Abe and His Wife
Hemingway was very well aware that the International Brigades were functioning as a military unit, that there was an Abraham Lincoln Brigade, there was Canadians in it, and he chooses to write a novel whose main character is Robert Jordon who is on top of a hill with piece of dynamite and he’s going to blow up a bridge (he said this angrily). That wasn’t the essence of what the International Brigades were in Spain to do. They were an organized military unit. Hemingway knew it then, well there’s no recognition in the book about that fact. And that has always bothered me because I think there was a lack of integrity for him to assign Robert Jordon, the American, was gonna blow up that bridge to stop some fascist… whatever the point of it was.
He’s a big hero to most people, and maybe he is and maybe I’m being picky (laughs). Furthermore, he has… it wasn’t Hemingway’s fault, but when they cast it in the movie they gave Ingrid Bergman the role of Maria, this big, beautiful Swedish blond – Swedish blond – plays the part of this passionate Spanish girl (he says laughing harder) who the earth shakes when she makes love. Why couldn’t they get a dark haired Mexican actress? They could have at least died her hair… (laughing even harder) and the earth shook with Ingrid Berman in the movies.
Now you’ve heard my gripes.
It’s hard for people like your generation… I went to Boys’ High and Lou was a classmate of mine and lucky for him he was able to steal my work because we sat side by side. Lou was always kind of a cutup, very strong ideas about what he wants to do. He was a… we were in the Young Communist League. He told you this because he was very proud of it, which was that on May Day… now wait a minute you must remember that in those years the competition between the communists and the socialists was even more severe than the communists and the capitalists (laughs) competing for membership. On a particular May Day, this must have been like ’36, Lou had a bucket of red paint and at two in the morning – we chortled for a year after that and it was so wrong to do, so sophomoric, he did it not me, he showed it to me what he did the next morning.
He took a can of red paint and on Compton’s Avenue in Williamsburg, where the headquarters of the Young People’s Socialist League was, he took a can of red paint and threw the whole damn lot of it onto their sign. I don’t say that with any pride now; we were kids and he took a great deal of joy in doing it, but that’s minor stuff, talk about me better.
I come from a family, I was always political and always left political. My mother and father were very much involved in the movement to keep the Yiddish language alive in those years. There was a newspaper called the Fyhyt(?), which was a communist newspaper in Yiddish. They would canvas every Sunday to see if they could get some dough to keep the paper alive. They were very passionate about it and they were also very passionate about in having kids attend a Schula(?), a Yiddish word for school, after regular elementary school they would spend a couple of hours learning the language, learning some of the history about the Jewish people, learning about the struggle in general. This was my upbringing. I saw this every morning when my parents were up and about.
Evictions
In those years evictions were fairly common. They simply dumped the furniture on the sidewalk and if it stayed there, this was a regulation of the City, it was their house later on and people couldn’t get it back unless they paid their back rent. It was intolerable, impossible to see families on the street. On Hart Street in particular I remember a case where we took all the furniture back and stayed there until nightfall, and the sheriff’s department from King’s County, who did the eviction, came by and left right away because we were standing there. We wouldn’t tolerate that. While all this was going on this poor woman and a guy was out looking among their friends and relatives for the $30 or $40, that was what the rents were generally in those days. She found the rent finally.
It was neighborhood in those years that was highly sympathetic to left wingers, to young communists. Every Tuesday evening we would have a little stand where we hold open-air meetings, which the neighbors would hear us rant about the injustices of the capitalist system and the various needs of the people. The Democrats do it today! We were asking for Social Security long before anybody thought of it. The answer of people was, “You’re asking us, you’re telling us that they’re going to give us money for not working?” They couldn’t believe it, you know, it sounded… And this is what it was in those young days.
We were also an organization that had a lot of fun. We weren’t so rigid and so bitter about the situation that we didn’t allow ourselves a hell of a lot of laughs. We ran dances every Saturday night, and crowds of us would go after our regular meeting to a park in the neighborhood, Compton’s Park, and we would drive around how kids do to this very day. We were young people just as normal as could be.
