Jerry Harris is a life-long friend. We’ve been pals since we were kids.
His dad, the late Syd Harris, was a noted Chicago organizer, labor journalist and photographer.
Born in Leeds, England, Syd Harris ended up in a Chicago orphanage when he was five. Fifteen years later, he volunteered for the Lincoln Battalion. After the war, as a well-known labor photographer and journalist, he was targeted by the FBI.
A former boxer, he also acted as Paul Robeson’s personal bodyguard when the singer performed in Chicago.
In my last post, I told of the video prepared by the Veterans of the Abraham Lincoln Brigade Archives that was made up of the testimony of the grandchildren of those who volunteered to fight Franco and the fascists in Spain.
I also included a letter from my father, Robert Klonsky, which gave a taste of the conditions that the American volunteers, and the volunteers of many other countries, endured.
Syd Harris was a prisoner of war in Spain.
Jerry sent along this:
Life at the prisoner of war camp was anything but easy. Syd recounted his experience writing:
Cold cement floor full of holes, broken stairs, thousands of mice, rats and vermin of all kinds.As we drove in we received our first view of what was later was to be a daily occurrence: a sergeant with a long leather reinforced twisted cane-whip, lashing out among a group of men. We all had our share of beatings from shell shocked sergeants who didn’t even try to give any reasons in explanation of their actions. Too many of us bear scars from sticks, rifle butts, fists or boots, they used them all. They got a genuine pleasure and joy in making and seeing us as miserable as possible.
Always hungry, unable to concentrate, to exercise, lying on louse- and flea-ridden mattresses all day waiting for a ladle full of beans and two rotten sardines.
Clothed only in pants, shirts, and slippers in a cell with damp and windy climate; no wonder ten of our comrades died and most of the others were sick all the time. Three water taps for seven hundred men to wash themselves, their clothes, and plate in…planning for the day when once again we could be MEN.
Freedom. Liberty, how we appreciate those words now. But in the midst of that feeling comes the thought of our comrades, especially those from the countries dominated by fascist, who are still in national Spain. Always picked upon to receive the worst treatment by the guards they have the courage, self discipline, and intestinal fortitude that belongs to men convinced of the righteousness of their actions and a deep and everlasting love of liberty and democracy.
May the day be soon that they also can once again breath the fresh air of liberty and freedom for which they sacrificed so much to defend, until then, Salud comardes.