“I see the flag in all of that”—Discussions on Americanism and Internationalism in the Making of the San Francisco Monument to the Abraham Lincoln Brigade

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Notes

¹ Edith Segal, Another Letter to the Veterans of the Abraham Lincoln Brigade, ALBA VF Merriman.

² Billie Portnow, Letter to the Editor, The Volunteer, Vol. 10, 3 (1988), 15.

³ Pete Hamill, “For Some Old Soldiers There Are No Monuments,” The Village Voice, Vol. 15, 19 (1969), 1.

⁴ Peter Carroll calculates that about 2,600 American soldiers fought in the International Brigades and around 150 volunteers served in medical or technical units. Peter N. Carroll, The Odyssey of the Abraham Lincoln Brigade (Stanford: Stanford Univ. Press, 1994), 14.

⁵ There was no military unit called the “Abraham Lincoln Brigade” in Spain. Most of the American volunteers fought as part of the “Abraham Lincoln Battalion” or the “George Washington Battalion” in the Fifteenth International Brigade. These two battalions were later merged into the “Lincoln-Washington-Battalion.” There were also Americans fighting in other units, like the Canadian McKenzie-Papineau-Battalion. The term “Lincoln Brigade” has become common for the description of all of the Americans who served in military or medical units for the Spanish Republic and it will be referred to as such henceforth in the present work. However, there are authors who see the use of the term “Brigade” as the continuation of the Communist propaganda to “magnify” the American volunteers. See Cecil Eby, Comrades and Commissars: The Lincoln Battalion in the Spanish Civil War (University Park: Pennsylvania State Univ. Press, 2007), xii. On the Battalion—Brigade—controversy see further, Carroll, The Odyssey of the Abraham Lincoln Brigade, 94.

⁶ Peter Glazer, “Making History Matter,” The Volunteer, Vol. 25, 2, (2008), 6.

⁷ Cf. Iwona Irwin-Zarecka, Frames of Remembrance. The Dynamics of Collective Memory (New Brunswick; London: Transaction Publishers, 2008 [1994]), 57. Whereas collective memory in all its forms has produced a large amount of theorization, the term “community of memory” (sometimes also “community of remembrance”) is often used without references to theoretical considerations on what constitutes these communities. Iwona Irwin-Zarecka's study is an illuminating exception. Drawing upon the experiences she made during her research on the commemoration of Jewish Holocaust victims in Poland, Frames of Remembrance offers valuable reflections on communities of memory and “memory work.” She argues that “to trace how—and which—past is made to matter, we also need to ask: by whom, when, where, and why.” Although Michael Kammen praised Frames of Remembrance as the first overview of collective memory since Halbwachs, the book did not enter the theoretical canon on the subject. Michael Kammen, “Review Essay: Frames of Remembrance,” History and Theory, Vol. 34, 3 (1995), 245. A second edition was published in 2008, unfortunately without any revision.

⁸ “The Transition: Important Letter from ALBA,” The Volunteer, Vol. 25, 2 (2008), i.

⁹ Sanford Levinson, Written in Stone: Public Monuments in Changing Societies (Durham; London: Duke Univ. Press, 1998), 4.

¹⁰ Ibid., 24.

¹¹ Martha Gellhorn, The Face of War (New York: Atlanta Monthly Press, 1988 [1959]), 17.

¹² Martha Gellhorn was an American novelist and journalist. She reported on the Spanish Civil War for the American magazine Colliers Weekly from 1937 to 1939.

¹³ U.S. Court of Appeals, VALB vs. SACB, Petition for Review of Order of SACB, decided 12/17/1963, ALBA 211/5/10, 1.

¹⁴ Board of Supervisors, City and County of San Francisco, “Resolution No. 781-00: Urging the Port of San Francisco to Accept a Monument Honoring the Bay Area Veterans of the Abraham Lincoln Brigade in Harry Bridges Plaza,” 08/28/2000, at: http://www.sfgov.org/site/uploadedfiles-/bdsupvrs/resolutions00/r0781-00.pdf, 1.

¹⁵ John Bodnar, Remaking America: Public Memory, Commemoration, and Patriotism in the Twentieth Century (Princeton: Princeton Univ. Press, 1994), 14.

¹⁶ The Monument Committee was an informal committee of members of the Bay Area Post of the VALB and ALBA.

¹⁷ Richard Bermack, Peter Carroll, Peter Glazer, Martha Olson Jarocki, Emily Lazarre, Linda Lustig and Judith Montell. The one missing member is Donna Graves, who did not respond to my request.

¹⁸ Corine Thornton.

¹⁹ The other artist—Ann Chamberlain—died of cancer on April 18, 2008.

²⁰ Of the 12 veterans who attended the dedication, three died before August 2008 (Abe Osheroff, Dave Smith, and Abe Smorodin), six either lived in areas of the United States that I wasn’t able to travel to, or were not fit enough to be interviewed. The three veterans who could be interviewed were Matti Mattson, Hank Rubin, and Nate Thornton.

²¹ Peter Glazer had recommended that I interview Bruce Barthol. I included his account in the analysis because of his long history with the Bay Area Post of the VALB.

²² Kammen, “Review Essay,” 257. Kammen is the author of an extensive study on tradition and collective memory in the United States: Mystic Chords of Memory. The Transformation of Tradition in American Culture (New York: Knopf, 1991).

²³ For a detailed analysis on how this narrative transformed between 1937 and 2008 see Chapter 4 in: Teresa Huhle, ‘“This is an American History’: Spanish Civil War Monuments and Politics of Commemoration in the United States,” Diploma Thesis, University of Cologne (2009), 17–27.

²⁴ Peter Glazer, Radical Nostalgia. Spanish Civil War Commemoration in America (Rochester: Univ. of Rochester Press, 2005), 96.

²⁵ “Memorial Plaque in City College,” The Volunteer, Vol. 1, 3 (1980), 12.

