JOURNAL OF THE IRISH LABOUR HISTORY SOCIETY

58SAOTHAR 13tional Brigades was in itself an appropriate riposte tothe racism of the fascist forces they were confronting.But the 'national question' could occasionally posedifficulties within the Brigades themselves. JosephDonnelly's Memoir quotes from Peter O'Connor'sdiary record of the January 1937 meeting which resultedin 45 Irish volunteers switching battalions. AsO'Connor describes it, 'At that meeting Charlie Donnelly,Johnny Power and myself fought very hard to be'sent to the British Battalion. The main reason given bythose who were for going to the Americans was becauseof the wrongs done to the Irish by the English in the past... It was an understandable, historical but politicalmistake that the vote went against us by such a smallmajority - five votes'.As editor of the Book of the XV Brigade in 1938Frank Ryan ensured that the distinct national contributionof the Irish was appropriately honoured at the timein Spain itself. The book was sub-titled Records of theBritish, American, Canadian, Irish Volunteers. Thecontribution of another nationality was honoured in theSpanish Republic when The Jewish Volunteers forLiberty was published with an introduction by theInspector General of the International Brigades. Jewishvolunteers in Spain numbered 7,000, or a sixth of thetotal International Brigades, the largest single nationalcontribution. And Al Prago rightly includes his ownpioneering research on this contribution in the OurFight anthology, complementing the other nationaltributes which he has included as editor.One such Jewish volunteer, Maurice Levine, hastold his story in Cheetham to Cordova - A ManchesterMan of the Thirties. The son of immigrants who hadfled to Manchester from the Tsarist pogroms in theirnative Lithuania, Levine provides a very colourfulaccount of both immigrant and working class life in thatcity. When the Communist Party, of which he was amember, asked for volunteers for Spain, Levine readilywent in 1936. His account of that war in many waysparallels that of Joe Monks since they fought in thesame engagements in Andalusia.Levine's memoir contains a previously unpublishedaccount of an incident which would be of particularinterest to Irish readers. The commander of theBritish anti-fascists, George Nathan, was recognisedby some of the Irish as a former Black-and-Tan whowas believed to have been involved in the murder inMarch 1921 of the Mayor and ex-Mayor of Limerick.Levine recounts, 'At Madrigueras, Ryan and the otherIrishmen put Nathan on trial for his life, charging himwith being a spy for the Franco forces ... Nathan haddenied the charge and said he had come to Spainbecause he was anti-Fascist ... 'If you want to shoot mefor what happened in Ireland, all right, but I was underorders', ... They eventually accepted his explanationand deleted all references to the past'.Jce Monks had only the warmest of memories ofN athan in Spain and recalls his address to the 43-strongIrish unit which he had formed within the BritishCompany 'Feeling that he was now a Socialist, and abrother in arms to fellow Socialists who not long' agohad been just Nationalists, Nathan referred to the fact.that he had served in Ireland with the Crown forces. Hespecified that he had been with military intelligence inCounty Limerick. His exact words were:- 'We have allgrown up, politically . We are Socialists together now' .The meeting responded to the spirit of his speech andclapped him' .And indeed there cannot have been a more sinceretribute paid to him than that of Frank Edwards whorecalled, 'Nathan was a brave soldier, no matter what issaid or may be suspected of him. He was killed, stillrallying his men in that devil-may-care manner of his,in the Brunete salient north of Madrid, in July 1937'.2Maurice Levitas was a Dublin-born Jewish volunteerwhose father, an immigrant from Lithuania, hadbeen active in the Tailors' and Pressers' Union, commonlyreferred to in Dublin as 'the Jewish Union'. Thestory of Levitas' capture with, among others, FrankRyan and fellow-Dubliner Bob Doyle, as well as theirsubsequent imprisonment in the fascist concentrationcamp of San Pedro de Cardena, is among the individualaccounts detailed by their American fellow-prisonerCarl Geiser in Prisoners of the Good Fight. This bookis indeed a remarkable achievement. Almost fifty yearsafter that War the author tracked down as many survivorsas possible from among Franco's InternationalBrigade prisoners and meticulously chronicled theconflict that went on off the battlefields as anti-fascistprisoners resisted every effort to crush them spirituallyand often physically. New testimony as to Ryan'sbravery under such conditions as well as previouslyunpublished accounts of Dubliners such as Levitas andDoyle are of course of particular interest to the Irishreader.An American-Jewish prisoner who played a keyrole as Ryan's interpreter at the time of capture was thelate Max Parker. This is not the place to provide adetailed musical appreciation of Max Parker's powerfulrendition of an international repetoire of prisoners'songs from San Pedro de Cardena, which he recordedin 1982 when he was 70 years of age under the title AlTocar Diana. The record, however, also contains anarrative in which Parker reminisces about his experi-. ences of fighting fascism in Spain, as well as an accompanyingpamphlet in which these reminiscences areexpanded in greater detail. His particular admirationfor the inspiration which Frank Ryan gave to his fellowprisonersis again noteworthy. But Max Parker performedanother service to the history of Irish antifascistsin Spain when he recorded, to the air of 'O'Donnel!Abu~, an anthem of the Irish prisoners which wasotherwise either subsequently forgotten by those whosurvived or remained but a dim memory, 'The Con·