Jewish Volunteers, the International Brigades and the Spanish Civil Wa

Jewish Volunteers, the International Brigades and the Spanish Civil War discusses the participation of volunteers of Jewish descent in the International Brigades during the Spanish Civil War, focusing particularly on the establishment of the Naftali Botwin Company, a Jewish military unit that was created in the Polish Dombrowski Brigade. Gerben Zaagsma analyses the symbolic meaning of the participation of Jewish volunteers and the Botwin Company both during and after the civil war. He puts this participation in the broader context of Jewish involvement in the left and Jewish/non-Jewish relations in the communist movement and beyond. To this end, the book examines representations of Jewish volunteers in the Parisian Yiddish press (both communist and non-communist). In addition, it analyses the various ways in which Jewish volunteers and the Botwin Company have been commemorated after WWII, tracing how discourses about Jewish volunteers became decisively shaped by post-Holocaust debates on Jewish responses to fascism and Nazism, and discusses claims that Jewish volunteers can be seen as 'the first Jews to resist Hitler with arms'.

Product details

• Authors: Gerben Zaagsma, Gerben (University of Luxembourg Zaagsma, Zaagsma Gerben
• Assisted by: Stephen McVeigh (Editor)
• Publisher: Bloomsbury Academic
• Languages: English
• Product format: Hardback
• Released: 06.04.2017
• EAN: 9781472505491
• ISBN: 978-1-4725-0549-1
• No. of pages: 264
• Series: War, Culture and Society; War, Culture and Society
• Subjects: Humanities, art, music > History > Regional and national histories; Non-fiction book > History > Miscellaneous; European History, Spain, HISTORY / Military / General, 20th century history: c 1900 to c 2000, HISTORY / Jewish, SOCIAL SCIENCE / Jewish Studies, Jewish Studies, Modern warfare, c 1919 to c 1939 (Inter-war period), c 1918 to c 1939 (Inter-war period), Spanish Civil War, 1936–1939 (Spanish Civil War period), Relating to Jewish people and groups, Civil wars, Social groups: religious groups and communities, HISTORY / Europe / Spain, HISTORY / Military / Civil Wars