²⁶ On the whole memorial project see, Adler to Possible Sponsors, no date, ALBA 19/13/17; Pamphlet “The New York City College Volunteers-in-Spain Memorial Scholar Award,” ALBA, 19/13/17; “CCNY to Honor Lincolns Killed in Spain,” The Volunteer, Vol. 2, 2 (2) (1979), 7.

²⁷ The Spanish Civil War Historical Society (SCWHS) was founded in May 1980, but was only active for a few years. The organization was to a large degree initiated by veteran Pete Smith, who for several years after 1975 held the official position of the VALB “historian,” and published “News Briefs” in The Volunteer (1980–1983). On the SCWHS see, “Historical Society,” The Volunteer, Vol. 3, 2 (1980), 8; SCWHS, Minutes of Meeting, 05/10/1980, ALBA 19/16/11; “SCWHS, Description, 02/23/1980, ALBA 19/16/11. On conflicts between the SCWHS and ALBA see, VALB National Board, Minutes of Meeting, 04/09-10/1980, ALBA 19/18/4.

²⁸ Pete Smith to Lincoln Brigadiers and Friends, no date, ALBA 19/13/17.

²⁹ The Volunteer is the magazine that the VALB has been publishing since 1937. Printed on an irregular basis during the Second World War and the McCarthy era, The Volunteer has been published three to four times a year since the late 1960's. In the late 1980's ALBA took over the publication. The Volunteer is an indispensable source for research on the VALB. The first issue of The Volunteer officially was called “an ALBA publication” from summer 1997. But since at least 1990 ALBA members have been on the Board of Editors.

³⁰ Cf. Albert Prago, “A Missing Page of History Restored,” The Volunteer, Vol. 3, 3 (1980), 4; Albert Prago, “To Honor Thirteen Killed in Spanish Civil War,” Morning Freiheit, 04/06/1980, 1.

³¹ “For the first time, a prestigious college is officially honoring the thirteen fallen Lincolns who had been its students, alumni, and instructors, it was paying tribute to all the men and women who went to Spain to fight for democracy and against fascism. (…) The present college administration is to be congratulated in giving recognition, after more than forty years, to the thirteen fallen sons of City College and in so doing had ‘restored a page torn out of American history’.” Prago, “A Missing Page of History Restored,” 4. Prago quoted the last words from a speech Lincoln veteran and historian Robert Colodny gave at the inauguration ceremony.

³² “It has been suggested that the Jewish community should take note of and honor these men, of whom eleven were Jews.” Prago, “To Honor Thirteen Killed in Spanish Civil War,” 1980, 1. Albert Prago was one of several Jewish Lincoln Veterans who stressed the importance of the International Brigades for Jewish history, memory, and identity. Ed Lending—an anti-Communist Lincoln Veteran in conflict with the VALB—was also involved in transnational efforts to commemorate the Jewish volunteers in the International Brigades with a Monument on Montjuic in Barcelona, dedicated in 1990. Ed Lending, “Memorial on Montjuic,” The Volunteer, Vol. 12, 1 (1990), 10–12. He also published on the issue of Jewish volunteers. See for example, Ed Lending, ”Jews Who Fought,” Horizons, (Jan–Feb 1992), 1–5. The high percentage of Jewish volunteers in the International Brigades is an important counter-argument to the myth of the Jewish passivity against fascism. See, Arno Lustiger, Schalom Libertad! Juden im spanischen Bürgerkrieg (Köln: Kiepenheuer und Witsch, 1991).

³³ James E. Young, The Texture of Memory. Holocaust Memorials and Meanings (New Haven: Yale Univ. Press 1993), 337.

³⁴ Adler to Possible Sponsors, no date, ALBA 19/13/17. See also, Pamphlet, “The New York City College Volunteers-in-Spain Memorial Scholar Award,” ALBA, 19/13/17.

³⁵ Cf. “CCNY to Honor Lincolns Killed in Spain,”1979, 7; Program, “New York City College Volunteers-in-Spain Memorial Meeting,” ALBA 19/13/17.

³⁶ The only mention The Volunteer made of the attempt to erect the sculpture in New York was a very short notice in 1981: “A large bronze sculpture to the American Volunteers who fought and died in the Spanish Civil War has been funded. The expressed interest and approval of those associated with the cause is welcomed.” The notice also included two sentences on Roy Shifrin. But nothing hints to an existing or desired VALB involvement with the project. “David and Goliath,” The Volunteer, Vol. 3, 4 (1981), 8.

³⁷ Moe Fishman, Note about David and Goliath statue, 01/10/2000, ALBA 19/13/29; ”Barcelona inaugurará en otoño un monumento a las Brigadas Internacionales,” La Vanguardia, 03/14/1988, 18.

³⁸ Prospectus, Monument to the American Volunteers in Spain, no date, ALBA 19/13/29.

³⁹ The sponsors included Woody Allen, Leonard Bernstein, Studs Terkel, and Allen Ginsberg. Prospectus, Monument to the American Volunteers in Spain, no date, ALBA 19/13/29. According to Miriam Friedlander, then New York City Council Member, “both Barcelona and the Municipal Art Society of Washington, D.C. have expressed their desire for this monument, but the sculptor and the American vets, as well as many of us, would like to have it in New York City, the home of so many volunteers.” Friedlander to Brademas, 03/02/1983, ALBA 19/13/29. Shifrin himself wrote in 1987: “With the help of Council woman Miriam Friedlander a search for a site in New York was vigorously pursued, unfortunately two years ago red tape and art establishment maneuvers prevented its placement just when success seemed imminent.” Shifrin to VALB, 04/21/1987, ALBA 8/5/48.

⁴⁰ The VALB claimed responsibility for that change. Steve Nelson, “Monument to the International Brigades in Spain,” The Volunteer, Vol. 9, 3 (1987), 1; Moe Fishman, Note about David and Goliath statue, 01/10/2000, ALBA 19/13/29.

⁴¹ The Volunteer from December 1988 featured four articles on the dedication, covering the first six pages of the issue. The articles were written by three active VALB members (Steve Nelson, Moe Fishman and Bob Reed) and the historian and ALBA board member Gabriel Jackson. On the installation in Barcelona see “Barcelona inaugurará en otoño un monumento a las Brigadas Internacionales,” 1988, 1 and 18.

