The echo is where Peter O'Brien 2019

William Krehm
“… oh … ah … yes …” These are the smiling words of Bill Krehm, 105, as I showed him pages from this
project. I’ve known Bill for about eight years. I talked with him at the Toronto General Hospital at the end of
December 2018 – he was there with a touch of pneumonia.
In 1937 Bill drank coffee and talked with George Orwell in the cafes of Barcelona, and in 1940 he stood
guard over the corpse of Leon Trotsky at his funeral. Trotsky’s secretary had asked Bill, a strapping Trotskyite
who had recently moved to Mexico City, to take on the task, fearing that even thought Trotsky had been
dispatched, someone might still try to defile the body. In Cahiers Léon Trotsky, Charles Andrew Orr writes:
“Bill Krehm était un intellectuel qui adorait James Joyce. Il essayait d’apprendre l’espagnol, mais, trop
perfectionniste, n’osait sortir un mot dans cette langue avant d’en avoir maîtrisé la grammaire.” It’s not
surprising that Bill wanted to learn the grammar first. I asked him about his languages and he mentioned
Catalan, French, German, Latin, Spanish, Yiddish … “and I speak Italian, and have a bit of Chinese.”
Bill crunched on ice as we talked about Joyce: “… you will have your preferences and I will have my
preferences – then we will compare our preferences, and if they are not the same, well, what the hell! … we
release what we are engaged in … inspired … you will adapt to what we’re doing … northern France has
always been more democratic than southern France … a jumble of languages … we can do this …”
A young nurse, Jessica, came by to give Bill a full-body sponge bath. She asked what his secret was for such a
long life. “I ain’t got none,” he said with a wink. Bill left the hospital two days later to get back to the books and
music that were waiting for him at home.
~
William Krehm was born in Toronto on 24 November 1913. He attended the University of Toronto,
quit when he ran out of money, and then moved to New York City. The stock market crash of 1929 had
convinced him of the merits of Marxism and then Trotskyism. He joined the Partido Obrero de Unificación
Marxista (POUM) as a propagandist during the Spanish Civil War, and was in the same unit as George Orwell.
Bill has written books in Spanish and English, and in the 1980s he co-founded the Committee on Monetary and
Economic Reform.