Eddie Balchowsky: Anti-Fascist of the Alleys

Posted by Jessi Duncanson on December 19, 2020January 10, 2021

Jessi Duncanson

HONS 2011J

Maria Hernandez

18 October 2020

Eddie Balchowsky: Anti-Fascist of the Alleys

Eddie Balchowsky was an enigma of sorts, a man who lived by a strong moral code to avoid moral codes and whose most consistent feature was his embodiment of contradictions. He always professed a lack of interest in politics, yet was active in leftist causes from an early age and boldly defended and uplifted those who he saw marginalized or threatened by tyranny. He was an intensely creative person and identified as an artist rather than a dissident, but was most famed for ignoring the dictates of the US government and fighting Fascism in Spain with the Abraham Lincoln Brigade. Perhaps most enigmatic of all, and a large part of my reason for writing about him, is that even though the fight he joined in Spain failed in its mission to halt Fascism and cost him an arm, he maintained for the rest of his life that the sacrifice had been been well worth it. I believe his story can be both a model of life well lived and a cautionary tale, and that it has much to teach us and much to warn us about.

Edward “Eddie” Ross Balchowsky was born in 1916 outside of Chicago in the town of Frankfort, Illinois. His parents had left their native Poland prior to WWI and settled in Frankfort after being invited there to open a green grocery. They were the only Jewish family in Frankfort and after WWI broke out they had significant friction with the town’s largely German populace due to their open support of American forces fighting against Germany. The bullying that young Balchowsky received for being a Jewish kid in Frankfort would later be one of the main reasons he gave for volunteering to fight Fascism in Spain.

In contrast to Balchowsky’s reports of being bullied by his Frankfort peers, one of these peers claimed later in life that this bullying was unlikely because Eddie had had an uncanny ability to win people over and make friends with the force of his charm. Eddie’s cousin twice removed, Jeff Balch, told this second hand story from a member of the Frankfort Historical Society. “Ed would get together these poker games when he was just a young kid in Frankfort, but he would get the parents involved in the poker games. The parents would come to keep their kids from playing poker, and then he’d rope them in. He had that sort of personality” (Balch 44:27).

After high school Eddie went to University of Illinois and The Art Institute of Chicago and had plans, after completing his studies, of becoming a professional concert pianist. In his late teens, he had become friends with a politically leftist crowd who made him aware of the rising tide of Fascism and antisemitism in Germany and Spain. He became involved in leftist politics on campus but remained nonpartisan, which got him in trouble at times. When asked in an interview if he was a communist, Eddie said no, but added, “I had been exposed to all kinds of left-wing groups in college-socialists, communists, Trotskyites-and I was friendly with all of them because I wasn’t that much into politics. In fact, I marched in the May Day parade with the wrong banner-socialist or communist, I forget which-and got a tooth knocked out” (Heise). Though he frequently described himself as not being political and generally rejected political parties and ideological labels, Balchowsky hung out with a lot of leftist radicals and associated himself with a variety of leftist causes over the course of his life. His adoption of a neutral outsider status, combined with his charming and extroverted personality, gave him a certain independence that seemed to allow his easy movement between disparate social groups, which would be a pattern in his life.

At age 21 Balchowsky put his plans for a concert pianist career on hold in order to join the then nascent fight against Fascism in Spain. After the Spanish general Francisco Franco led a fascist military coup against the left-wing Republican government of Spain the Republicans put out a call for volunteers from around the world to come to their aid. Angered by the antisemitism of the Franco and his allies, Balchowky heeded the Republican call for volunteers and joined the American contingent of the International Brigades, known as the Abraham Lincoln Brigade (ALB) or the “Lincolns” for short. He identified with the Spanish people, likening the antisemitic bullying he received in the town of Frankfort to the oppression they would face if the forces of Fascism were allowed to prevail. He described the decision decades later to a crowd of fellow Lincolns at a reunion in Spain, telling them, “Neither a hero nor a coward, I was a pianist who learned about oppression at a very early age, because for years I was the only Jewish child in my hometown and it was impractical to fight back. So, with the rise of Fascism in Spain I was grateful for the opportunity to fight what I had found no way to fight at home” (Forever Activists).

