The young man Gallo spoke of was Albert Neramivokh. He had left his native Poland as a youth and emigrated to Mandated Palestine. From there, he moved to Paris, and then to Spain, where he died for Madrid. But it has been 31 months, and Franco’s Moors, the Raquete, and fascists of every stripe, still have not advanced from where they stood when Albert Neramivokh left them.
Albert Neramivokh’s anguished request answered the question initially posed: what prompted Jews of every social class and age to go to Spain? The answer is simple: they wanted to fight the fascists in a separate Jewish military unit. I was told that if a Jewish unit had existed at the start of the war, many more Jews would have joined the International Brigades.
One year after Albert Neramivokh’s death, his dream of a Jewish unit became a reality. On December 13, 1937, the XIII Dombrowski Brigade renamed its Second Company the “Naftali Botwin Company” in honor of the martyred Jewish hero. This new Jewish company unified Jews, Spaniards, and Poles into a single fighting unit. [Naftali Botwin’s story will be told in later translations. If you want to read more about him, please join the email list for future updates and news].
On February 16, [1938], the Botwin Company received orders to retreat from Extremadura because large Moroccan cavalry units were gathering there. Their response: “We came to Spain to advance! The Botwin Company does not retreat!” Moroccan troops soon surrounded the outnumbered Botwins. Shtamler from Tel-Aviv, Zavadnik, Eli Weintraub, and Eisen pulled the pins on their hand grenades. They blew themselves and the approaching Moroccans to pieces. [Sigmunt Stein witnessed this event and described it in his book, Der Birger Krig in Shpanye (The Civil War in Spain), currently being translated from the original Yiddish into English by Deborah Green. If you want to receive excerpts, please join the email list for future updates and news].
The Botwin Company gained fame fighting in Aragon, Extremadura, and most recently, during the Republican offensive on the Ebro River, where the Botwins were first to cross the river in pontoons. There were also many other Jews in the Brigades, professional officers such as the English career officer, Major George Nathan, who exemplified fearlessness. As grenades flew over the olive tree he used for shade, Nathan studied his maps and smoked his Capstan cigarettes as calmly as if sitting in a cantina. [There were other Botwin Company heroes who continued to fight fascism during World War II. Their stories will be told in forthcoming posts.]
Former Jewish officers of the Polish Army taught other Jews and Spaniards how to use artillery and formed the Rosa Luxembourg, Karl Liebknekht and Baratsch Zlavarski artillery batteries. Young Jewish-Moroccan men also played an important role on the front. They were fearless ammunition-carrying truck and ambulance drivers, pilots, telephone operators, liaisons, patrolmen, and soldiers. They brought their technique, athleticism, conscientiousness, stability, and discipline to the front.
The American Jews brought with them the spirit and traditions of their European fathers, who had fought in the [Russian] uprising of 1905. They were the most confident of their compatriots. Their role, as well as that of the Negroes in their battalion, was to lift the primitive, downtrodden Spanish peasants and teach them to resist and attack. Abraham Lincoln’s spirit lived within these young American men. They had been icons of the workers’ movement, boldly walking the picket lines. Now they showed other Jews, Negroes, and Spaniards the road toward freedom.
In August 1937, I met Max Stark in Albacete. Of all the fighters I met in Spain, he impressed me the most. Captain Stark was born into a working family in Lemberg, Poland [now Lviv, Ukraine]. His father worked in the Drohobych coal mines, and the family was often hungry. . Young Stark struggled to earn a living and left home for Antwerp, Belgium, where he worked illegally, spending his days playing cards in cafés to earn some money, making bread deliveries when he could, taking any kind of job—reading was of no interest to him.
Finally, Stark learned a trade. He became a barber and was making decent money. Wanting to supplement his earnings, he leased his apartment to the illegal “Red Militia” as a place for them to hold clandestine meetings. He listened to their political discussions, learned about the workers’ struggles and revolutionary activism, and became radicalized. His girlfriend, whom he loved and respected and who had raised his worker’s consciousness, encouraged him to become an activist.
