Art
in the Struggle for Freedom
SEIU
Local 49
3536 SE
26th Ave., 233-9525
7 pm Friday,
Oct. 13
Donations
accepted
One of the Osheroff
films, 1974's Dreams and Nightmares, won prizes at
film festivals across Europe and the United States. His
new film, Art in the Struggle for Freedom, focuses
on the heart-tearing poetry and astoundingly dynamic poster
art produced by Republicans during the war in Spain.
There must have been a moment when Abe Osheroff wondered.
The young radical's heart may have seethed with righteous
fire. He may have been ready to take a bullet in the name
of liberty, equality and fraternity. There he was, though,
swimming for his life toward the coast of a country not
his own, fleeing the wreckage of a ship just shredded by
a missile of exploding German steel. He had never seen war
before, and already people around him were dying, drowning,
splashing desperately towards the Spanish coast.
In hell's name, what was he doing there?
It was 1937. Osheroff was 21, a veteran of the vitriolic
labor fights of the American Depression. The boat--now a
wreck slipping into the Mediterranean--sailed from the south
of France for Barcelona. Osheroff and the other men on the
boat were bound for Spain to fight in a war, unexpected
walk-ons in an epic of fire, death and idealism many of
them hoped could alter the course of history.
Spain had transformed from a kingdom to a republic, and
that republic had upset the country's vested powers: landed
aristocrats, conservative army officers and Church hierarchs
whose hands were often as red as their robes. A coalition
of Communists, Socialists and reformers took power, and
the army rebelled under the leadership of Francisco Franco.
Beaten by popular resistance in the early days of the ensuing
civil war, Franco turned to sympathetic Nazi Germany and
Fascist Italy for men, planes and arms. Democratic governments
remained neutral, though the corporations based on their
soil didn't skimp in their affections for Franco. On their
own, people like Osheroff scrambled to Spain to
volunteer for the
republic's improvised army.
"When the war in Spain started, it was no great shock,"
Osheroff says now. "From the moment Hitler came to power,
I hated him, but I couldn't do a fuckin' thing about it.
But when I saw the war in Spain change from a civil war
into an international war, that's when I knew I had to go.
I was 21, I was young and I had a gorgeous-lookin' girlfriend,
so it wasn't the easiest decision, but I decided that if
I didn't go, I'd feel guilty about it for the rest of my
life. So I went."
So, too, did some 3,000 other Americans, who formed the
famed Abraham Lincoln Brigade and also marched with other
International Brigades on the Republican side. Of those
3,000, about 800 died in Spain; according to Osheroff, just
120 are still alive. Three of them--Osheroff, still crackling
like brushfire in Seattle, Corvallis' Carl Geiser and Bob
Reed, another Seattle vet--will speak at a local union hall
this Friday, as will Virginia Malbin, a Portland woman who
worked to funnel humanitarian aid into the shattered republic
and help the refugees flooding before the Fascist advance.
"We are a dying and irreplaceable breed," Osheroff says.
"If they want to preserve us, they're going to have to stuff
one of us and put us in the Smithsonian."
A pair of films by Osheroff--who is quick to point out
that he's a carpenter, not a filmmaker, by trade--anchor
an evening of discussion about a historical epoch that still
fires romantic passion, not to mention sectarian finger-pointing
by various left-wing factions. And while the particular
politics of the war, which often degenerated into murky
squabbles within the Republican side, are long since obsolete,
Osheroff and Malbin both say the events of '30s Spain remain
relevant to generations of Americans who are typically unacquainted
with this history.
"It was not simply another war," Malbin says. "It was a
confrontation with the most reactionary and frightening
countries on earth at that time.
"You have this new republic, this practically feudal country,
trying to fight, and literally hundreds of thousands of
people who supported the government they had voted for fleeing
for their lives. These days, we're accustomed to large refugee
problems, but this was really the first time something like
this had ever happened on this scale."
The Spanish war was, indeed, an arena for innovations in
the field of warfare, as Germany took the opportunity to
test some new theories of combat that included saturation
bombing of civilian settlements. Meanwhile, the most passionate
and idealistic supporters of the republic continued to try
to build the new, humane and progressive culture they envisioned
for the stillborn democracy.
"The most striking incident I recall happened in Valencia,"
says Malbin. "Pablo Casals, the great cellist, was giving
a concert in the Opera House. And the hall was full, because
this is a glorious occasion, to hear Pablo Casals play.
As we sat there in the hall, the air raid sirens went off,
meaning that bombers were coming in to attack the port.
They'd bomb any ship that was in the harbor. We all heard
the air raid sirens. As they went off, Casals didn't stop
playing, not for a second. In those 2,000 people who were
there to hear him, not a single person stood up. Not a single
person left. We sat and listened to him play. And as it
happened, the Opera House wasn't hit that day, but an area
about half a mile away was. I think it was one of the most
fortunate experiences of my life to be there in that hall
that day. It was an act of defiance that I think symbolized
the whole war.
"In Barcelona, people would stand in the middle of the
streets and shake their fists at German and Italian bombers
as they flew over. Now, that seems like kind of a futile
gesture. But you have to understand that this was the first
experience they'd ever had with being in charge of their
own affairs, and this was their way of saying they weren't
giving that up without a fight."
Osheroff survived a wound in Spain to fight in World War
II, agitate for civil rights in Mississippi in the '60s,
build peasant housing in Nicaragua in the '80s and tirelessly
address high-school and college kids in the '90s. While
few people can be expected to put together that kind of
untouchable activist résumé, he says the example
of the International Brigades should still inspire action.
"There were some unique aspects to the Abraham Lincoln
Brigade," he says. "First, we were a completely desegregated
unit. Blacks and whites fought alongside each other. When
I fought again in World War II, the U.S. Army was segregated.
So there was that. And then there's the fact that there
are rare occasions in this world when people will actually
put their asses on the line for principle. It doesn't happen
very often, but I have seen it a few times, and one of those
times was in Spain."
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