⁴² The bronze plaque on granite depicts a clenched fist, a five point star, in bold letters “Voluntarios Internacionales de la libertad” and a five line long dedication. The monument was designed by David Ryan from Oakland, California. Peter N. Carroll, “Historic Breakthrough in Seattle,” The Volunteer, Vol. 20, 4 (1998), 1.

⁴³ Bill Susman, “From Harassment to Honor,” The Volunteer, Vol. 20, 4 (1998), 2.

⁴⁴ Ibid., 2. For similar appeals see Reed to VALB, 09/23/1998, ALBA 207/4/20 (“This is the first such monument in this country, and a probable forerunner for many”); Abe Osheroff, “Seattle Monument Materializes: Supporters Hope For Emulation,” The Volunteer, 20, 3 (1988), 1–2 (“The Seattle Monument is planned to stimulate campaigns for similar monuments to the Lincoln Brigade throughout the country. (…) Seattle has been the ground breaker. (…) Seattle's prototype assures that the task in other cities will be easier and less expensive. Keep up the momentum we’ve begun!”)

⁴⁵ See The Volunteer, 20, 4 (1998), 4–5.

⁴⁶ Daniel Czitrom, “Monumental!,” The Volunteer, 21, 4 (1999), 12; John Aehl, “Spanish Civil War Vets Receive Memorial,” Wisconsin State Journal, 11/01/1999, 1B.

⁴⁷ Cf. John Nichols, “Monument to the Good Fight,” The Capital Times, 07/19/1999, 9A.

⁴⁸ On the bronze plaque is written: “This memorial is dedicated to the 45,000 International Volunteers who fought in the Spanish Civil War, 1936–1939. Among them were 2,800 United States Veterans of the Abraham Lincoln Brigade, many of whom came from Wisconsin. Their memorable struggle against the spread of fascism can be counted as a unique moment in the fight for peace and democracy.” Program, “Dedication of Madison's Memorial to the International Volunteers Who Fought in the Spanish Civil War, 1936–1939,” ALBA 19/13/36, 4. The other engravings were the same as on the Seattle Monument. Czitrom, “Monumental!,” 15.

⁴⁹ Cf. Nichols, “Monument to the Good Fight,” 9A; John Nichols, “Monument Here Honors Spanish Civil War Vets,” The Capital Times, 10/30/1999, 3A; “Hundreds Honor Special Veterans,” The Capital Times, 11/01/1999, 2A. See also Kailin's article in Nichols’ paper: Clarence Kailin, “Fighting Fascism While the World Watched,” The Capital Times, 09/03/1999, 15. Nichols also served as the master of ceremonies for the inauguration. Cf. Czitrom, “Monumental!,” 12.

⁵⁰ Joshua Chamberlain, “Plaque Stirs Political Fight in New Hampshire,” The Volunteer, Vol. 23, 2 (2001), 4.

⁵¹ Burt Cohen, “New Hampshire Plaque Still on Hold,” The Volunteer, Vol. 23, 3 (2001), 5. On the New Hampshire controversy see further, “N. H. Monument Fight Continues,” The Volunteer, Vol. 24, 1 (2002), 8; Michael Gillis, “Plaque and Prejudice,” The Sunday Citizen, 02/25/2001, 1A and 8A-9A; “Communist Threat Undiminished! (In Some Minds),” The New Hampshire Gazette, 02/22/2001, 1–3; Glazer, Radical Nostalgia, 262–264.

⁵² Interview, Peter Glazer 1, 08/04/2008, Berkeley, CA, 5–6. The page numbers refer to my private transcripts of the interviews. I fully transcribed the nine interviews with the community members of the second generation. The interviews with Nate and Corine Thornton and with the other two veterans were only partially transcribed. The transcripts were written strictly literal, but, when quoted in this work, some verbal errors were adjusted.

⁵³ Interview, Peter Glazer 2, 08/19/2008, Berkeley, CA, 1.

⁵⁴ Interview, Glazer 1, 5–6.

⁵⁵ Interview, Bruce Barthol, 08/07/2008, San Francisco, CA, 6.

⁵⁶ Montell, in: Interview, Linda Lustig and Judith Montell, 08/13/2008, Berkeley, CA, 60.

⁵⁷ Lustig, in: Interview, Lustig and Montell, 60.

⁵⁸ Cf. Irwin-Zarecka, Frames of Remembrance, 136.

⁵⁹ Interview, Emily Lazarre, 08/22/2008, Berkeley, CA, 8.

⁶⁰ Cf. Irwin-Zarecka, Frames of Remembrance, 13.

⁶¹ Interview, Peter Carroll, 10/08/2008, Manhattan, NY, 23.

⁶² The other ALBA projects he mentioned were exhibitions, teacher summer courses, books, and The Volunteer. Cf. Interview, Glazer 1, 7.

⁶³ Interview, Glazer 1, 13. The tradition of celebrating and commemorating the Lincoln Brigade with an annual dinner started before the war had even ended. Peter Glazer reconstructed a chronology of more than two hundred different events starting in 1938. Until the early 1970's the VALB managed to stage events for important anniversaries; from then on the events took place on a yearly basis. Until the mid 1990's it was the veterans who organized the events and who were the key speakers. The meetings served as social reunions and political gatherings. Commemoration of the Lincoln Brigade and contemporary political activities of the VALB were combined in the performances and through the fundraising for political causes. Reverence for the dead was also a theme all through the years. On both coasts between 500 and 1,000 people would attend the events. Cf. Glazer, Radical Nostalgia, 9–10, 68, 96, 133, 137 and 148.

⁶⁴ “Well, most of those guy-people are all gone, so the process of having the events every year isn’t necessarily taking place.” Interview, Martha Olson Jarocki, 08/11/2008, Greenbrae, CA, 19.

