John Gerassi oral history collection, 1980.

ArchivalResource

John Gerassi oral history collection, 1980.

This collection contains 227 audiocassettes consisting of 89 separate interviews with individual veterans. The average taping session was 7 hours and there are multiple tapes associated with most of the interviews. The interviews cover the following topics: family background and political affiliations, their motivations for joining the International Brigades, experiences and impressions of Spain, instances of discrimination and harassment during WWII and subsequently during the McCarthy era. Included are oral history interviews with the following individuals: Bill Bailey, Alvah Bessie, Robert Colodny, Archie Brown, Walter Dent, Milt Felsen, Moe Fishman, John Gates, Carl Geiser, Robert Gladnick, Irving Goff, Syd Harris, Ocsar Hunter, Admiral Kilpatrick, Edward Lending, Vincent Lossowski, Carl Marzani, John Murra, Steve Nelson, Lou Ornitz, Rosario Pistone, Herman Rosenstein (a.k.a. Gabby Klein), Walter Scheutrum, Morris Stamm, Robert Steck, George Watt, Irving Weissman, and Milton Wolff. Although the oral history interviews were chiefly conducted with combat veterans, there are also several interviews with women who like Salaria Kee O'Reilly, Nan Green, and Rose Wachsman Sorkin, who served in the medical units or, in the lone case of Evelyn Hutchins, as a driver. The collection also includes three tapes with spoken research notes that Gerassi recorded during his visits to libraries and archives at Brandies University, Cleveland University, and the Toronto Public Library, as well as a tape of the Veteran's of the Abraham Lincoln Brigade 43rd Anniversary event honoring African-American volunteers. An additional tape documents Gerassi's contract with Ray Villis, his principal interviewer on the project.

227 sound cassettes.

Information

SNAC Resource ID: 7586574

Churchill County Museum

Related Entities

There are 38 Entities related to this resource.

Medical Bureau and North American Committee to Aid Spanish Democracy

http://n2t.net/ark:/99166/w6dn88w3 (corporateBody)

Hutchins, Evelyn, 1910-1982.

http://n2t.net/ark:/99166/w64k01kz (person)

Wolff, Milton

http://n2t.net/ark:/99166/w6rb7jmf (person)

Milton (Milt) Wolff (1915-2008) was born in Brooklyn, NY to a working-class family. He left school at fifteen and worked in the New Deal 's Civilian Conservation Corps, 1933-1934. He later found work in a Manhattan garment factory and became politically active through membership in the Young Communist League. When the Civil War broke out in Spain he responded to a YCL appeal for volunteers and sailed for Europe, aged 21, in March 1937. He initially served as a medic and then saw act...

Hunter, Oscar.

http://n2t.net/ark:/99166/w63k13c5 (person)

Felsen, Milt, 1912-2005

http://n2t.net/ark:/99166/w68705tj (person)

Goff, Irving, 1911-1989

http://n2t.net/ark:/99166/w62n63fb (person)

Irving Goff (1911 - 17 May 1989) was a member of the Communist Party USA and the Abraham Lincoln Battalion, a unit that volunteered to fight during the Spanish Civil War for the Popular Front. During World War II, he was a member of the American Office of Strategic Services, and was instrumental in setting up guerrilla units working behind enemy lines in North Africa and Italy. His exploits as a guerrilla in Spain are considered to be the inspiration for Ernest Hemingway's novel For Whom the Bel...

Bessie, Alvah Cecil, 1904-1985

http://n2t.net/ark:/99166/w61v5cp5 (person)

Alvah Bessie (1904-1985) was an author and screenwriter who fought with the Abraham Lincoln Brigade in Spain, and was later blacklisted as one of the "Hollywood Ten" cited for contempt of Congress for refusing to answer questions at the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) hearings on the influence of the Communist Party in the motion-picture industry. From the description of Papers, 1937-1991 (bulk 1936-1939, 1967-1985). (New York University). WorldCat record id: 476413154 ...

