Hilda Bell Roberts was born Hilda Bell in Philadelphia in 1915, graduating from the Jewish Hospital School of Nursing in 1937. She went to Spain in May of 1937 as a volunteer nurse with the Medical Bureau to Aid Spanish Democracy, sailing on the S.S. Normandie. In Spain she worked as a staff nurse in the operating room at the Universidad Hospital and the Cruz Roja Hospital in Murcia before transferring to the Aragon front. There she traveled with the autochir, a mobile hospital that set up surgical units in a variety of temporary locations, including an unused railway tunnel, a nut factory, and a mansion. Bell was evacuated from Spain in December 1938 along with other International Brigade volunteers.
Bell served in World War II as a U.S. Army nurse in Australia and New Guinea. A nurse throughout her life, Bell also taught psychiatric nursing in San Francisco. She remained active in a range of social causes, including the anti-nuclear and ecology movements. She traveled to Nicaragua in 1986 with the Elders for Survival and participated in a weekly vigil to oppose Israel's occupation of the West Bank and Gaza. Bell returned to Spain with other International Brigades veterans in 1996.
Bell married in 1945, changing her name to Hilda Bell Kirk, and remarried in 1965, becoming Hilda Bell Roberts. She had one son by her first marriage, and two stepsons.
From the guide to the Hilda Bell Roberts Papers, 1937; 1952, (Tamiment Library / Wagner Archives)