⁶⁵ Cf. Aleida Assmann, Der lange Schatten der Vergangenheit. Erinnerungskultur und Geschichtspolitik (Bonn: Bundeszentrale für Politische Bildung, 2007), 26–35. Literary scholar Aleida Assmann, together with Jan Assmann, is highly influential in the German academic and popular debate on cultural and collective memory in Germany and has published a series of books and articles on the subject.

⁶⁶ Cf. Interview, Olson Jarocki, 19.

⁶⁷ Young, The Texture of Memory, 5.

⁶⁸ Interview, Olson Jarocki, 19. “[Spain] was not the only thing they did in their lives, (…) they wanted to live in the present and they wanted to contribute (…). I mean that to me is the inspiration behind them.” See also Montell, in: Interview, Lustig and Montell, 31.

⁶⁹ Ibid., 7.

⁷⁰ Interview, Olson Jarocki, 19.

⁷¹ Glazer, Radical Nostalgia; Richard Bermack, The Front Lines of Social Changes: Veterans of the Abraham Lincoln Brigade (Berkeley: Heyday Books, 2005); Judith Montell, Forever Activists: Stories from the Veterans of the Abraham Lincoln Brigade, DVD, (San Francisco, 1991).

⁷² Glazer, Radical Nostalgia, 20–32.

⁷³ Interview, Richard Bermack, 08/06/2008, Berkeley, CA, 22.

⁷⁴ James E. Young, “Holocaust Memorials in America: Public Art as Process,” in Harriet F. Senie, ed., Critical Issues in Public Art: Content, Context, and Controversy (Washington: Smithsonian Inst. Press, 2000), 58.

⁷⁵ The written sources used in this section are documents from agencies of the City and County of San Francisco that had to approve the monument and documents from the “Archie Brown Papers,” located at the Abraham Lincoln Brigade Archives in New York. Hon Brown, the widow of Lincoln veteran Archie Brown, had been a member of the Monument Committee until her death in 2003. Her material about the Monument has been included in her husband's papers.

⁷⁶ Interview, Olson Jarocki, 2. This connection between the “Homenaje” and the monument idea was also drawn in an article in The Volunteer, written a year after the trip to Spain. Cf. Martha Olson Jarocki; Roby Newman, “Keeping the Legacy Alive: the Bill Bailey Project,” The Volunteer, Vol. 19, 3 (1997), 10.

⁷⁷ Interview, Olson Jarocki, 5. The book she mentioned is an illustrated book published in 1996 as an “official publication of the International Brigade Association” in the UK: Colin Williams; Bill Alexander; John Gorman, eds., Memorials of the Spanish Civil War: The Official Publication of the International Brigade Association (Stroud: Alan Sutton, 1996). When the book was published there were fifty-five memorials to British and Irish International Brigadiers in the United Kingdom. Today there are more then sixty. The “International Brigades Association” became “The International Brigades Memorial Trust” (IBMT) in 2002, which conducts work similar to ALBA in the United States. For a list and a map with the British and Irish monuments see: “Memorials,” at: “http://www.international-brigades.org.uk/memorials.htm.

⁷⁸ Smith had moved to the Bay Area in the early 1990's and became the Commander of the Bay Area Post soon after, displacing Milton Wolff. Judith Montell and Richard Bermack both emphasized the importance of Dave Smith's initiative. Montell: “The monument in San Francisco is due mainly to the efforts of Linda Lustig's father, Dave Smith (…). It was Dave who really said that we should have it.” Montell, in: Interview, Lustig and Montell, 3. Bermack: “[the monument] was really initiated by this vet, Dave Smith and his family.” Interview, Bermack, 3.

⁷⁹ Larry D. Hartfield, “Bill Bailey: Waterfront Legend, Writer,” The Examiner, 01/03/1995, A.

⁸⁰ Bailey had been famous in the 1930's for ripping the swastika flag from the German passenger liner Bremen at a dock in New York City. In San Francisco he was a well known Union activist. “Bill Bailey,” The Volunteer, Vol. 17, 1 (1995), 4; Griffin Fariello, Red Scare: Memories of the American Inquisition (New York: Norton, 1995), 405–406. The Bremen incident is also part of Bailey's autobiography that covers the years until he went to Spain: Bill Bailey, The Kid From Hoboken: An Autobiography (San Francisco: Circus Lithographic Express, 1993). According to Dave Smith, the Pioneer Park Project in San Francisco had proposed the transformation of Bill Bailey's cottage into the Bill Bailey Science Center and Smith introduced the idea of co-financing the project to the Bay Area Post, since “it may be possible to incorporate Lincoln Brigade history/SF labor history into this center.” VALB Bay Area Post, Minutes of Meeting, 04/07/1997, ALBA 207/4/17, 2. On the Bill Bailey Cottage Project see also Lustig, in: Interview Lustig and Montell, 1; Olson Jarocki; Newman, “Keeping the Legacy Alive,” 10; Mika Belle, “Longshoremen Bill Bailey's Home Moved to Rail Yard,” The Examiner, 06/24/1999, A.; Pervaiz Shallwani, “Bill Bailey's House Saved—Seeks New Home: Labor Leader's Cottage Sitting in Muni Yard,” The San Francisco Chronicle, 06/24/1999, A19.

⁸¹ VALB Bay Area Post, Minutes of Meeting, 04/07/1997, ALBA 207/4/17, 2.

⁸² Cf. Shallwani, “Bill Bailey's House Saved,” A19; Dave Smith, “Bill Bailey's Cottage Seeks New Site,” The Volunteer, Vol. 21, 3 (1999), 16.

⁸³ Lustig, in: Interview, Lustig and Montell, 2. In a letter from July 1997 that this first Monument Committee sent to all the Post members, they spoke about the possibility to “commemorate Bill's life, VALB, and the San Francisco labor history” in Bill Bailey's cottage, but also encouraged the Post to discuss “what a fitting memorial to the Vets would be, where it should be” and what they would “like to communicate to future generations about their experience in Spain and their lives since.” See, VALB Monument Committee to Bay Area Post, 07/10/1997, ALBA 207/4/21.