Although Stark was doing well financially and supporting his family in Poland, he left for Spain in November 1937, together with several Antwerp comrades. While on the Madrid front, his friends sent him letters of encouragement. He fought in Madrid and on other battlefields. The High Command sent him to Officer Training School, where he became a disciplined fighter. As a lieutenant on the Brunete front, he endured a juggernaut of bombs dropped daily on the Republican army by 70 fascist planes. Despite the endless bombing, he displayed initiative and coolness under fire. He experienced the brotherhood known only among soldiers.
The Edgar André Company lost its most forward trenches when the Moroccans attacked. The fascists assaulted the Edgar André Company’s flank and destroyed it almost entirely. Communication was cut between Stark and headquarters. Without hesitating, Stark chose 15 men who grabbed hand grenades and a machine gun, then moved close to the positions captured by the enemy and attacked. Their assault was so strong, and the surprise so great, that 200 fascists soon lay dead. Stark recovered 1 1/2 kilometers of the ground lost by the Republic. Stark and his men then caught up to the remnants of the Edgar André battalion and joined it.
Stark’s actions astonished the Brigade leadership. They described his heroic exploits in the “Order of the Day” and promoted him to the rank of captain immediately. Because of his abilities as a strategist, he was assigned to the Military Academy to help craft a dangerous maneuver to be used behind Franco’s lines. But first, he was granted leave to see his wife, who worked in a Spanish hospital. Before he left for the Academy, Stark rejoined the Edgar André battalion, which was fighting the fascists in Teruel. Seriously wounded in January 1938, he died of his injuries two days later.
These Jewish fighters now represent our people—they are our new leadership. Although they have no titles nor university degrees, they are the vanguard of history’s first armed response to fascism. They focused their hatred on the Spanish insurrection and international fascism. Every antifascist returning from Spain will find solace in the 31 months spent defending and fighting for Spanish freedom; it was purchased with the blood of their comrades.
The International Brigades Inspectorate and the Republican Army leadership allowed me to write Los Judeos–Luchadores de la Libertad (Jewish Freedom Fighters in Spain), (Madrid, October 1937), a Spanish language book about these first Jewish freedom fighters in honor of the incredible courage shown by the Jewish anti-fascists who fought side-by-side with their Spanish and international brothers.
END
GINA MEDEM (1886-January 29, 1977)
David Diamant, author of Yidn in Shpanishn Krig 1936-1939 * [Jews in the Spanish Civil War, 1936-1939], (Warsaw, Yiddish Bukh, 1967), described Gina Medem as one of the most striking Jewish figures of her time. Upon graduating high school, she became a revolutionary in Lodz, Poland. She worked on behalf of the Bund and traveled throughout Lodz and the region’s provincial towns, spending months in Polish jails for her efforts.
Medem later went to Spain as a reporter for New Masses, a New York-based magazine. While there, she spoke on Madrid radio in Yiddish**, as well as reporting on the Spanish Civil War for the American Morgn Dzshurnal, the Paris Naye Prese, the Kharkov Shtern, as well as other Soviet-Yiddish newspapers.
Medem published her reportage in Lender, Felker, Kamfn [Countries, People, Battles], (New York, 1963) ***. She also wrote Los Judíos, Voluntarios de la Libertad (Un Año de Lucha en las Brigadas Internacionales) (Jews, Volunteers for Freedom (A Year of Fighting in the International Brigades) (Madrid, 1937), as well as other books. She went to every Spanish front and visited every hospital where a Jewish volunteer might be found. She tirelessly supported these men, holding long conversations with them, encouraging them, and popularizing their struggles in her reportage. Her articles about Jewish militiamen provided insight into the motivating force that propelled Jews into the fight for the Spanish Republic—their desire to destroy fascism.