Vincent Londoño

HONS 2011J

Final Essay

Professor Hernández-Ojeda

Hyman Wallach: The Strongest Man in San Pedro by Vincent Londoño

Personal Statement

 

I first found out about Hyman Wallace by chance while looking through the documents in the Abraham Lincoln Brigade’s digital archives. Looking through the letters he had written about his experiences I was amazed when I read about his experiences after his capture by the fascists, and how while imprisoned at the Concentration camp San Pedro de Cardenas, he kept spirits high by taking bets on which nationality of prisoners would be released next, offering to push a coin across the filthy floor of their quarters if he lost, which he never did. Between the betting and his contributions to the “Jaily News”, and his participation in Chess games with the other prisoners, his discussion of his experiences at the camp had a certain defiant positivity to it, as if refusing to succumb to the idea that imprisonment in obscene conditions had to crush one’s spirit. In every representation of life in a Concentration camp, whether in movies or books, they had always seemed to be places utterly devoid of hope, and yet Hyman Wallach seemed to carry it in there with him, and he kept that seed of hope watered and intact, and distributed its fruit out among his fellow prisoners for the duration of his imprisonment. I had never even considered such a thing to be possible, and yet knowing what I know now, it summarizes his attitudes so perfectly. I knew right then that I had to write about him. 

I was lucky in that a couple of substantial letters he wrote had been digitized, which along with a thorough autobiographical entry, provided me ample materials to start with understanding his story. In one of his letters he tells the story of how he was captured by Italian soldiers, and in another he describes his final days of captivity and the circumstances of his release and return to New York. I was also helped greatly by Nancy Wallach, his daughter, who sent me another letter which he wrote to her sister on her second birthday while he fought in World War II, as well as a photo of him at a protest against Franco’s regime after the war had ended. The last and most informative source of information was a video interview I conducted with Ms. Wallach on November 4th, where we discussed in depth both her father, and her own experiences with his legacy. That interview is the source of the bulk of the information in this paper. The result of all these sources was that I was able to piece together a good deal regarding his motivations, his beliefs, and his attitudes not only on his experiences in Spain, but on the global fight against Fascism which followed (and which never truly ended). I was also able to see a bit of the broader vision of the world he envisioned, and what he felt his role was in it: what impact he thought the years of fighting fascism in Spain, in North Africa and in Italy would have, why it all mattered in the end.

I can say with some confidence that it feels like I stumbled across a movie character, someone played by Humphrey Bogart or Cary Grant; or maybe that character somehow found his way off of the screen and into real life. Sometimes a soldier might get caught up in a war against his better judgement, or without fully understanding the conflict and his role in it. Sometimes the bigger picture might not matter to them, and idealism might not play a role in every soldier’s decision to fight either. But the soldiers of the Abraham Lincoln Brigade were truly the real deal: they entered into harm’s way voluntarily, they had the idealism, they knew the historical context, the global implications of the conflict, and they entered into their roles with the bigger picture fixed in their minds: the ultimate goal of defeating Fascism, and Hyman Wallach in particular, seemed to carry the strength of those convictions with him wherever he went, whether into battle, a fascist prison, or back home.

 

The Anti-Fascist Commitment

Hyman Wallach died on Sunday, July 3rd, 1986. Shortly after his funeral, fellow Lincoln Brigade member Vaughn Love, having missed the funeral, sent a letter with a poem attached, which he had wanted to recite. In Vaughn’s poem, he identifies the Abraham Lincoln Brigade as America’s conscience, and he calls Wallach their standard bearer, someone who they depended on for many years. “Hy had the patience of a saint,/ And he was always there./ We could gamble on his wisdom,/ And be assured of his love and care” (Love). Even among the brave veterans of the Lincoln brigade, Hyman Wallach was known for his wisdom, his conviction, and his moral strength. Wallach had not only fought in many crucial battles of the Spanish Civil War, but had also had to endure a harsh and lengthy imprisonment in the Nationalist concentration camp at San Pedro de Cardenas. However, these hardships did not break him, and among his comrades, he was often called “The Strongest man in San Pedro”. Wallach derived his strength from his beliefs; beliefs which carried him through tough times and guided him to fight on behalf of Spain and the world against the forces of oppression. 