⁸⁴ Cf. Montell, in: Interview, Lustig and Montell, 3; Interview Olson Jarocki, 5.

⁸⁵ “Milt would have liked giving all the money to Cuba. You know, and make a big statement.” Interview, Bermack, 19. See also, Interview, Carroll, 7; Lustig, in: Interview, Lustig and Montell, 7; Interview, Olson Jarocki, 5. In the 1990's the beneficiaries of the money raised at the dinners ranged from a pediatric clinic in Cuba, and peace and human rights organizations to a “Oliver Law Scholarship” at Dream West, a community project for indigent high school students. Roby Newman, “VALB Dinner West,” The Volunteer, Vol. 16, 2 (1994), 11–12; VALB Bay Area Post, Minutes of Meeting, 04/10/1994, ALBA 207/4/17.

⁸⁶ Cf. Interview, Bermack, 19; Lustig, in: Interview, Lustig and Montell, 7; Interview, Olson Jarocki, 5.

⁸⁷ Cf. Interview, Lazarre, 12.

⁸⁸ Interview, Bermack, 16.

⁸⁹ Cf. Interview, Glazer 1, 9. Notes from a meeting with labor activist and musician Archie Green reveal that the Monument Committee gathered information on who to approach in order to build something on the Embarcadero as early as August 1997. Notes from a Meeting with Archie Green, 08/04/1997, ALBA 207/4/21.

⁹⁰ Cf. VALB Monument Committee to Smith, Port of San Francisco, 03/31/1999, ALBA 207/4/21.

⁹¹ Interview, Olson Jarocki, 6.

⁹² See, for example, the following letter to Lynn Bonfield of the Labor Archives and Research Center of the San Francisco State University: “A majority of the Bay Area Vets were active in labor unions and remain identified with labor. (…) we would like to explore joining with Bay Area labor organizations towards a memorial that would acknowledge the continuing efforts of working people for social and economic justice.” VALB Monument Committee to Bonfield, 06/05/1997, ALBA 207/4/21, 1. See also, VALB Monument Committee to Smith, Port of San Francisco, 03/31/1999, ALBA 207/4/21.

⁹³ These quotes stem from an information sheet the Monument Committee wrote at the end of 2000. See, VALB Bay Area Post Information about the Brigade and Plans for a Bay Area Monument, 2000, ALBA 207/4/21. Similar statements can be found in the following documents: VALB Bay Area Post, Invitation to a Workshop for a “Monument to the Veterans of the Abraham Lincoln Brigade,” 08/04/2001, ALBA 207/4/21; Dave Smith to Sponsors, draft, 01/05/2000, ALBA 207/4/21; VALB Bay Area Post, Annual Reunion 2003 Booklet, ALBA 19/18/34, 9.

⁹⁴ See for example, this excerpt from the first resolution adopted by the Board of Supervisors in August 2000: “Many of the volunteers of the Abraham Lincoln Brigade were longshoremen, dock workers and seamen from the San Francisco waterfront.” Board Of Supervisors, “Resolution No. 781-00,” 08/18/2000, 1; and the Port of San Francisco Memorandum on its resolution from November 2006: “These activists were the first group of anti-fascist fighters in the 1930s. (…).Volunteers from the Bay Area and San Francisco were an integral part of this struggle. A number of them worked as longshoremen and seamen on the San Francisco waterfront, and were activists in the strikes of 1934 and 1936.” Port Commission, City and County of San Francisco, “Memorandum,” 11/06/2006, at: http://www.ci.sf.ca.us/site/uploadedfiles/port/meetings/supporting/2006/Item%206a%20Abraham%20Lincoln%20Brigade.pdf, accessed 05/17/2009, 1.

⁹⁵ Cf. Young, “Holocaust Memorials in America,” 59.

⁹⁶ Interview, Olson Jarocki, 6. The only other interviewee who mentioned this workshop was Linda Lustig. Cf. Lustig, in: Interview, Lustig and Montell, 28.

⁹⁷ VALB Bay Area Post, Invitation to Workshop for a “Monument to the Veterans of the Abraham Lincoln Brigade,” 08/04/2001, ALBA 207/4/21.

⁹⁸ Two more points on the agenda were “Potential Links for the Project” and the “Fundraising Plan.” VALB Bay Area Post, Agenda Monument Project Public Workshop, 08/04/2001, ALBA 207/4/21, 1.

⁹⁹ Olson Jarocki to Workshop Participants, 09/13/2001, ALBA, 207/4/21; Lustig, in: Interview, Lustig and Montell, 6.

¹⁰⁰ Interview, Lazarre, 1–2.

¹⁰¹ Emily Lazarre was not more specific on the persons. Cf. Ibid., 3.

¹⁰² Ibid., 3.

¹⁰³ Interview, Walter Hood, 08/20/2008, Oakland, CA, 1–2. Lustig remembered this as well: “I think Donna had a lot to do with that, I think she asked them to work with each other on that“, Lustig, in: Interview Lustig and Montell, 23.

¹⁰⁴ Interview, Hood, 1.

¹⁰⁵ Interview, Lazarre, 3; Interview Olson Jarocki, 18.

¹⁰⁶ Interview, Glazer 2, 7.

¹⁰⁷ Interview, Olson Jarocki, 18; Interview, Glazer 2, 7. Ann Chamberlain (1951–2008) was a San Francisco artist. Her two best-known works were also memory-related public projects: together with Ann Hamilton she created a mural for the new San Francisco Library that consisted of the cards from the defunct card catalogue, and the Healing Garden in Mount Zion Cancer Center—a wall of ceramic tiles created together with patients, their friends and families. Cf. Jesse Hamlin, “Artists Ann Chamberlain Dies at 56,” San Francisco Chronicle, 04/22/2008, B5. Walter Hood is a landscape architect from Oakland, California, and professor at the College of Environmental Design at the University of California, Berkeley. He is best known in San Francisco for designing the landscape of the De Young Design Museum in Golden Gate Park, San Francisco. Dashka Slater, “City Jazz,” California, Vol. 117, 4 (2006), at: http://www.alumni.berkeley.edu/calmag/200607/hood.asp.