The organization was at that time kind of over rigid about its membership. There was a meeting every Tuesday night and we had to be there. If we weren’t, why weren’t we there?
I remember one Tuesday night Lou and I went to Louissson(?) Stadium, which doesn’t exist any more. Hunter College has a building there. There were concerts gioven there, in that stadium. For a dime it bought a little pillow because it was a stadium with just plaster not the stone, and we were disciplined for having gone to that. We were given a lecture by the organizer, what the hell, we didn’t call him organizer, well anyway I’m rambling I’ll have to tell you some more interesting things.
Did you help them with welfare?
Yeah, we did that. It was called Home Relief the welfare organization. We would accompany a family and press our case. You know, we were talking to workers, social workers and they were instructed… when you were on Home Relief they would open your refrigerator to see if you got more than you claimed or were entitled to. There was all that kind of nasty stuff too, but I can’t tell you any more about it… I personally, my father did have long periods of unemployment. In those years once you passed the age of forty you were virtually unhirable. The labor pool was so much, would you believe 15 million unemployed? It’s a staggering figure. Virtually every family had someone who was unemployed, and the benefits of the New Deal and that Lyndon Johnson Medicare, the war on poverty, hadn’t set in yet and I’m talking there crowds of this.
His wife – And the WPA came…
There was some progress with them, and you could go work for them if you liked to use a shovel. That was mostly pick and shovel work, you know. They had various elements, they had some very good… there were a lot playwrights and artists and painters and cultural workers and musicians that were unemployed, and you had some of the most wonderful plays that were put on. The garment workers that were unemployed put out a play called “Pins and Needles.” It was so good it played on Broadway.
Wife – And “Waiting for Lefty”
Uh, no, “Waiting for Lefty” was done by Clifford Odettes(?). which was a one-act. You know how it ended, “Strike, strike, strike!” It ended that way with the whole audience getting up and joining in for the call for a strike. And then you had Mark Blitsty. I can recite to you all that in “No for an Answer” by Mark Bitsty, they were very clever lyrics. I wish they would revive that.
Anyway, but you don’t want to know about that. What do you want to know…
Who were the people that you helped?
It is estimated that in this period almost a million people went through, in and out of the Communist Party. It was a fluid membership. At its height in steady membership it had a hundred-thousand members in the base of the Depression. From the ranks of these hundred-thousand people, every major industrial union was led by Communist Party leaders. Whether it was steel or rubber or mine, mill and smelter workers union; all of the CIO unions that were formed at that time, there was only an AFL first then there was the Congress of Industrial Organizations, communists was at the head of these organizations. Compared to 200 million Americans it was small force, but they were mill related and they were great people. Today’s labor movement benefits from that fact. The sad thing is that today’s labor movement is, what, thirteen percent of the workforce organized now? It’s a shame. But Communists were active in that and I was active in that. One of my first activities as a young boy was a knit goods strike. It was a neighborhood shop, middle sized shop. It had about 200 young women mostly, immigrant women, young girls. A real sweatshop situation, and they went out on strike. The strike lasted for a long time and my YCL group was there. It was almost in our neighborhood. It was about a block from where we had our room, headquarters. We would be up at six in the morning leafleting people that this place was on strike, and picketed and did it for a long time. I met one young girl, she was beautiful and I dreamed about her for a lot (laughs). (Looks at his wife) nothing happened, I remained a virgin. I think I was the only guy who remained a virgin when I went to Spain via Paris. I got into a brothel, but I was too scared to go up there. I went there with a friend of mine, with Lou Gordon! No, no, no, it was Bush Goldstein, he was experienced then (laughs and so does his wife).
I was almost twenty and here I am in this brothel, it was a bar down below with women undressed virtually to the crotch, and I’m scared. My friends are walking upstairs and returning with that satisfied look on their face, I thought, “Get me out of here!” That was my only experience.
Wife – I must say that in all that time they couldn’t really go to college. Their parents were immigrants and they really couldn’t afford it.
City College you could; anybody who got 75 and over in those years it was virtually free, you had to pay for your text books. In those years it was a… truly a free college.