When he was still a small child, his Polish family decided to immigrate to the United States, and they made their new home in Brooklyn. Their financial situation while he was in his formative years was quite bleak, and that situation would have a major impact on his view of the world. “I think the poverty he grew up in had a lot to do with forming his social outlook, but also the empathy and compassion he had for others” (Wallach, Nancy). Because Wallach grew up poor, he was able to relate very strongly to the struggles of the people around him, and also of peoples around the world. Across continents, everyone was facing the same struggle to put food on the table, to work a job with a decent living wage, and to live in peace from the conflicts which had cascaded into World War I. Being of a Jewish background as well, he was familiar with the spectre of anti-semitism, and he was able to see the intersection between anti-semitic and racist beliefs in American society. Not only that, but perhaps because of his immigrant background, or his encounter with socialist values and ideas, Hyman Wallach always had an international outlook. The pain of others struggling in the world was as relevant to him as if they were his own neighbors. So, when General Fransisco Franco led a reactionary coup to topple the democratically elected government of Spain, a government which was beginning to make crucial progress on issues such as education, as well as women’s suffrage and reducing the influence of the Church, he knew he had to get involved. Watching the gradual spread of reactionary right-wing dictatorships across Europe, he clearly saw the threat posed by the unification of fascist regimes under the common purpose of domination, a goal which was explicitly clear in their strong military support of Franco. “I volunteered to fight against fascism in Spain for the peoples of the world as well as for the United States” (Wallach, Hyman, Autobiographical Entry) Wallach knew that the fascist movement would never be satisfied, and would never stop until it had spread across Europe, and the rest of the world; a fact which seems so obvious to the modern reader, but which the ruling classes of America, Britain, and France denied as fear mongering. However, Wallach saw the peril, and he knew he had to fight against it, even if it meant uprooting his life and putting himself in harm’s way. “He saw the dangers of Fascism and he really felt that was the issue of the day that just took priority over everything else” (Wallach, Nancy) 

At the time, there was a penalty for Americans going to Spain to fight in the war, and passports would be marked “not valid for travel in Spain”. The American government was still set on its policy of non-intervention. Wallach had to come up with a way to get around the restrictions. “He said…he was representing a wine firm in France and he was going to purchase wine for them” (Wallach, Nancy). Unfortunately, the FBI investigated his supposed workplace, and they caught on to him and the cover story was blown. He was still determined to go, though, and he tried to make his escape again with another daring plan. He consulted the committee in charge of sending volunteers to Spain. “They issued him a false Spanish passport and a Spanish name… he didn’t speak any Spanish” (Wallach, Nancy) This time, the ruse worked, and he slipped out of the country without any record of his departure. As an American departing to help Republican Spain in violation of the will of the government, he would surely face steep penalties on his return, but those consequences did not matter to him, as the consequences of inaction, of standing by while a country had its democracy violated and its common citizens trampled on, were far graver. He and the other Abraham Lincoln brigade members were, after all, the conscience of America because despite what diplomatic or economic interests dictated, they knew the right thing to do was to fight for the little guy.

When he made it to Spain in February of 1938, Wallach joined the International Brigade there. The brigade was composed of volunteers from over 50 countries, and reflected the international nature of the struggle against fascism. Though the battles took place in Spain, they reverberated throughout the world. As for Hyman Wallach, he would later recall: “I fought in the battles of Belchite, Fuentes Del Ebro and Teruel. I was selected to attend an Officer’s Training School but at the end of the first week, the entire school had to be sent to the front lines near Gandesa to stop the world’s first blitzkrieg, threatening to cut the republic in two” (Autobiographical Entry). His experience in fighting in the war was intense, having participated in the front lines of several key battles, such as Belchite and Teruel. He must have shown promise during this time, having been selected to attend officer’s school, but it was not meant to be, as the events of the battle of Gandesa would prevent him from completing that training. 