¹⁰⁸ Cf. Interview, Lazarre, 7.; Interview, Hood, 4. In the invitation to the workshop in August 2001 the Monument Committee expressed the hope “to dedicate the artwork by early 2003.” VALB Bay Area Post, Invitation to Workshop for a “Monument to the Veterans of the Abraham Lincoln Brigade,” 08/04/2001, ALBA 207/4/21.

¹⁰⁹ “Each time we had to go before various commissions (…), neighborhood advisory groups, landmark groups, and the Art Commission, (…). It took us almost a year, you know, months in each case, to sort of work things through.” Interview, Olson Jarocki, 16. See also, Interview, Hood, 4; Interview, Lazarre, 7.

¹¹⁰ Interview, Lazarre, 7.

¹¹¹ Cf. Port Commission, “Resolution No. 00-80,” 11/01/2000.

¹¹² Port Commission, City and County of San Francisco, “Memorandum,” 02/22/2006, at: http://www.ci.sf.ca.us/site/uploadedfiles/port/meetings/supporting/2006/Item8cAbrahamLincolnBrigademonument.pdf, accessed 05/17/2009, 2.

¹¹³ Lustig, in: Interview, Lustig and Montell, 39.

¹¹⁴ Cf. Interview, Olson Jarocki, 6; Interview, Hood, 3; Interview, Lazarre, 6.

¹¹⁵ Cf. Port Commission, City and County of San Francisco, “Resolution No. 06–83,” 11/14//2006, at: http://www.ci.sf.ca.us/site/uploadedfiles/port/meetings/supporting/2006/Item%206a%20Abraham%20Lincoln%20Brigade.pdf, 3–4.

¹¹⁶ Interview, Glazer 1, 9.

¹¹⁷ Lustig, in: Interview, Lustig and Montell, 22.

¹¹⁸ Interview, Lazarre, 7.

¹¹⁹ Montell, in: Interview, Lustig and Montell, 41.

¹²⁰ Cf. Don Santina, “You Fought in Spain: Taps for the Abraham Lincoln Brigade,” Counterpunch, 08/16/2008, at: http://www.counterpunch.org/santina08162008.html.

¹²¹ Cf. Lustig, in: Interview, Lustig and Montell, 6.

¹²² Cf. Ibid., 32.

¹²³ Interview, Carroll, 20.

¹²⁴ Gavin Newsom got elected as mayor of San Francisco in 2003, succeeding Willie Brown.

¹²⁵ Interview, Carroll, 20–22.

¹²⁶ Lustig, in: Interview, Lustig and Montell, 49. See also the following comments: “The mayor was immediately supportive and (…) a lot of the barriers with the city began to sort of softly fall,” Interview, Glazer 1, 9; “Rumor has that Mayor Newsom somewhere in his background, there's a Lincoln vet. . . ’cause he okayed the project,” Interview, Barthol, 7.; “The mayor played an incredibly important role in this, very toward the end. (…) I get a call from the Port, (…) is there a reason the mayor's office cares about this? (…) and once that happened, things started to move.” Lustig, in: Interview, Lustig and Montell, 48–49.

¹²⁷ Montell, in: Interview, Lustig and Montell, 44.

¹²⁸ Interview, Lazarre, 4.

¹²⁹ Cf. Lustig, in: Interview, Lustig and Montell, 59.

¹³⁰ “They were incredibly eloquent.” Ibid., 43.

¹³¹ Among the other speakers who supported the resolution were Linda Lustig, Walter Hood, Peter Carroll, and a retired ILWU member. Cf. Port Commission, City and County of San Francisco, “Minutes of Special Meeting,” 11/14/2006, at: http://www.ci.sf.ca.us/site/uploadedfiles/port/meetings/minutes/2006/M11142006.pdf, 13–18.

¹³² Ibid., 16.

¹³³ Peter Carroll said about Eula Walters appearance at the meeting: “At the final meeting at the Port there were two women there (…) one of them set up to speak at the Commission (…) it wasn’t like a reasoned argument, just like a tirade (…) some of it may have been linked to anti-Communism (…) I’m not paranoid about it, but I don’t think it's innocent.” Interview, Carroll, 13–14.

¹³⁴ Cf. Interview, Hood, 2; Interview, Lazarre, 5. Hood also argued twice that the lack of larger funds led to changes of the original design: Ann Chamberlain's idea of including music couldn’t be realized and the size of the monument had to be reduced. See, Interview, Hood, 3 and 6. Hood described the original design as follows: “(…) it always had text and some kind of image, but it was never kind of absolute. [In the original proposal] there was a podium, a box for people to stand on, there was the wall, there were the olive trees, there was the dirt, (…) a red dirt.” Interview, Hood, 2. A similar description of the first proposal can be found in: Visual Arts Committee, San Francisco Arts Commission, “Minutes of Meeting,” 06/19/2002, at: http://www.ci.sf.ca.us/site/uploadedfiles/sfac/minutes/2002/vac/vam061902.htm, accessed 05/17/2009.

¹³⁵ See the quote in its context: “One of the things that I often said was, ‘we need to leave this to the artists’.” Interview, Glazer 2, 6–7.

¹³⁶ “The artists needed to have a lot of authority in what went on that monument,” Interview, Glazer 1, 12; “I always argued for that (…) we’ve chosen them and they’re making the decisions,” Interview, Lazarre, 17; “I said (…) that the artists were the ones that would make the determinations,” Interview, Carroll, 9. Only Corine Thornton expressed disagreement with the artists having the ultimate right to take decisions: “We tried to be involved, but (…) ‘it's the artists, we can’t. . . have, they have to have their say about this’,” Corine Thornton, in: Interview, Nate and Corine Thornton, 08/08/2008, Hayward, CA, 11.

¹³⁷ Cf. Interview, Glazer 2, 7; Interview, Lazarre, 17.

