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May 31, 2004
A Life Lived and a Memorial Day Movie: “Dreams and Nightmares”
What would you call people who had abandoned their homes, risked their lives and traveled across the ocean to fight the threat of fascism that was to engulf Europe and leave millions dead in its wake?
“Premature anti-fascists.” That’s what the U.S. army called them when the survivors tried to sign up to fight the Nazis after they had returned from fighting fascism in Spain. Their files marked them as “premature anti-fascists” and in many cases held them back from the front.
So it was with Abe Osheroff, one of the last survivors of the Abraham Lincoln Brigade, the under-equipped, under-fed, rag-tag group of Americans who joined the 50,000 men, and a few women, who gathered from around the world to die for freedom in Spain. After returning from Spain, with half his comrades dead, he volunteered to fight in World War II -- as had done almost all the able-bodied veterans of Spain. Because he was a “premature anti-fascist,” the army wouldn’t deploy him to the front even after his unit was shipped off there -- and he had to first fight the Army in order to be sent to fight the Nazis, which he eventually did.
Unfortunately, freedom lost in Spain as the great powers of the day, Britain, France and the United States, secretly and sometimes not-so-secretly hoped. Well, they didn't just hope, they tried to move things along in that direction sometimes by impeding those that would help the anti-fascist forces and sometimes by directly and indirectly aiding the fascist forces. But it turned out that the beast you nourish may turn around bite you too. How surprising.
But I’m not going to recount all that history. Grab a copy of Abe Osheroff’s award winning documentary, “Dreams and Nightmares.” Not only is the movie amazing, it features pretty rare footage ingeniously finagled out of the CIA and Pentagon by Abe. Amazing how much they’ll cough up if you tell them you’re making a film called "The Shield Against Communism: The North Atlantic Treaty Organization."
I’m thinking about Abe today, amidst all the pompous celebration of war thinly disguised as "memorial day." You know the name’s a misnomer because a true memorial day would almost necessarily be anti-war. Veterans are both perpetrators and victims of war and, as first-hand witnesses, would play a crucial role in a true national accounting and soul-searching about war and what it really means, why it was really fought, who paid the price and who benefited from the oft-accompanying plunder. Consequently, veterans are perhaps the most-managed constituency: barraged by speeches, crocodile tears, ugly monuments, garish parades and what-not.
Abe is one of those people who should have already died in about 83 different incidents. His ship to Spain was sunk by fascists two miles from shore -- so he swam to Spain. “I was baptized,” he says of the incident. His life is a history of just causes and near-deaths. His car was firebombed in Mississippi during Freedom Summer. Carpenter by trade, he went to Nicaragua in the 1980s to build houses for the poor while their elected government, the Sandinistas, battled terrorists funded by us.
But, miraculously, Abe Osheroff is now 89 years old and very much alive. I met him a few years ago. To say that it was a moving experience would be quite an understatement. There was the movie which I can’t recount -- you really just have to watch it. Anyway, I bawl through it every time I try to watch it from beginning to end so any review by me would probably be incomplete. No matter how many things one reads, it’s sometimes hard to believe that Spain in 1937 existed. The international effort for Spanish freedom was one of the most noble and most tragic moments in modern history and the generation that rallied around Spain may well be the greatest generation. And here was a flesh and blood person talking about it, as he saw it and felt it. You know, maybe it did all happen, maybe it is true and not just some embellished myth.
And let me say clearly, I do now about the sordid side of that history -- the sectarian fratricide, the short-sighted and sometimes criminal stupidity of some who fought on the Republican side, the leaders who sought to use “la causa” to entrench themselves further in power. None of that changes the awesomeness of the realization that tens of thousands of people around the world voluntarily left behind their homes, their families and their lives to bleed and to die for freedom in a far away country. Not for a flag or a medal, not for the promise of glory or plunder and not to kill heathens and go to heaven.
Perhaps the most wonderful part of meeting Abe all was that I found myself vehemently disagreeing with his take on the left’s response to 9-11. Abe’s no old furniture to be occasionally dusted and annually memorialized. The man is the epitome of alive. He’s not just going to tell you some cool stories from the past, instead he has strong opinions about the world around him -- as he always did.
He meant to live and he still does. When he talks to the younger generation, he never blabbers about “sacrifice” -- instead he talks about the incredible rewarding life of a social activist that he led.
Thus marches on Abe Osheroff, a humble Jewish carpenter with the strength to die for his beliefs.
Posted by zeynep at May 31, 2004 04:23 PM
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Comments
Thanks for the post. I saw a group of Abraham Lincoln Brigade vets at the last big antiwar demo in New York (on the 1 yr anniversary of the Iraq war) and I immediately ran over to shake their hands
Posted by: Karin at June 1, 2004 10:21 AM
OK--so what IS his take on the left's response to Sept 11???
I was the generation after his (I was born during WWII), and I knew the Spanish civil war was SO important, but for a long time knew little about it except from Hemingway. Then I learned about people like Abe Osheroff. I have great respect for the "Old Leftists" views on the "New Left" (me in the 60's) and any "left" or so-called "left" that resurrects itself since then.
I've got to get that movie!!!
Posted by: LESLIE at June 1, 2004 01:55 PM
People have been asking what Abe's take was so I'll try to remember it best I can and recount it to the best of my ability. I do want to see if there is a transcript of the talk -- I wouldn't want to misrepresent his views.
Posted by: zeynep at June 4, 2004 01:15 AM