[PEN-L:544] Lincoln Brigade Is Honored

["Frank Durgin" <fdurgin1@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

        The New York Times
        October 16, 1998


        SEATTLE JOURNAL

        60 Years After Spain, Lincoln Brigade Is Honored



        By SAM HOWE VERHOVEK

            EATTLE -- More than 60 years after they took up arms against
the fascists in Spain, for
            which Hemingway romanticized them and F.B.I. files blacklisted
them, members of the
        Abraham Lincoln Brigade have finally been given an official
monument in this country.

        The granite memorial, on the campus of the University of Washington
here, was unveiled on
        Wednesday, with about 20 of the fast-dwindling brigade veterans --
all in their 80's or 90's,
        many with tears in their eyes -- in attendance. The ceremony drew
veterans from as far away
        as New York, who said they hoped the recognition might lead to
movements for memorials in
        other cities.

        "I came 3,000 miles just to see this," said Louis Gordon, 83, a
retired union organizer from
        Kingston, N.Y., sporting a button that said "Stop Franco Terror," a
reference to the general
        against whom the brigade fought in the late 1930's in the Spanish
Civil War. "I feel we're
        finally being recognized for something we did, something we deeply
believe was right."

        The 2,900 American volunteers in Spain, more than a third of whom
died in the fighting,
        rallied to the aid of Spain's elected government against a
rebellion led by Gen. Francisco
        Franco and his rightist forces. Franco was aided by Hitler and
Mussolini and by a policy of
        neutrality adopted by the United States and Britain, which wanted
to avoid a conflict with
        Hitler.

        Brigade veterans thus note proudly that they fought the fascist
threat years before World War
        II, in which many of them also went on to fight, and many trace
their activism onward in a
        straight line that led to the civil-rights struggles of the 1960's
and opposition to the Vietnam
        War.

        But because the brigades were largely organized by Soviet-backed
Communist organizations,
        the American Government used the term "premature anti-fascists" to
describe them, and
        many wound up dogged by harassment into the 1960's that cost them
their jobs and
        passports.

        How the brigade memorial wound up in Seattle is in part a story of
efforts by two brigade
        veterans who live here, Abe Osheroff and Bob Reed, and of a
professor of Spanish and
        Portuguese at the University of Washington, Tony Geist, who lobbied
the university's
        architectural committee for the privately financed memorial.

        But the placement in Seattle is not quite by chance: The city has a
history of labor activism
        dating to the Industrial Workers of the World, the Wobblies. And
Washington was once
        considered so liberal that Franklin D. Roosevelt's campaign manager
jokingly referred to "the
        47 states and the Soviet of Washington."

        Many brigade members -- no one knows how many, though there were at
least 11 from the
        University of Washington -- came from this area, and thus the city
is culturally and
        historically suited for a memorial.

        Brigade veterans have been made honorary citizens by the Parliament
of Spain, and
        memorials to their service can be found throughout Europe. But in
this country, they have
        received no such recognition.

        "I think it was the right thing to do, but we were made to suffer
for it," said Al Gottlieb, 90, a
        former Brooklyn longshoreman, who was wounded by shrapnel twice in
Spain and then lost
        several jobs in the 1950's when F.B.I. agents informed his
employers that he had served in the
        brigade.

        In a small measure of the shifting currents of American history and
memory, the ceremony
        here attracted little attention outside the circle of veterans,
family members and students from
        a Seattle high school who made up the audience of about 300.

        "These people are able to be seen not as communists but as
anti-fascists, which is something
        they just could never do in the 1940's and 1950's," said Peter N.
Carroll, author of "Odyssey of
        the Abraham Lincoln Brigade: Americans in the Spanish Civil War"
(Stanford University
        Press) and chairman of the Abraham Lincoln Brigade Archives at
Brandeis University.

        Julia Newman, a Manhattan producer who is making a documentary
about women who
        served in the brigade, said the fall of the Soviet Union had helped
cast the brigade in a
        different light.

        "The ogre is dead," Ms. Newman said. "There's a general willingness
to look back on that
        time with less harshly judgmental ideas."

        Few veterans seemed embittered by the scorn they endured after the
war, and some even said
        positive experiences came out of it.

        "I was a carpenter and one time an F.B.I. agent came around and
said to my employer, 'Do
        you know this man is a communist?' " Mr. Osheroff said. "And my
boss, to his everliving
        credit, tells the agent, 'Hey, do you know where I can find any
more of those? This guy does
        great work.' "

        Even as they gathered here Wednesday, word spread among the
veterans that one of their
        members, 82-year-old Richard Cloke, had died on Tuesday in Los
Angeles. Those who
        survive said they hoped that the granite memorial, designed by
David Ryan of Oakland and
        with "IViva la Brigada Lincoln!" on a bronze plaque, will stir
interest in a cause that they said
        most Americans seem to know little about.

        "Sometimes I say I fought in the Spanish Civil War and people say,
'Wow, you don't look old
        enough to have gone charging up San Juan Hill' " said Mr. Gordon,
referring to the
        Spanish-American War of 1898.


           Copyright 1998 The New York Times Company