¹³⁸ “We provided the artists with a lot of photographs and a lot of text and a lot of stuff and then they did their own research. And they came back with a basic design (…) maybe thirty percent of what was there was changed and the artists were pretty comfortable with that.” Interview, Glazer 1, 12. See also the following words from Judith Montell: “We fed them with the materials that, you know, we were interested in and that we felt were of value. (…) we did surround them with what they needed.” Montell, in: Interview, Lustig and Montell, 11–12.

¹³⁹ Cf. Interview, Olson Jarocki, 11; Interview Lazarre, 6; Lustig, in: Interview, Lustig and Montell, 11–12. The final process of deciding the texts and images took place in the last two years of the process. By that time Ann Chamberlain had become too ill to be able to actively participate in the process, that is why the interviewees in some cases didn’t speak about “the artists,” but about “Walter Hood.” Ann Chamberlain died of cancer two weeks after the monument was erected. She was not able to attend the dedication ceremony.

¹⁴⁰ This happened with both texts and images, e.g. with the poem “To the Veterans of the Abraham Lincoln Brigade” by Genevieve Taggard and the famous Robert Capa photo “The Falling Soldier.” Interview, Olson Jarocki, 11; Interview, Hood, 5; Lustig, in: Interview, Lustig and Montell, 19.

¹⁴¹ Interview, Glazer 1, 4–7.

¹⁴² Lazarre remembers going “over and over” the text, Montell said they tried the to avoid repetitions.” Interview, Lazarre, 19; Montell, in: Interview, Lustig and Montell, 19.

¹⁴³ “So it was important that we had some women in there selected, it was important that we have some African Americans in there, and then we wanted (…) some Spaniards.” Ibid., 18.

¹⁴⁴ Interview, Bermack, 21–22. Glazer said Martha Gellhorn's quote got selected at a point where someone said they needed to have more women. Cf. Interview Glazer 2, 3.

¹⁴⁵ Interview, Hood, 5.

¹⁴⁶ Cf. Interview, Hood, 5.

¹⁴⁷ Interview, Lazarre, 17. See also, Interview, Bermack, 32; Lustig, in: Lustig and Montell, 54.

¹⁴⁸ Ibid., 54–56.

¹⁴⁹ Interview, Lazarre, 17. Lustig similarly spoke about the need to “explain” to Ann Chamberlain the meaning of the group. Lustig, in: Interview, Lustig and Montell, 54.

¹⁵⁰ “We also felt that certain of the vets should be represented because they were important within the organization and they meant a lot to the other vets that were still alive and. . . but they also represented who the vets were.” Montell, in: Interview, Lustig and Montell, 18. “They honored–they had Milt, because he was so–you just couldn’t help, (…) they put Dave in it, because Dave–(…) but they represented–the vets always said this thing is all of us, it's not any particular one person.” Interview, Bermack, 32. Linda Lustig said the artists wanted her father's quote and picture in it, because he put “so much effort” into the monument. Lustig, in: Interview, Lustig and Montell, 21.

¹⁵¹ Cf. Glazer 2, 7; Lustig, in: Interview, Lustig and Montell, 17.

¹⁵² Montell said the Camus and Robeson quotes were her “favorites,” Lazarre said she “loved” the poetry and the Robeson quote, Glazer himself had been “very fond of” the Langston Hughes poem and “put [it] forward.” Montell, in: Interview, Lustig and Montell, 16; Interview, Lazarre, 19; Interview, Glazer 2, 3.

¹⁵³ Interview, Olson Jarocki, 14.

¹⁵⁴ Cf. Interview, Glazer 1, 12; Interview, Glazer 2, 7; Interview, Olson Jarocki, 14.

¹⁵⁵ Interview, Glazer 2, 4–7. Lustig said similar things: “They had a sense of what would fit,” Lustig, in: Interview, Lustig and Montell, 18. “It was literally, how it will look. So they rearranged it in such a way of when to have long ones and short ones and under what picture.” Lustig, in: Interview, Lustig and Montell, 19.

¹⁵⁶ The picture had been used on the front cover of an ALBA publication from 1987: Alvah Bessie and Albert Prago, eds., Our Fight. Writings by Veterans of the Abraham Lincoln Brigade, Spain, 1936–1939 (New York: Monthly Review Press, 1987).

¹⁵⁷ Cf. Interview, Olson Jarocki, 9.

¹⁵⁸ Cf. Interview, Glazer 1, 12; Interview, Barthol, 8.

¹⁵⁹ Dr. Edward Barsky headed the first U.S. medical team that volunteered for the Spanish Republic. After he returned to the U.S., he became head of the Joint Anti-Fascist Refugee Committee (JAFRC). The JAFRC was the first “communist front group” to be investigated by the House Committee on Un-American Activities (HUAC), in as early as 1946. For his refusal to hand over the JAFRC's lists of donors and recipients, Barsky was sentenced to six months in jail. Carroll, The Odyssey of the Abraham Lincoln Brigade, 285–286 and Ellen Schrecker, Many are the Crimes. McCarthyism in America (Boston; New York et al.: Little, Brown and Company, 1998), 128. Paul Robeson was a famous American baritone and member of the Communist Party. In early 1938 he went to Spain to visit the Lincoln Brigade and perform for them. Peter Glazer, “The Lifted Fist: Performing the Spanish Civil War, New York City, 1936–1939,” in: Peter N. Carroll; James D. Fernández eds., Fighting Fascism; New York City and the Spanish Civil War (New York: Museum of the City of New York et al., 2007), 167.

¹⁶⁰ Interview, Olson Jarocki, 8.

¹⁶¹ Interview, Hood, 7.

¹⁶² Interview, Bermack, 9.

¹⁶³ Montell, in: Interview, Lustig and Montell, 51.

¹⁶⁴ Interview, Glazer 1, 14. He said something similar in his second interview: “The American flag represented what forced their fathers and their husbands and their parents to have to change their lives, … hence a hatred for the flag.” Interview, Glazer 2, 2.

¹⁶⁵ Interview, Olson Jarocki, 9.

¹⁶⁶ Ibid., 14.

¹⁶⁷ Interview, Bermack, 10.