On November 19, 1937 Balchowsky arrived in Spain aboard a ship called the Massanet. Once there, he began work with the Republican Cultural Committee producing Republican radio broadcasts from Madrid. In the course of this work he became acquainted with, and came to admire, a number of volunteers from the British Isles who were lending their talents as writers, artists, and musicians to the Republican cause. In 1938 singer/actor/activist Paul Robeson traveled to Spain to perform for the Republican troops but did not have a pianist to accompany him. Chuck Hall, a friend of Balchowsky’s who met him in Spain during basic training, recounted, “Eddie jumped up and volunteered. He still had both his arms. He gave a concert I wouldn’t forget” (Kleine).

Balchowsky actually spent most of his time in Spain with the British battalions, rather than the Americans. Speaking with historian Studs Terkel, he described crossing paths with some of his British comrades from the Cultural Committee in the town of Tarazona de la Mancha and deciding that he wanted to fight with them, stating,

“I knew them. I knew what they did musically, I knew what they did poetically, and I knew what they did dramatically … when it comes time to fight, I wanna be with them!… But the order came, Americans over here, British over here. As soon as I heard that I got down on my knees and I slid around on the ground and I came up where the British were and I stayed there for a year, baby, and I was never sorry for it”. (Balchowsky, interviewed by Studs Terkel)

Working with the British Battalion, Balchowsky served as an reconnaissance scout and observer along the Ebro River. Speaking with Studs Terkel, he described the camaraderie between him and these volunteers from across the pond, including the curious but familiar way that he, as an affable outsider, was able to befriend and move between the groupings of English, Irish, Welsh, Scottish, New Zealander, and Australian soldiers who were sometimes unable to get along with each other. When such ethnic disputes arose, the commanding officer would call on Balchowsky as a neutral outsider to mediate and sometimes translate between feuding parties who pretended not to understand each other’s regional accents (Balchowsky; “Eddie Balchowsky talks with Studs Terkel”).

Balchowsky was taken out of action for a spell in the summer of 1937, after receiving a minor wound. Around September 1, he returned to the front and joined the Lincoln Battalion. One week on the front and a bullet from a fascist sniper caught him in the right arm. Balchowsky described the wound in the documentary Peat Bog Soldier; “I remember falling back and seeing a fountain of blood come up over my head. I was concerned because it was my right hand and I was a pianist, but the pain and trauma blotted everything out” (Peat Bog Soldier). The wound ended up requiring the amputation of his right hand and most of his forearm. He reported that his arm did not fully heal for seven years.

At the end of 1938 the Republic was losing the war and so, seeking to strike some kind of deal with the nationalists, sent the international brigades home. Balchowsky sailed with 40 other wounded men aboard the SS Harding and arrived back in the states on December 31, 1938, New Year’s Eve. His return to civilian life was difficult. His dream of a career as a concert pianist was shattered by the bullet that took his right hand. The Spanish republic he fought for had been defeated. Fascism had won in Spain and the US government labeled those Americans who had been brave enough to try and stop it “premature anti-fascists” and hounded them for flouting its officially neutral position on the fate of Spanish democracy. To cope with the pain in his arm and the trauma of the war, Balchowsky drank heavily for a period of eight years before a friend, worried that he would drink himself to death, turned him on to heroin as a more effective means of self-medicating.

Despite the monumental disappointment of the defeat in Spain, and the struggles he faced upon returning home from war, Balchowsky continued to play the piano and developed his own one-handed versions of international leftist anthems and classical works by the likes of Beethoven and Chopin. He had a particular affinity for Chopin and, when speaking on the subject of his one-handed technique, would say “I used to play Chopin but now I play with Chopin” (The Good Fight). This playful way of subverting misfortune by turning negatives into positives was characteristic of Balchowsky’s sense of humor and outlook on life.

Balchowsky was friend and collaborator to many of the writers and artists who lived in Chicago or passed through, especially those who frequented or performed at the Quiet Knight, a folk music club where Balchowsky got a job as a janitor so that he would have access to their grand piano. Balchowsky did the cover artwork for the album, 953 West (Balchowsky, 953 West), by The Siegel Schwall Band (who, incidentally, my parents saw play at the Quiet Knight sometime in the late ‘70s, a few years before my birth) and several musicians wrote songs about or inspired by him, including Jimmy Buffet (“He Went to Paris”), Skip Haynes and John Jeremiah (”For Eddie”), and the great folk singer/storyteller of the working class Utah Phillips (”Eddie’s Song”). At a memorial for Balchowsky, long after his death, Phillips, who was Balchowsky’s junior by 19 years, described his admiration for him and told stories from their long friendship (Grider). According to Phillips, he met Balchowsky when he had just moved to Chicago and walked into the Quiet Knight to check it out, but found the place dark and empty except for Balchowsky, who sat at a grand piano playing Beethoven’s “Moonlight Sonata” with one hand (a moment Phillips would later immortalize in “Eddie’s Song”) followed by a raucous rendition of the leftist anthem, “Freiheit” (German for “Freedom”), a favorite of Balchowsky’s that was written by German anti-fascists, Gudrun Kabisch and Paul Dessau, in 1936 specifically for the international brigades fighting in Spain.

