Spanish Civil War vets mark 60th Anniversary

by Charles Caruso

This article was reprinted from the May 15, 1997 issue of the People's Weekly World. For subscription information see below. All rights reserved - may be used with PWW credits.

NEW YORK - Six decades ago they went to Spain to fight in what they saw as a crusade to stop fascism.

"They clung like burrs to the long expresses that lurch through the unjust lands ... they walked the passes: they came to present their lives."

So wrote poet W. H. Auden of the international volunteers who went to Spain from 1936 to 1938 to defend the Spanish republic against the rebel army of Gen. Francisco Franco.

Among the 35,000 volunteers from 53 nations were some 2,700 Americans, only half of whom returned unscathed. An estimated 750 were killed.

Last November, 370 of the remaining veterans of the International Brigades, most of them white-haired men and women in their 80s, many walking with canes or using wheelchairs returned to Spain for 10 days of Homenaje - homage - to be greeted by cheering crowds and awarded honorary Spanish citizenship. Among them were 63 Americans.

On Sunday, the American veterans, with family and friends, gathered again at Manhattan Community College to celebrate the 60th anniversary of their first arrival in Spain. The old comrades-in-arms swapped well-worn war stories, remembered departed buddies and heard greetings from Lena Horne, by letter, and Harry Belafonte in person. Belafonte told the veterans their example had inspired him as a teenager growing up in Harlem. Then, with a grin, he ordered them to stop smoking.

The celebration was the beginning of a month-long series of films and talks at the Puffin Room in Manhattan and a week of films at Lincoln Center on the war. Proceeds will go to the Abraham Lincoln Brigade Ar-chives, a collection of books, pamphlets and other materials at Brandeis University in Waltham, Mass.

"What we did was right," said Jack Shulman, 83, of Brooklyn. "We were fighting to stop fascism. The young crowds that turned out in Spain last year knew that - they understood it better than their parents. Ten years before there had been hostility. This was a whole new generation."

As he spoke, an impromptu group at a nearby table struck up "The Four Generals," a Spanish war song. Two old veterans embraced in a corridor.

"I remember your face, but I can't remember your name," Sam Schiff, 82, of New York said to Matti Mattson, 80 of Queens.

Schiff said later: "If we had won and Spain remained a republic, World War II would have at least been delayed and maybe even averted."

"We weren't warriors," Mattson said. "We were trying to stop war."

Fragments of conversation floated up from the crowd assembled in the auditorium for the program.

"He was a damned good commander...Remember that wind at Tereul? I've never been so cold in my life ... The hell with George Orwell ... "

Franco's armies, aided by thousands of troops and squadrons of aircraft from Nazi Germany and Mussolini's Italy, finally triumphed in 1939. The acquiescence of the Western powers in the victory, the West's diplomatic surrender to Hitler in 1938 at Munich and the subsequent Hitler-Stalin Pact of 1939 set the stage for the World War, most historians agree.

"It was in Spain," French philosopher Albert Camus wrote, "that my generation learned that one can be right and be beaten, that force can vanquish spirit." The veterans, dubbed brigadistas, came home to a cold welcome in the United States. Many of them, considered "disloyal" were denied commissions and otherwise harassed when they enlisted in the war, and a number were later jailed for their left-wing affiliations during the McCarthy period in the 1950s.

But most of that was ancient history in the hall on Sunday, where the mood was triumphal.

A group of 36 Friends of the International Brigades came from Spain to present flags and plaques. "We will never forget you," a spokeswoman said. "You are part of the Spanish people."

The high point of the event came when 43 ancient veterans climbed creakily to the stage to be hailed with chants of "Viva!" and "No Pasaran!", the doomed republic's battle cry. The old soldiers, crumpled and worn, defeated but not destroyed, raised their fists in salute.