After withstanding a brutal cavalry charge by the fascists, and retreating from the advancing tanks, he and his fellow soldiers split up, to increase their chances of slipping by the Nationalist patrols. Trekking for days through the hills, surviving off of food given by a kind local, he had almost made it past enemy lines when he walked straight into a camp of Italian soldiers. “I attempted to get out of sight around a hill but 2 officers standing near a car spotted me and called to me. I pretended to be deaf, motioned to my ears and tried to go on. However, one of the officers drew his gun and beckoned for me to approach” (Wallach, Hyman, Gandesa 1938). He ramped up his acting and by some miracle, it was starting to work. “I heard one of the officers saying that I was a Spanish peasant and to let me go. I had 6 weeks growth of beard and I was wrapped in a blanket like a poncho” (Gandesa 1938). Luckily for him, his scruffiness was greatly helping his disguise, and it was starting to look like he would get away. “Just then, the sun came out and it was hot! One of the officers sympathetically opened my blanket – and there was my uniform” (Gandesa 1938).  The greatest irony of this story is that it was an act of apparent compassion which broke his disguise. His luck had run out at last, and as the Italian officers searched him and questioned him, his feigned deafness fell away.

Even when he was captured, he remained defiant and proud of the actions he had taken. “I was advised to say that I came to work. That seemed to me to be a betrayal. I stated that I came to Spain to help the Spanish Republic in its fight against Fascism” (Gandesa 1938). Wallach never regretted coming to Spain, even in that dark moment. Indeed, at that time, to him his prospects likely seemed even darker. Unknown to him, the Spanish republic had taken some prisoners of its own. “Until the republic had captured the Italian troops the fascists weren’t taking any prisoners, they shot you, and my father didn’t know that they had these Italian prisoners, so he thought he was going to be executed when he was captured” (Wallach, Nancy). His reaffirmation of his determination to fight the fascists, and his refusal to cave in to pressure to make a statement otherwise when it may have been his life on the line only shows how deeply Hyman Wallach held his ideals and his convictions. The desire to see fascism defeated, and to see a world where working peoples would be able live in peace and to realize their full potential in life without being crushed by poverty, these were ideas that were bigger than just his life, and if it wasn’t clear when he put his life on the line to fight in what some would say was someone else’s war, his ardent refusal to cave in when he was captured affirmed that he thought collective struggle and the ideals it enshrined were bigger than the life of one individual. If the strength of his selfless convictions were now apparent, it would be his time in San Pedro de Cardenas that would demonstrate how they helped his own life in turn.

 

“Under such inhumane conditions they maintained their humanity” (Wallach, Nancy)

 

During his imprisonment in San Pedro, Wallach and the other imprisoned republican soldiers found ways to maintain their dignity and keep morale from crashing, even in the face of strict restrictions on their activities and physical torture. They accomplished this in a number of ways, each person helping to contribute to the community in the best way they knew how. The only news coming into the camp was filtered through fascist newspapers which the guards read to the prisoners. “He was one of the people who suggested that they have this underground news paper: The Jaily News” (Wallach, Nancy). With the Jaily News, he and the others at San Pedro were able to gain some control over the narrative of the war that reached their ears, and weaken the power of the nationalist propaganda they were being fed over them. Regaining the power to interpret events for themselves and to spread that information among their comrades was a major step in gaining some more agency over their lives, and the feeling of having agency and being informed was crucial to keeping spirits from becoming very low under the harsh circumstances. Then there was the problem of socialization. Wallach helped to solve this with one of his favorite pastimes. “When they were first captured, they were not allowed to speak, they were not allowed to congregate in groups larger than two. And my father got permission for them to have a chess club because that was a silent game” (Wallach, Nancy) Though the men could not communicate verbally, they could engage with each other mentally, and maintain bonds of friendship and solidarity with each other in that way. When something very demoralizing happened, “My father jumped up and decided he was going to… play a lot of boards at once. So he was jumping up and he was jumping from board to board just to distract people” (Wallach, Nancy). He was quite comfortable with making a spectacle if it meant it would cheer up his comrades. Even the sadistic prison guard simply sat and watched as he played several people at once.