Fishman, Moses, 1916-

http://n2t.net/ark:/99166/w6xw50kp (person)

Spain. Ejército Popular de la República. Abraham Lincoln Battalion.

http://n2t.net/ark:/99166/w6j460h5 (corporateBody)

Veterans of the Abraham Lincoln Brigade

http://n2t.net/ark:/99166/w6c57872 (corporateBody)

VALB was formed in December 1937 by U.S. volunteers returning from combat in the Spanish Civil War. VALB originally assisted wounded veterans and sought to awaken the U.S. public to the significance of the Spanish Civil War and the Loyalist cause. In later years, VALB began to address other political issues, including U.S. policy in World War II and later, Cuba, Nicaragua and Vietnam. In addition to their headquarters in New York City, VALB "Posts" developed in various cities including Los Angel...

Gerassi, John.

http://n2t.net/ark:/99166/w6q854pm (person)

Journalist and scholar John ("Tito") Gerassi was born in France in July 1931, to Fernando Gerassi, a Turkish-born artist of Sephardic Jewish heritage, and Ukranian born Stepha Awdykowicz. Moving between Barcelona and Paris, the couple belonged to the cosmopolitan circle of artists and intellectuals who congregated in cafes to argue art and politics, and counted Jean-Paul Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir as close friends. When civil war broke out in Spain in 1936, Gerassi joined the Loy...

Stamm, Morris.

http://n2t.net/ark:/99166/w6rz0cnc (person)

Spain. Ejército Popular de la República. MacKenzie-Papineau Battalion.

http://n2t.net/ark:/99166/w6cg6x5r (corporateBody)

Brown, Archie, 1911-1990.

http://n2t.net/ark:/99166/w6zk6ckt (person)

Archie Brown (1911-1990), San Francisco waterfront unionist, Communist Party organizer, and active member of the Bay Area Post of the Veterans of the Abraham Lincoln Brigade, fought with the Abraham Lincoln Brigade in Spain and participated in the Battle of the Bulge during WWII. He served on the Executive Board of the International Longshoremens and Warehousemens Union, Local 10, was prosecuted under the Landrum-Griffin Act barring Communists from serving as elected union officials, and won a S...

Ornitz, Lou

http://n2t.net/ark:/99166/w6tj69s3 (person)

Murra, John V.

http://n2t.net/ark:/99166/w6tf18dt (person)

Ferraro, Chantal.

http://n2t.net/ark:/99166/w60s7d1t (person)

Spain. Ejército Popular de la República. Brigada Internacional, XV.

http://n2t.net/ark:/99166/w67157fz (corporateBody)

Gladnick, Robert.

http://n2t.net/ark:/99166/w68d2dwt (person)

Nelson, Steve, 1903-1993

http://n2t.net/ark:/99166/w6fj2x26 (person)

Steve Nelson was born Stjepan Mesaroš in Croatia, and emigrated to the United States with his family after World War I. He was a labor activist and organizer, Communist Party official, Political Commissar in the Abraham Lincoln Brigade, and National Commander of the Veterans of the Abraham Lincoln Brigade (VALB). During his time in Spain he took part in the Brunete offensive, as well as the battles of Quinto and Belchite. He was wounded at Belchite, and then was recalled to the United States by...

Rosenstein, Herman, 1915-

http://n2t.net/ark:/99166/w65b7rk6 (person)

Herman Rosenstein was born in 1915, son of a garment worker and the youngest of five children. During the Depression Rosenstein worked as a bookkeeper for the William Morris Agency in New York City. He came into political awareness at a time when the threat of Nazism was making itself felt even in his Jewish neighborhood in the borough of Queens, New York. But when Rosenstein declared that he was going to Spain to join the antifascists in the International Brigades, his mother tried...

Scheutrum, Walter.

http://n2t.net/ark:/99166/w6g52dsx (person)

Dent, Walter

http://n2t.net/ark:/99166/w6z9733v (person)

Steck, Robert

http://n2t.net/ark:/99166/w63x8nfs (person)

Robert Steck was born in 1912 in Rock Island, Illinois. One of five brothers, he inherited a keen awareness of society's injustices from his father, a fruit and vegetable wholesaler and member of the Freethinking Society, leading Steck to a lifelong commitment to public service and political activism. While attending St. Ambrose College in Iowa, Steck discovered the theater and, after a stint as a truck driver for his father's business, landed in New York City, where he worked on the staff of Ne...

