![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
lethargic_manI went to an interesting seuda shlishis yesterday; the ever-erudite Dr Colin Schindler spoke on the Jews who volunteered for the International Brigades during the Spanish Civil War. It seems this is a substantial group of people—had the Jews been counted separately, they would have had the biggest representation amongst the different nations that fought in the International Brigades—whose story has not been told. The Communists did not consider the Jews a nation, so did not count them separately, and the mainstream national Jewish organisations, such as the Board of Deputies, were rather embarrassed that these Jews were communists, so tended to keep quiet about them, as a result their story has fallen between the cracks.
Who they were seemed to be people who had sat idle whilst Hitler and Mussolini came to power in their respective countries, and were now determined to do something to prevent the same thing happening in Spain. (The historical background in a nutshell: a coalition of left-wing parties gained a fractionally higher share of the vote in in the 1936 general election than Franco's (fascistic) nationalists; following the assassination of high-ranking figures, the nationalists attempted a coup d'etat, which failed but plunged the country into all-out civil war. The rest of the world theoretically stayed neutral, but was generally biased against the communists, and eventually the nationalists won.)
One of those at the shiur was an old man who claimed he nearly went to Spain along with the first three British volunteers, who were all Jewish (can't remember their names, sorry), but the person whose bike he was borrowing to get to his (unspecified) transport out of the country managed to write it off in an accident the day beforehand. He said perhaps he was lucky: of the three he would have gone with, one got killed, one got a dum-dum bullet in the knee, and the third only escaped alive by throwing himself into the sea, swimming out to a ship and clinging onto the anchor. (Dr Schindler cited other examples: he quoted from a letter from an American volunteer to his mother, explaining why he felt compelled to fight; the volunteer got killed a month later, his brother, also fighting in the Spanish Civil War, got killed a year afterwards, and a third brother was killed in action in WW2.)
The speaker (the old man, not Dr Schindler) himself did not get a subsequent chance to go to Spain, he said, as he was too busy planning the Battle of Cable Street [in which counter-demonstrators, many of them Jewish, disrupted a march by Oswald Mosley's fascists in the East End of London]. He then talked a bit about his involvement in that. I hadn't realised just how much the Jewish community was opposed to standing up to the fascists in the run up to their march. Apparently the advice was to go home, keep everyone inside, lock up your doors, windows and shutters, and keep your head down. The Board of Deputies actually forbade anyone from going to the counter-demonstration, and used its influence on the unions. The speaker cited the chairman of a union (or club, I forget which) who (evidently having made clear his intention to join the counter-demonstration) was forbidden access to his club, and, on trying to enter anyway, got arrested and spent the night in police cells!
Sounds like the guy (the old man) had an interesting youth (in the sense of: interesting times). He said many Jews were Communists in the 1930s, but got disillusioned with communism after the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact (the non-aggression pact between Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union). He himself finally left the Communist Party, he said (IIRC, which is not necessarily the case), after the anti-Semitic Slánský trials in Prague. The following day there had been a Communist Party meeting in London; the speaker denied the Communist authorities would do any such thing. A member of the audience then stood up with a Czech newspaper and read the course of events out; and the Jews in the room got up and walked out, and that was the end of that.
Jewish learning notes index
Who they were seemed to be people who had sat idle whilst Hitler and Mussolini came to power in their respective countries, and were now determined to do something to prevent the same thing happening in Spain. (The historical background in a nutshell: a coalition of left-wing parties gained a fractionally higher share of the vote in in the 1936 general election than Franco's (fascistic) nationalists; following the assassination of high-ranking figures, the nationalists attempted a coup d'etat, which failed but plunged the country into all-out civil war. The rest of the world theoretically stayed neutral, but was generally biased against the communists, and eventually the nationalists won.)
One of those at the shiur was an old man who claimed he nearly went to Spain along with the first three British volunteers, who were all Jewish (can't remember their names, sorry), but the person whose bike he was borrowing to get to his (unspecified) transport out of the country managed to write it off in an accident the day beforehand. He said perhaps he was lucky: of the three he would have gone with, one got killed, one got a dum-dum bullet in the knee, and the third only escaped alive by throwing himself into the sea, swimming out to a ship and clinging onto the anchor. (Dr Schindler cited other examples: he quoted from a letter from an American volunteer to his mother, explaining why he felt compelled to fight; the volunteer got killed a month later, his brother, also fighting in the Spanish Civil War, got killed a year afterwards, and a third brother was killed in action in WW2.)