It certainly required a lot of energy to keep working so hard not just for himself, but for the sake of everyone else too, but he was helped because of the sense of community shared by them all; everyone looked out for each other. It was a reciprocal kindness, which paid dividends on his emotional investment. Even so, he was exceptionally strong willed. His outlook was optimistic. It was “not an optimism based on having an easy life or necessarily going through easy things or necessarily going through easy things” (Wallach, Nancy). It was instead an optimum which looked for the best in people, in this case, in the comrades he found himself supporting and who supported him in the prison camp. “They called him the strongest man in San Pedro. He wasn’t physically strong at all, he wasn’t a very big guy or anything, but that he had that kind of moral strength… he attributed that to his beliefs” (Wallach, Nancy). Hyman Wallach’s strength and his determination came from the certainty he had in the conviction that he was fighting for a new and just world. “He believed in socialism, he believed in communism, and he felt that’s what gave him his strength” (Wallach, Nancy). Wallach was fighting for a peoples’ world, one where rampant inequality would no longer exist. This was an ideal worth suffering for, and it helped to carry him through his time in San Pedro. His ideals not only brought him the solace of being a part of something bigger than himself, but gave him the motivation to be a better person and hold himself up to a higher standard. “It felt almost as if he particularly had a responsibility to set an example, because he was a communist” (Wallach, Nancy). The way he carried himself had to be in accordance with the vision he had for the future: he had to be equal to the task, and this explains why he did so much to help inspire his comrades in the harsh conditions of the concentration camp: he wanted to be an example to them of how to cultivate solidarity, and how to resist oppression with your dignity intact. The ideals he learned about when he first encountered socialism and communism in New York City were what gave him the inner strength to resist the brutal treatment he went through, and as he resisted it, he became someone who uplifted his comrades and gave them that strength as well. His fellow prisoners trusted him because of this. When the international soldiers received care packages, he was trusted with dividing them among everyone equally. A strong sense of solidarity was fostered among them all, so that Americans shared their care packages with the Basques, who received none.

Another way that Hyman Wallach boosted morale was to become a betting man. The bets he placed were on when each group would be repatriated from San Pedro, by nationality. If he guessed the correct day, he would get something on the outside, and if he was wrong, he would deliver what he called “dinner and a show;” meaning he would do something like push a coin around the filthy floor of their quarters. It turned what was a dreary and anxious wait into a win-win scenario: either the group gained their freedom, or he would perform an embarrassing stunt in front of everyone. Either some hope, or some levity would result. He ended up winning every bet. “Although I never collected on the bets, nothing gave me greater satisfaction than seeing the hope inspired by winning these bets” (Autobiographical Entry). It was not easy to do so much to maintain a positive attitude, especially near the end of his time at San Pedro. The Americans were released in alphabetical order, and Wallach was just under the cut off point for those who were released. The war was over, and he did not know if or when he would be released, but he made the same bet again, though he may not have believed it himself. “I made a bet with Bob that we would be out of San Pedro by August 15… I made this bet – as the others – because I felt it helped morale” (Gandesa 1938). The day approached, however, with no hint of their release. “But this time it was close! On August 14th, there was no indication whatsoever and Bob was gleefully explaining that the next day, I would be pushing a coin with my nose across that filthy floor as I was losing the bet. But the next day, our names were called and we were on our way to San Sebastian for 10 days of quarantine and on August 25th, we crossed the border!” (Gandesa 1938).  He was sent to France, where he managed to catch the very last boat before the port was closed, arriving in the United States in September, on the eve of World War 2.

 

“Do you want the premature anti-fascists or the common garden variety kind?” (Wallach, Nancy)

 

Upon his return to the United States, the world had changed. World War 2 caused the collapse of American non-intervention, and the fight against fascism, due in no small part to activism in support of the Spanish republic, had finally become widely encouraged. However, there were still consequences for those like Hyman Wallach who had gone against non-intervention to fight in Spain. “At first the government did not want to send them overseas even though they were the ones who had actual combat experience with the Fascists, because they were deemed as security risks” (Wallach, Nancy). The American government did not trust the Lincoln brigade members, and they labelled them “premature anti-fascists.” A paradoxical term, as if fascism had only suddenly become a threat to the American way of life on the day of the Pearl Harbor attack, as if that tragedy and others like it could not and should not have been prevented by earlier action. Unfortunately, it was a fear of Communism which led the FBI and the State department to mistrust the veterans of the Lincoln brigade. 

