PUNCHED AGAIN

It was in Spain that I learned that one can be right and yet be beaten, that force can vanquish spirit, that there are times when courage is not its own reward. It is this, doubtless, which explains why so many men the world over regarded the Spanish drama as a personal tragedy. – Albert Camus

Heart of Spain: Robert Capa’s Photographs of the Spanish Civil War, a collection of photographs, negatives, essays, poems, contemporary newspaper cuttings and historical ephemera, has been dear to me ever since I bought it about ten years ago. Even now, I thumb through with trepidation, deeming it far too delicate an item to sully with my clumsy paws.

Capa, the presidential-handsome Hungarian exile who sided with the beleaguered Spanish Republic became renowned and discussed in photography classes for his ‘Falling Soldier’ shot, but that was not the bulk of his work. His photographs from this period encapsulate the popular memory of this period: the euphoria of revolutionary Barcelona, the enthusiasm of the undertrained worker’s militias fighting fascism, the siege of Madrid and the volunteers of the International Brigades, who came in their thousands from 53 different countries to defend democracy - and for whom Capa held an intimate affinity.

Despite this, some of the most poignant images are those of defeat, as fascist victory drove hundreds of thousands of proud Spanish democrats from their homeland and over the Pyrenees. This particular photograph of a Spanish refugee, cello in hand, is particularly striking. The exhaustion of the broken Spanish people is absolutely written across the man’s crumpled face. The other refugees in the background are obscured, though the cellist’s expression is as oblique, his looks placed appropriately for an unknown future. With or without context, this is such a deeply distressing image.

in this picture: French Jewish Communists, liberated from Auschwitz, holding a banner they secretly made in the camp. Obscured from the picture is the infamous Arbeit Macht Frei sign.

I wrote an article about the resistance inside Auschwitz:

In summer 1944, Antonia Lehr and two of her friends were deported from Vienna to Auschwitz concentration camp. Posing as a foreign worker recently married to an Austrian, Lehr was in reality a Viennese Jew and a seasoned communist militant, specialising in exceptionally dangerous propaganda work amongst German soldiers in Paris, her two companions Communist underground activists. They had collectively received the death sentence for organising Austrian anti-fascists, the deportation a mere stop to liquidation. As national traitors, they considered themselves finished.

However, moving to Ravensbrück – a women’s camp with a high proportion of condemned political inmates, and the intended final destination for them – communication from the Auschwitz resistance organisation informed the Ravensbrück resistance of their special status as seditious Jewish communists and created false identities for them, successfully ‘vanishing’ them from the camp.

Antonia Lehr and her comrades were saved not by chance but as a result of the rigorous underground developed from the camp’s beginning. This experience, unusual within a general context of the Holocaust, is far from exceptional when studying the history of the anti-fascist movement operating behind stacheldraht. Written with the seventieth anniversary of Auschwitz’s liberation in mind and the ensuing commemorations, this article hopes to depict and discuss the political struggle within Auschwitz and to salvage the legacy of organised resistance, an important aspect of l’univers concentrationnaire that shall be no doubt ignored in faux-universalist politician-speak by humanitarians of dubious standing.

"It erases Shiite-Sunni division": #Baghdad filled with joy after win over #Iran

from the KKE's 96th anniversary celebrations in 2014

Happy 100th birthday, Ewan MacColl! The rendition of 'Dirty Old Town' yesterday afternoon at FC was electric. Highly fitting too that today it looks like the Greek people are about to reject the EU debt and elect Syriza (as well as raise the vote of the 'hardine' Communist Party higher than the traitorous social democrats).

photograph of Ewan MacColl from MI5 documents (from great article here)

with Peggy Seeger