Overview

Jewish volunteers made up almost one-third of the Abraham Lincoln Brigade (ALB) during the Spanish Civil War. Most belonged to a Communist Party focused on the antifascist goals of the Popular Front and faithful to the internationalist idea of erasing ethnicity, including Jewish ethnicity. Joseph Butwin's oral history presents conversations with ten Jewish veterans of the ALB. Recorded from 1992–94 in the wake of European communism's collapse, the interviews explore the milieus that formed the volunteers. Immigrants established the secular Yiddish-speaking socialism that became a part of many Jewish American communities. Their children, reacting to economic depression and the rise of fascism, enlisted in the ALB. Butwin follows their stories from their youthful motives and choices through their lives as Jews and leftists, and records the reckonings that took place as they reflected on their past. Insightful and revealing, Salud y Shalom explores the forces of identity and history that led young Jewish leftists to fight fascism.

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9780252088629

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Reviews

"""A unique account of Jewish identity amid social and political pressures to assimilate or deny heritage and tradition. The interviewees discuss what it meant to be a Jew in the global context of the 1930s--in America and Spain, and in the contentious scheme of world politics that culminated in World War II.""--Peter N. Carroll, author of The Odyssey of the Abraham Lincoln Brigade: Americans in the Spanish Civil War"

Author Information

Joseph Butwin is an associate professor emeritus of English and Jewish studies at the University of Washington. He is the coauthor of Sholom Aleichem (1977).

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