Even so, Hyman Wallach fought in World War 2, continuing what he always saw as the international struggle against fascism. Spain may have been lost, but the battles against the Axis powers continued. Wallach fought on the front lines as long as he could. “On VE Day, I had enough points to be discharged but I turned it down, volunteering for the Pacific. I went home on furlough and then to Fort Dix waiting to be shipped to the Pacific. VJ came while I was awaiting reassignment and I was immediately discharged” (Autobiographical Entry). His convictions led him to fight until the very end of the war, even though he had served his required time and more. Still, he wouldn’t rest until the war was won. The defeat of the Nazis and of Imperial Japan was worth celebrating, and though the war against fascism was lost in Spain, Wallach believed that he and the other Lincoln brigade members had bought the world the valuable time needed to fend off Hitler’s final assault. The fascists’ plans were upset. Franco thought the republic would crumble immediately, but instead he got a drawn out war which lasted 2 years and 8 months. “2 years and 8 months in which millions of people all over the world were mobilized in the struggle against fascism” (Autobiographical Entry). At home in the United States, activist groups mobilized public opinion against fascism, and put pressure on the government to abandon non-interventionist policy and prepare for war. Similar movements happened in the other nations of the free-world. Most importantly, the public gained an awareness of these conflicts, and learned to empathize with the plights of others who were an ocean away. Empathy and international solidarity were the cornerstones of the new world that Wallach envisioned, and while the United States rejected socialism itself, the era of isolationism was over, and that empathy lay the groundwork for the peoples’ movements that followed in years to come. 

Wallach himself continued to be involved in activism, and continued to hold his ideals close to him. He participated in the peace movement, in the opposition to the Korean war, in the as well as the anti-nuclear movement. He helped to organize “Dubois Clubs” to help young people working in the Civil Rights movement. He also continued to advocate for the Spanish people. Serving as treasurer of the Lincoln brigade, he organized the sending of money to Republican prisoners and their families. There were still consequences for his actions in Spain, which manifested in particularly nasty ways during the McCarthy era, when in addition to FBI harassment, there was the threat of deportation. Wallach was a naturalized American citizen, but when he went to Spain “the committee lost those papers and then during the McCarthy period they were trying to deport people who were naturalized citizens, particularly if they were activists, and so my father did worry that he might have been deported” (Wallach, Nancy). The threat of deportation for his time fighting in Spain and his Communist beliefs hung over the family when his daughters were growing up, but they managed to avoid it. While there was a definite prejudice against him for his beliefs, which resulted in harassment and insecurity, his same beliefs produced a strong positive influence on his children. “My father used to love to sing all the Labor songs.” Wallach would sing folk music relating to the Irish Revolutionary Army: “Shoot me like an Irish soldier, do not hang me like a dog.” When Nancy asked him why he would prefer to be shot than hung, he replied: “One has more honor and dignity” (Wallach, Nancy). He wanted his daughters and their generation to embody the outlook that he had acquired, and to bring about a world based on empathy, free-will, and working class solidarity: the solidarity that results from caring for each other, rooting for each other, and wanting every man and woman to live free of poverty, oppression, and war. In a letter to his daughter, he wrote: “The world and everything in it is a reflection of the peoples that inhabit it. A simple truth – and to your generation it will seem so obvious. But that is because this peoples’ war that your father, mother, and their generation are engaged in will have been won. That is what we are fighting for – the historic task of our generation – to make this a peoples’ world” (Hyman Wallach to Victoria Wallach). He and his generation had beaten back the assault of fascism. Now they had to teach the generation that followed how to cultivate empathy, and create just and fair systems that worked for everyone. To create the broadest coalition possible. To end poverty and all other forms of oppression, whether political or economic. To achieve racial justice. These were the things Hyman Wallach hoped the example he had worked so hard to set would inspire others to do. “In our fight for the freedom of Spain, we learned to express these things with the words ‘Salud y Victoria’” (To Victoria). Victory over Fascism. 

Works Cited

Love, Vaughn. “Vaughn Love to Joe Brandt.” July 13, 1986. The Abraham Lincoln Brigade Archives.  https://alba-valb.org/volunteers/david-hyman-hy-wallach/

 

Wallach, Hyman. “Autobiographical Entry.” The Abraham Lincoln Brigade Archives. https://alba-valb.org/volunteers/david-hyman-hy-wallach/

 

Wallach, Hyman. “Captured by the fascists behind enemy lines Gandesa, 1938.” The Abraham Lincoln Brigade Archives. https://alba-valb.org/volunteers/david-hyman-hy-wallach/

 

Wallach, Hyman. “Hyman Wallach to Carl Geiser.” November 16, 1979. The Abraham Lincoln Brigade Archives. https://alba-valb.org/volunteers/david-hyman-hy-wallach/

 

Wallach, Hyman. Hyman Wallach to Victoria Wallach. 1945.

 

Wallach, Nancy. Interview by the author. Brooklyn, NY, November 4, 2020.