In another story, Phillips told how he heard of Balchowsky’s passing and wrote “Eddie’s Song” to mark the occasion, only to pick up the phone one day, weeks later, and hear Balchowsky’s voice on the line. “Where ya calling from, Eddie?” quipped Phillips (Grider). Balchowsky had called to dispel the rumor of his demise and Phillips would go on to play him his (premature) post-mortem tribute, or “death song,” as Phillips called it.

In addition to playing the piano, Balchowsky wrote poetry, drew, painted, and in 1988 published a memoir titled As You Pass Each Fence and Door after one of his own poems (one of the few available on the internet). Balchowsky’s style as a visual artist was eclectic, ranging from figurative portraits and landscapes to cubist and surreallist abstractions (Peat Bog Soldier). When he was low on funds, friends say that he would go from tavern to tavern on Chicago’s north side, selling his artwork to the bar patrons as a way to make ends meet (Anderson). He also had successful gallery shows, a one man show at the prestigious Art Institute of Chicago, where two of his more surrealist works remain in the museum’s permanent collection, and his work was also chosen to adorn the walls and menus of Oprah Winfrey’s restaurant, The Eccentric (Anderson).

Balchowsky called himself “King of the alleys” and made Chicago’s many back alleys his personal stomping grounds (Grossman). In another of his stories from the 2000 memorial/benefit, Utah Phillips described Balchowsky drawing and writing poems on pieces of newsprint as he walked Chicago’s alleyways and then flinging the finished pieces over his shoulder (Grider). Judging from images of Balchowsky’s home and studio and the stories of his friends, he produced a prolific amount of written and visual art work but he also seems to have had little concern for its preservation (Peat Bog Soldier). For Balchowsky, the physical evidence of his own life here on Earth seems to have been irrelevant, a distraction to be avoided so as to continue with the crucial task of living. This appears to have been an important part of his personal philosophy, to focus on living life in the moment rather than spend time ruminating on its meaning or its foibles.

At times, Balchowsky’s free-spirited ways seemed to get the best of him, and led to many a run in with the Chicago Police Department, but his sense of humor could re-emerge in surprising ways. There were times when, after being arrested on some charge he would prank the officer in charge of fingerprinting by putting the stump of his right arm into his mouth right before they saw him. The startled officer would immediately panic, believing Balchowsky to have somehow swallowed his own hand (Balch).

Balchowsky’s skirmishes with the law culminated in a period of incarceration for two years on a drug charge. While in prison he befriended an African American man on Death Row named Paul Crump, who had begun to take up writing. Balchowsky helped Crump edit his writing and led a successful campaign, through the prison newsletter, to convince the warden to give Crump a typewriter. After his release, Balchowsky was prohibited from visiting the prison, so he convinced a freelance writer, Felix Singer, who he was friends with to take an interest in Crump. Singer picked up where Balchowsky left off, advocating for Crump and his manuscript, and gaining the public support of figures like the author James Baldwin and folk singer Phil Ochs, who wrote a song about Paul Crump. Eventually their efforts paid off. Crump’s semi-autobiographical novel, “Burn, Killer, Burn,” was published and became a bestseller. The novel was presented as evidence of Crump’s rehabilitation in hearings that led to the commutation of his death sentence and his eventual release from prison (“How a Killer Became a Writer”).

According to Utah Phillips, Balchowsky also did other work advocating for those incarcerated in America’s prisons. In another story from the memorial, Phillips mentioned Balchowsky doing good work with disabled incarcerated people and collaborating with him on a series of benefit concerts for people in California’s prison system (Grider).

In 1986 Balchowsky and many other veterans of the ALB gathered for a reunion in Spain. It was the first time most of them had returned to the country since their sad farewell in 1938. Balchowsky gave a speech to an auditorium full of the assembled Lincolns and other comrades about his reasons for signing up to fight almost fifty years prior and the pride he felt in his service to Spanish democracy, stating that, “though I went home with one hand, I gained much more than I lost. Thanks to the Spanish people” (Forever Activists).