Pistone, Rosario

http://n2t.net/ark:/99166/w6s25sj7 (person)

Lossowski, Vincent, 1914-1984.

http://n2t.net/ark:/99166/w6155hrt (person)

Vincent Lossowski (1914-1984) was born and raised in Rochester, New York, into a Polish working class family. As a young man, he served in an artillery unit with the United States Army's Coast and Harbor Defenses in Panama. He returned to Rochester, worked as a machinist, and, in 1936, became active in the Young Communist League. A newsreel graphically depicting the fascist bombing of Madrid incited Lossowski to join the International Brigades to defend of the Spanish Republic. He s...

Bailey, Bill

http://n2t.net/ark:/99166/w6rn5344 (person)

Longshoremen activist. From the description of Bill Bailey oral history transcripts and related papers, [ca. 1970-1978]. (University of California, Berkeley). WorldCat record id: 233004149 ...

Harris, Sydney, 1916-

http://n2t.net/ark:/99166/w6km724k (person)

Kee, Salaria, 1917-1990

http://n2t.net/ark:/99166/w68b1vvp (person)

Salaria Kea O'Reilly (b. July 13 1917, Milledgeville, GA–d. May 18, 1990, Akron, OH) was an American nurse and desegregation activist who volunteered in both the Spanish Civil War and the Second World War. During the Spanish Civil War she was the only African American nurse working in the Abraham Lincoln Battalion....

Weissman, Irving, 1913-1998.

http://n2t.net/ark:/99166/w6p563gj (person)

Irving Weissman (1913-1998) grew up in a Polish-Jewish immigrant family in New York City. In the early 1930s Weissman attended City College of New York for one year studying English literature and history. He quit school to work in a factory and help support his family. Weissman was a member of the Young Communist League and was active in the Fur and Leather Workers and the United Electrical Workers Unions. He participated in actions of unemployed and laid-off workers during the Dep...

Watt, George, 1913-1994

http://n2t.net/ark:/99166/w65h7x1t (person)

From an early age, George Watt (b. 1913) was involved in Communist activities, serving as executive secretary of the Communist National Student League. From 1937-1939, he was a political commissar in the Abraham Lincoln Brigade during the Spanish Civil War. Watt later served as a sergeant in the Army Air Force during World War II. After the war, Watt became an official of the American Communist Party. He was one of a group of party officers convicted of sedition in 1953 ...

Colodny, Robert Garland

http://n2t.net/ark:/99166/w65t51hp (person)

Robert Colodny (1915-1997) fought with the Abraham Lincoln Brigade in the Spanish Civil War. He returned to the U.S. in 1938 with a severe head injury. After his recovery Colodny served in the U.S. Army in Alaska during World War II. Colodny received his Ph.D. in history and philosophy in 1950 and joined the faculty of the University of Pittsburgh in 1959. In 1961, a Pennsylvania State representative accused Colodny of being a Communist sympathizer, jeopardizing his faculty position at the Unive...

Marzani, Carla

http://n2t.net/ark:/99166/w6k935r8 (person)

Carl Marzani (1912-1994), an Italian-American immigrant radical, was a writer, editor, publisher, and also produced political documentary films. During the late 1930s he received a degree at Oxford University, joined the anarchist Durruti Column during the Spanish Civil War to fight against the fascists, hitch-hiked around the world with his first wife, Edith, and then served briefly as a Communist Party, USA, organizer on New York City's Lower East Side. During World War II, he worked in the Un...

Gates, John, 1913-1992

http://n2t.net/ark:/99166/w6vh69fk (person)

Kilpatrick, Admiral

http://n2t.net/ark:/99166/w6gj7798 (person)

Green, Nancy W.

http://n2t.net/ark:/99166/w6543d36 (person)

Villis, Ray

http://n2t.net/ark:/99166/w6715qx1 (person)

Lending, Edward Isaac, 1912-2003.

http://n2t.net/ark:/99166/w6dv2038 (person)

Edward Isaac Lending (1912-2003) fought with the International Brigades in Spain and later served in the United States Army during World War II. From the description of Papers, 1937-1995 (bulk 1978-1995). (New York University). WorldCat record id: 476060327 Isaac Edward Lending was born March 24, 1912 and raised in the Bronx. His father, who ran a textile trimmings business, was a religious Jew and early member of the Zionist Organization of America. As a young ...