Jobs?
Yeah, I finally, finally… my parents had a candy store. Later on… we sold penny candy and nickel bars, two for a quarter packs of cigarettes. Opened up at five in the morning and closed eleven at night, you know, your talking about slavery. My father had reached that age I am telling you about, after forty, fifty you couldn’t get work. He bought this little store and I worked in it. It was terrible hard, hard times. One day one of our comrades comes to me and they got one of those mimeograph machines, you know what they are? They don’t make them anymore. They had just past the Smith Act and the fear was they were going to drive our organization underground. So he comes with this mimeograph machine to our store. He says, “Can you put this in your cellar?” We had one of these great cellar where I kept empty soda bottles in. So I said, “Hmmm, yeah put it down in there.” He put down there and stuffed it away. About a week later the fire department comes and they gotta inspect my boiler (he and his wife laugh loudly). Well, I was kind of shocked, but I said okay, what was I gonna do? So I let him in. He goes down there and looks at the boiler, it’s a little shaky, goes along the pipes and he says, “Hey, what’s that machine down there?” I said, “Ohh, my friend put it down there.” He had no clue, what would he know about it? There was no fear, but it just shook me a bit.
Want to hear about the FBI? This was before Spain (actually the Smith Act was passed on June 18, 1940 after Abe had returned from Spain). The Smith Act was passed and they locked up a bunch of leaders of the Party and some others fled. Most of them went to Mexico. No this was after Spain. Let me tell you and I’ll come back. I had took over from my mother and father who working in this wretched place, it was terrible. One day a couple of guys walked in and it looked like they came from Central Casting. The hat on, shirt (he says it like “shoyt”, hair like a Marine, cut very tight. And they sit down very quietly and they wait for the store to empty. And I knew already, this was a black neighborhood, black and Italian, and I knew they didn’t come to by an ice cream soda. They were sitting there and waiting for the customers to leave and then they said we’d like to talk to you. I said, “Okay, now then wait a minute,” and I called up to my mother, who was upstairs, we had an apartment. And, uh, she says, “Alright, take ‘em to the back.” I went back and they flipped open their badges and put them on the table there and they said, “This is serious business. Do you know who Bob Thompson is?” Bob Thompson was an old… he was my first commander in Spain, he was a major there. I said, “No, I don’t know and I’m not going to answer any questions from now on about anything. I’m not going to answer it.” They said, “We’re going to put a series of questions to you and if you don’t answer there you’re going to pay the consequences.” They were threatening me. So I kept my mouth shut and they kept asking me a bunch of questions. “Is he in the United States? Is he down in Mexico?” A bunch of questions. Nothing happened. Finally they said, “You’ll be hearing more from us.” And they go out and they stay around on that corner where the store was, on the sidewalk, and they stepped out like, you know (pulls his shoulders up). And then they went away. The minute they went away my friends across street came over, all black kids. With their experience they thought they had come because a bunch of them across the street had broken probation and they thought these guys were probation officers and they want to stick them back in jail. Well, I said, “I didn’t tell them nothing,’ you don’t have to worry about it.” (laughs)
And then they came to our home.
Wife – I knew that this… they were saying that this was going to happen. They had been to the others and I was ready for them. So when they showed up I said, “You know what, why don’t you go after the rapists and the gangsters and robbers robbing us and bugging us and all that baloney. Why don’t you go arrest them? I’m not going to tell you anything.”
You see, that’s why we’re still together after 63 years (he and she laugh).
Wife – sixty-four.
Sorry, 64.
Spain
Well, a prelude to Spain was Ethiopia. Ethiopia a couple of years before Spain was attacked by Mussolini. And the first mass raids and bombings of civilian populations were done by Mussolini and his San Machiono, his air force, and bombed Ethiopian people. He wrote about it. How glorious the mushroom cloud looked from up above, he wrote in his memoirs…
This preceded Spain and we felt helpless and we couldn’t think what to do. There were demonstrations on the streets of New York…
How did you find out about it?
