‘Readings in Nonviolence’ features
extracts from our favourite books, pamphlets, articles or other material on
nonviolence, or reviews of important works in the field (suggestions welcome).
What are the limits of nonviolence? This
piece from Teresa Huhle about the Spanish Civil War challenges us through the
experience of US citizens who fought militarily against fascism – and
continued to struggle at home against war and injustice. The Irish experience
in the Spanish Civil War is depicted in Christy Moore’s powerful song ‘Viva la
Quinta Brigada’. As always, if you would like to share your thoughts on this,
or anything else, they are very welcome. - Ed
A few reflections on the commemoration of
the Abraham Lincoln Brigade
by Teresa Huhle
“…No men ever entered earth more honourably
than those who died in Spain.” Ernest Hemingway wrote these words in a eulogy
entitled “On the American Dead in Spain” in 1939. A community of memory that
since more than seventy years devotes time and energy to commemorate the
Abraham Lincoln Brigade in the United States – as the about 2800 American
volunteers who fought for the Spanish Republic in the Spanish Civil War
(1936-1939) are commonly called – has repeated the verse in many
commemorative performances. Since March 2008 Hemingway’s praise is engraved in
stone on the first national monument to the Abraham Lincoln Brigade that has
been erected in the United States. The monument – 45 onyx panels framed
in a slightly bended steel construction – uses Hemingway’s words, 25
other writings, 4 maps and 21 photographs to tell the history of these men and
women, who are American anti-fascist heroes to some and un-patriotic Communists
to other
Four months after the inauguration I was in
San Francisco and visited the monument many times. Sometimes I would just sit
there, look how the colour of its stones changed when the sun went down. Or I
went there to write down all the poems and writings on it. Or I observed how
many people stopped and what they looked at. And one day I came with a little
microphone and went after everybody who had stopped to take a closer look. I
introduced myself as a German history student who was writing her MA thesis on
the process that led to the erection of the monument and asked them if they
would tell me why they had stopped and what they thought about the monument.
Immediately they asked me back: “You came all the way from Germany to San
Francisco to ask what I think about this monument?”
So I explained why the answer to this
question was “yes”: It was two years earlier when I first consciously heard
about the Abraham Lincoln Brigade. I was sitting in a history class on
anti-Communism in the 1950s in the United States and we were analyzing a
Hollywood Black List from the FBI. Dorothy Parker was on the list and among the
accusations the FBI had listed, was the fact that she had donated money to a
relief organization for Spanish orphans in the Republican Zone. I was stunned:
why did the FBI think this donation proved her a threat to the inner security
of the United States? I started to research on the relations between the United
States and Spain during the war, on the American relief organizations that
tried to help the Spanish Republic and on the Abraham Lincoln Brigade as the
group of people who get involved directly. I was fascinated by the history of
these men and women who voluntarily fought against Franco, Mussolini and
Hitler, who were harassed by various government agencies after their return,
who became heroes for the New Left in the 1960s and who have been and still are
commemorated by a small but very persistent group of people after more than
seventy years.
Their history touched a question that I
– considering myself a pacifist – often wondered about: are their
moments in history when I think the best solution was or has been to take up
arms even though it contradicts almost everything I believe in? To tell it
right away: I have not found an answer to this question and I’m glad I haven’t.
Travelling to the United States, studying the monument, interviewing the people
who are responsible for its erection and the ones who incidentally came by the
monument while I was there – the experience generated more questions than
answers, but was still extremely fulfilling.
Two different things happened during my
research. On the one hand I academically distanced myself from the version of
history the admirers of the Lincolns tell and came across more and more parts
of the story that I felt critical about, for example the military language the
organization Veterans of the Abraham Lincoln Brigade (VALB) used – an
example is the title “Commander” for the head of the VALB Posts. On the other
hand I was less and less able to resist the emotional power of the
commemoration. When I watched a movie about the Brigade or heard one of the
famous folk songs about them – like “Jarama Valley” sung by Woody Guthrie
– I had tears in my eyes within seconds. Too powerful was the transported
idea of the “Good Fight” against Fascism that could have prevented World War
Two and Auschwitz. “Could have” – an impossible thought from my historic
point of view, but an emotionally striking message in the commemorative
context.
The people I interviewed, the people who
are responsible for the monument are children and friends of the veterans, of
whom only about thirty are still alive. Most of them are also political
activists and have been part of protest movements since the 1960s. The veterans
have marched against every U.S. war since Vietnam. And the monument pays tribute
not only to their fight in Spain, but to all the struggles they have
participated in since they came back. For the second generation, the generation
who accomplished the monument, this part of their legacy is just as important
to remember as the fight in Spain.
On the monument you have a picture of
Lincoln Brigadiers marching in Spain, but you also have a picture of the
veterans demonstrating against the First Gulf War. You might call it
contradictory to commemorate soldiers as heroes and being active in anti-War
movements. But for the people I spoke to, the core idea to commemorate is that
there were young men and women who stood up for ideas they believed, who chose
to do something and who devoted themselves to all different kind of causes
throughout their lives. This idea is maybe best captured by the words of
Lincoln veteran Abe Osheroff on the monument: “If you look out the window and
see a hungry emaciated child and do not feel a desire to do something to make
the world a little better – then you're not a complete human being.”