The speaker (the old man, not Dr Schindler) himself did not get a subsequent chance to go to Spain, he said, as he was too busy planning the Battle of Cable Street [in which counter-demonstrators, many of them Jewish, disrupted a march by Oswald Mosley's fascists in the East End of London]. He then talked a bit about his involvement in that. I hadn't realised just how much the Jewish community was opposed to standing up to the fascists in the run up to their march. Apparently the advice was to go home, keep everyone inside, lock up your doors, windows and shutters, and keep your head down. The Board of Deputies actually forbade anyone from going to the counter-demonstration, and used its influence on the unions. The speaker cited the chairman of a union (or club, I forget which) who (evidently having made clear his intention to join the counter-demonstration) was forbidden access to his club, and, on trying to enter anyway, got arrested and spent the night in police cells!
Sounds like the guy (the old man) had an interesting youth (in the sense of: interesting times). He said many Jews were Communists in the 1930s, but got disillusioned with communism after the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact (the non-aggression pact between Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union). He himself finally left the Communist Party, he said (IIRC, which is not necessarily the case), after the anti-Semitic Slánský trials in Prague. The following day there had been a Communist Party meeting in London; the speaker denied the Communist authorities would do any such thing. A member of the audience then stood up with a Czech newspaper and read the course of events out; and the Jews in the room got up and walked out, and that was the end of that.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2006-08-07 07:57 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-08-07 08:04 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-08-07 10:12 am (UTC)buying TRAMADOL in new york
Date: 2011-08-07 04:33 pm (UTC)cod TRAMADOL in or
cheap TRAMADOL pills online
buy cheap TRAMADOL free fedex shipping
i want TRAMADOL saturday delivery at iowa
is TRAMADOL a prescription drug
buy TRAMADOL online prescription
how to get a TRAMADOL without rx
online pharmacy TRAMADOL 120 ea
order TRAMADOL tablets without prescription
real TRAMADOL without a prescription
TRAMADOL without prescription shipped overnight
TRAMADOL cheap overnight delivery
TRAMADOL c o d shipping
buy TRAMADOL 30 day credit
TRAMADOL cod cheap 120
TRAMADOL no prior script
order TRAMADOL to uk
how to get TRAMADOL prescription
how do i get TRAMADOL
buy TRAMADOL in england
TRAMADOL shipped by cash on delivery
TRAMADOL buy in aus online no prescription fast delivery
order TRAMADOL without a prescription online
TRAMADOL ship to florida
TRAMADOL cod cod
online pharmacy TRAMADOL sale
buy TRAMADOL no prescription needed
order overnight TRAMADOL
free TRAMADOL samples before buying
TRAMADOL with physician consult cod
buy not expensive fedex TRAMADOL
buy TRAMADOL online without script
purchase TRAMADOL online with overnight delivery
TRAMADOL and no prescription
buy generic TRAMADOL online in kansas
order buy TRAMADOL online
TRAMADOL online with overnight delivery
order TRAMADOL at cheapest possible prices
cheapest TRAMADOL er shipping to canada
TRAMADOL imprint code
TRAMADOL buy in us without prescrs buy online
order TRAMADOL online no rx prescription
TRAMADOL no prescription online
order TRAMADOL uk
TRAMADOL no xr buy online cheap in or
TRAMADOL cod overnight delivery
how to get TRAMADOL drug cod accepted massachusetts
or free prescription TRAMADOL free shipping
order TRAMADOL cash on delivery
buy TRAMADOL no visa
buy TRAMADOL 180
next day delivery on TRAMADOL sr saturday
nextday TRAMADOL cod
buy TRAMADOL online from mexico cod pharmacy
imitrex buy TRAMADOL
TRAMADOL no prescriptions
buy cheap TRAMADOL prescriptions online
purchase TRAMADOL with saturday delivery
buy TRAMADOL with discount
how to buy TRAMADOL online
purchase TRAMADOL in ve
TRAMADOL boys online
pharmacy degree line cheap TRAMADOL
lowest TRAMADOL prices with shipping
cheap TRAMADOL online low