¹⁶⁸ Montell, in: Interview, Lustig and Montell, 51 and 57.

¹⁶⁹ Lustig, in: Interview, Lustig and Montell, 55.

¹⁷⁰ Interview, Hood, 6.

¹⁷¹ Ibid., 7.

¹⁷² Chapter 4, 26–27. In his book about blacklisting in Hollywood “Inquisition in Eden,” Alvah Bessie cites Gary Cooper (who played Robert Jordan in the film adaption of Hemingway's For Whom the Bell Tolls in 1943) with a sentence that's strikingly close to Hood's: “That's what's so great about this country. (…) a guy like you can go and fight in a war that's none of your business.” To Bessie, that sentence was bitter irony. Alvah Bessie, Inquisition in Eden (New York: Macmillan, 1965), 104.

¹⁷³ Interview, Olson Jarocki, 9.

¹⁷⁴ Ibid., 8.

¹⁷⁵ Ibid., 9.

¹⁷⁶ “I don’t think that my father went or became engaged in that struggle because he thought he was a US-citizen (…). For him I think it was about internationalism.” Ibid., 14.

¹⁷⁷ Ibid.

¹⁷⁸ Interview, Olson Jarocki, 9.

¹⁷⁹ Interview, Glazer 2, 2. See also, Interview, Glazer 1, 14.

¹⁸⁰ The term “New Left” is used to distinguish between the new protest movements of the 1960's and the “Old Left” of the 1930's. The term was first used in a newspaper article from The National Guardian in 1956. Terry H. Anderson, The Movement and the Sixties: Protest in America from Greensboro to Wounded Knee (New York: Oxford University Press, 1995), 60.

¹⁸¹ The “Pledge of Allegiance” has been the official national pledge of the United States since 1942. In 1954 the words “under God” were included. Arnaldo Testi, Stelle e strisce. Storia di una bandiera (Torino: Bollati Boringhieri, 2003), 53. Testi's book is a comprehensive cultural history of the American flag, its uses and symbolic power in the United States. See also, Scot M. Guenter, The American Flag, 1777–1924: Cultural Shifts From Creation to Codification (Rutherford: Fairleigh Dickinson Univ. Press, 1990).

¹⁸² Interview, Bermack, 8 and 30. In a different context, Bruce Barthol also spoke about how Vietnam turned his worldview upside down: “I jumped out at a kiosk to get the Herald Tribune and the headline was “My Lai massacre” (…) Man and that just turned me completely around. (…) I went to high school with all those guys (…) they were all, you know, Americans like me (…).” Barthol told that story in the context of how he changed his attitude towards Germans, an issue that came up because of me being German. He said before My Lai he had believed that there was “some genetic fucking thing wrong” with Germans, but that this massacre taught him that people in his own country did “stuff like that.” Interview, Barthol, 3.

¹⁸³ Interview, Bermack, 8.

¹⁸⁴ “Nonetheless, these were vets who were holding up the flag on their way to Spain.” Interview, Glazer 1, 12; “but the guys going to Spain hold the American flag up on the ship on their way over and they call themselves the Abraham Lincoln Brigade.” Interview, Glazer 2, 2. “I’m not sure about the American flag, but on the other hand they did call themselves the Abraham Lincoln Brigade and not the “Foster Brigade” —the head of the CP—or something, right, so it's in line with their kind of position.” Interview, Barthol, 8. “The guys going over were holding the flag. (…) It's not that we put the flag. They were holding the flag.” Interview, Hood, 7.

¹⁸⁵ Interview, Glazer 2, 2.

¹⁸⁶ Interview, Olson Jarocki, 9.

¹⁸⁷ Interview, Bermack, 29–30.

¹⁸⁸ Interview, Glazer 2, 1. In his speech at the ceremony after the dedication of the monument, Peter Glazer argued similarly to what he had said in his interview: “We live in a time when the Right in America has attempted to appropriate patriotism, as though dissent was ever unpatriotic, as though these men and women before me weren’t defending rights and values at the core of our democracy. (…) Why, on this momentous day, do I speak of such trouble? Because people need your history, and your history is in danger. We all know there was a time when the Left was a visible and undeniable voice in American political discourse; when to imagine a better, saner, more just and peaceful world of people more equal and more free could not be, would not be, put down.” A transcript of the speech was published in The Volunteer. Glazer, “Making History Matter,” 6.

¹⁸⁹ Michael Kazin, “A Patriotic Left,” Dissent, (Fall 2002), at: http://www.dissentmagazine.org/article/?article=560. See also Gore Vidal, “We Are the Patriots,” The Nation, 06/02/2003, at: http://www.isebrand.com/Gore_Vidal_We_Are_The_Patriots_2003.htm. In response to the Bush administrations’ “Patriot Acts,” Peter Glazer wrote a script with the same title for the VALB's commemorative events in 2004. Cf. Glazer, Radical Nostalgia, 262–270.

¹⁹⁰ See Testi, Stelle e Strisce, 84, for the tradition of “reclaiming” the American flag. According to Testi, American patriotism has both a celebratory and a critical tradition and the flag can represent “America’ as it is,” but also “America as it should be.”

¹⁹¹ Cf. Interview, Bermack, 9. Bermack said, the idea to show Dr. Barsky was not only because of his having been blacklisted, but also because he was the “favorite hero” of Milton Wolff, because he “was a person of peace (…) he didn’t fight.” Wolff had not been “happy with the monument (…) for lots of different reasons,” but when Dr. Barsky was included, he changed his opinion.

¹⁹² African American Oliver Law became Commander of the machine-gun company of the Lincoln battalion after the battle of Jarama in February 1937. He died in combat four months later. Carroll, The Odyssey of the Abraham Lincoln Brigade, 135–139.

¹⁹³ “The Abraham Lincoln Brigade was the first non-Jim Crow, non-segregated military organization in the country; and (…) many of the volunteers of the Abraham Lincoln Brigade were longshoremen, dock workers and seamen from the San Francisco waterfront (…).” Board of Supervisors, “Resolution No. 781-00,” 08/28/2000, 1.