Re: Communists in concentration camps

[Chris Brady <cdbrady@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Prisoners of the Good Fight
The Spanish Civil War 1936-1939:
Americans Against Franco Fascism
 by Carl Geiser
(Westport, Conn.: Lawrence Hill & Co., 1986).
The account of POWs from the Lincoln Battalion incarcerated in the San
Pedro de Cardeña concentration camp as told by the top-ranking officer
to get out alive.  Using organization and discipline, the prisoners
overcame petty party rivalries to form a united front in the face of
their fascist jailers.  They never let on that Carl Geiser was an
officer, or that he was also a commissar for the Mackenzie-Papineau
Battalion.  He would have been liquidated.  Solidarity was their key to
survival.  They set up their own hospital in the camp, began a newspaper
called the Jaily News, held classes on a wide range of subjects, made
chess sets out of all sorts of stuff, made decks of cards, put together
singing groups (it occured to me while reading this that song used to be
much more a part of everyday life than it is today), found ways to
maintain hygeine for all, etc..  It may seem a tad altruistic today,
though, eh?  Or maybe there is a message in such stories?