Balchowsky was a stubbornly free spirit and a champion of marginalized folk, who was determined to live as an artist and to live by his own principles. Due to his dogged independence, commitment to a bohemian artist’s lifestyle, and also his disability, trauma, and use of illicit drugs (whether for self-medication or recreation), this also meant that he spent much of his life in a precarious state, a step away from the streets. In his own fashion though, he seemed to adopt the struggles he faced in life as badges of honor. Rather than complain about his lot or give in to social expectations, he treated the bullying he received as a kid, the loss of his arm, and the fights with addiction and the law as mere pieces of a larger narrative, the personal myth of a man who lived according to his own terms. He often found creative ways to reframe the conditions he faced, perhaps using that same charm –which enabled him to convince angry parents to join in on their kids illicit, though probably harmless, gambling, and which allowed him to move among and befriend so many different types of people– on himself, to render as sensible the chance misfortunes of life and the principled sacrifices made in vain, and thus make the difficult path he had chosen more walkable.

Balchowsky died in December of 1989 in Chicago after being hit by a train. He left behind three children, many friends, and a complicated legacy. Balchowsky was many things to many different people. I think the most apt assessments of Balchowsky’s life are also likely to be the most counterintuitive or contradictory. His friend Stu McCarrol called him “Our Falstaff and our Hamlet” (Anderson), a reference to figures both comical and tragic from the works of William Shakespeare. Studs Terkel referred to him both as “Chicago’s Huck Finn” (Grossman) and “Lazarus” (“Services Set for One-Armed Pianist Eddie Balchowsky”). Jeff Balch recounted the words that his father, Balchowsky’s first cousin, said about him:

“My dad, he wasn’t dismissive of Ed, but I remember the way he put it was the following… ‘Your cousin Ed. He went to Spain and he was convinced that he was right and the rest of the world was wrong and was very disillusioned in Spain. Came back embittered. And maybe he…’ This is my dad reflecting many decades later, my dad said, ‘you know, maybe he was right about that’… Although my dad’s politics were conservative, I think he understood where Ed was at philosophically” (Balch 29:03).

When I asked Jeff, who was initially drawn to Balchowsky’s story by his radical leftist bona fides, what legacy or lessons could be drawn from Balchowsky’s story, he answered, “You know, there’s a temptation to glorify and say he stuck to his ideals and we should take inspiration from it. And there’s some truth to that. But I think there’s also the tragedy, you know. He goes off to Spain and the Spanish war is lost, comes back and he has a lot of trouble… I see him as both an inspiring character and as a tragic character” (Balch 47:39). Utah Phillips stated that the two biggest things he learned from Balchowsky were 1. endurance and 2. the importance of understanding the Spanish Civil War, or as Eddie preferred to call it the “Second War for Spanish Independence”, to understanding the world today (Grider).

Balchowsky is buried a short ways away from the Haymarket Monument in Forest Home Cemetery. Though he was initially buried without a grave marker, Jeff Balch and the Chicago Friends of The Abraham Lincoln Brigade raised money to buy one. A large portion of that money was raised by the memorial/benefit featuring Utah Phillips in November of 2000, from which many of Phillips’ stories in this piece came (Grider). In a major stroke of luck for the benefit, Jon Anderson from the Chicago Tribune covered the event and published the resulting article one day before media coverage of the hotly contested 2000 Florida presidential election exploded and blocked out every other story in the news, which was just enough time for the article to spur a large influx of donations covering most of the costs of Balchowsky’s grave stone (Balch). A cenotaph, which is a marker for someone, often a casualty of war, whose body lies elsewhere, now sits in radical row, near the monument to the haymarket martyrs. It reads “In memory of Edward Ross Balchowsky 1916 – 1989 artist, poet, raconteur, one-armed pianist, veteran of the Spanish Civil War as a volunteer in the Abraham Lincoln Brigade your friends, family, and fellow “premature anti-fascists” salute you” (Cenotaph).

As you pass each fence and door

by Eddie Balchowsky

As you pass each fence and door

I see you pass.

The wind loud alley

And the dog you hear

I hear.

You eat and touch

and I am pleasantly nourished.

And so together

We are free to act alone

Or to come once more as strangers