This was in the newspapers. We knew about it. This was in the newspapers all the time. It had a lot of local support from a lot of Italians who were not conscious of what was happening. It was a terrible event that had subdued the country in no time at all. It had previously, before it became Ethiopia it was an Italian colony, Abyssinia. And we couldn’t do anything about that.
Then when Spain came, a couple of years later, we heard about the civil war and we followed it closely because there were already, there were… we knew that there was organizations that were defending the Republic, the socialists and communists and a party in Spain known as the Left Republicans was one of the coalitions that made up the Spanish Republic and they were fighting off the fascists under Franco.
When there was intervention by the Italians who sent in a couple of divisions, that’s quite some stretch with all the iron and it changed the character of the war. The COM intern, the Communist International, this was not done publicly, they called for an answer to the Italian intervention. They called for International Brigades to be formed and sent to Spain. It turned into… the estimate is very loose and you get various figures, but it was in the ballpark of around 40,000 organized Americans, Canadians, Germans, Italians – the Garribaldis – had their own brigade, the French had another brigade, made up the 35th Division, the 5th army corps of the Spanish Republican Army.
We opted… we were volunteers. We went to Spain specifically, and we were hammered up by everybody on this point, that we are not going there to sell up a socialist Spain. We were there to defend the Republic. If when you beat the fascists there will be free and open discussion about what kind of society we wished, but we are not going to do it by force of arms to set up a new socialist state. We are there to defend Madrid particularly, and generally Spain.
Out of the defense of Madrid a formulation developed, which was Madrid was being attacked from four sides – four columns. Led by general Moler, he died in Spain, he was killed, four columns advancing for Madrid on all sides. And Franco thought there was a fifth column inside of Madrid who were waiting to welcome these fascist four columns and that became the famous phrase “the fifth columnist,” which was like a… if you want to talk about traitor you would say he was a fifth columnist or a quisling was another term.
That was the origin of the International Brigades. It was a response to Italian intervention. We also had it with the Germans, but the Germans never had ground troops, they had the air force, the Junkers and… I forgot what their fighter plane was called. They were in up to their ears too. Mussolini had many conferences with Hitler about Spain. So that’s why…
And your own experience?
All I know is this: We watched Spain with such intensity to see what was going on. The fascists came across from Spanish Morocco and the Canary Islands. That’s where Franco was waiting at, the Canary Islands to go to mainland Spain. From Spanish Morocco they brought Moorish cavalry with them, and the soldiers that occupied Morocco, they came into southern Spain and almost without a stop went up into Seville and Andulocia and all the way up to Toledo without a response from the Republicans because a lot of desertions took place. You talk about the traitor generals; they betrayed the Republic and they trained Franco, and the Republic had very little… they organized factory workers, all of them were armed anyway. They didn’t have a lot of experience with this thing and they had to build a new army, a Republican army. That’s the genesis of the International Brigades. They simply could not ignore what was happening in Spain.
I think you can figure out when I decided to go from what I’ve said. Then, as now, whatever I got interested in it was with a passion. Whether listening to Mozart or reading a book, seeing a movie, I do things with passion. It’s worked for me. I’m 88 years-old and I still feel that passion. And it’s good, I think it stops you from getting senile. That’s the reason I went. When I was moved I had to do something about it. Here I was sitting around with my friends in Williamsburg, which was my turf and I looked around and more and more guys aren’t there anymore. I understood they had gone up to a recruiter on 23rd Street on Manhattan; Jesus Christ, maybe even a few blocks from here. And the recruiter… the Communist Party was recruiting, this of course was a big secret. Our passport was stamped with “Not valid for travel to Spain or China.” China at that time also had Chang Kai Shek and the Chinese Red Army, and they had that long march.
So we went to… I had to get into it. I told my parents and they could not object if they were going to be true to their lifelong beliefs. My father was a little bit… My mother was really a stoic. She gave me a good proletarian handshake… my father slavered a little bit (laughs). He was less happy, but he knew I was doing the right thing and I am sure he was also proud of me. There’s a lot of things I did wrong. Going to Spain was not one of them. It was a terrible, terrible war.
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