Wendorf, Paul

Paul Wendorf graduated with a B.A. from Columbia University, where he majored in history and economics, in 1932. In 1933, while working as an organizer for the American League against War and Fascism, he joined the Communist Party. Over the course of the next three years, he worked as an activist and labor organizer in New York City, first for a white-collar municipal workers' union, and subsequently as a coordinator of welfare and relief for the unemployed. He married Leona Grossman and soon after enlisted in the Abraham Lincoln Brigade to fight on behalf of the Republican forces in Spain. He sailed on the S.S. Paris on February 6, 1937 and served in Spain from February 1937 until August 1938.

He fought in the battle at the Jarama front from March to June 1937, and in the Brunete offensive from July until August 1937. He was appointed in September 1937 to the Historical Commission in Albacete and, under the supervision of Sandor Voros, participated in writing the history of the 15th International Brigade and the American battalions. He also contributed articles to the Brigade's newspaper the Volunteer for Liberty . In January of 1938 he was charged, along with Carl Geiser, with organizing a school for political commissars. A bout of rheumatism and subsequent hospitalization prevented him from carrying out this assignment, and by March, he was returned to active service. He took part in the Ebro offensive, the Brigade's final conflict, and crossed the Ebro with the Lincoln Brigade late in July. On August 18, 1938, Wendorf was killed during an aerial attack in the Sierra Pandols, only one month prior to the withdrawal of the International Brigades. In 1939 Charles Nusser, a fellow Lincoln Brigade veteran and Wendorf's friend, married Leona Grossman Wendorf.

From the guide to the Paul Wendorf Papers, Feb 1937-Sep 1938, (Tamiment Library / Wagner Archives)