Stalinism in Spain(1938)
Revolutionary History, Vol.1 No.2, Summer 1988. Used by
permission.
This article first appeared as a pamphlet under the title
Le Stalinisme en Espagne in Paris in 1938, and was republished
in 1971 and 1986 as Le Stalinisme, Bourreua de la Revolution Espagnole,
1937-1938. This first English version restores the original title, as
well as the text censored during the Second World War to avoid giving away the
names of resistance fighters to the Nazis (footnote 15 below).
The sole reference to the brochure in any of the thousands of pages
devoted to the Civil War written by English bourgeois historians lies in a
single footnote implying that the ‘horrible stories’ it contains remain in doubt
(H. Thomas, The Spanish Civil War, 3rd Edition, Harmondsworth
1977, p.703, n2). This blanket of silence is not accidental, since official as
well as Communist fellow-travelling history has all to lose and nothing to gain
by the revelation that behind the democratic facade of Negrin’s government
lurked a Stalinist police state, set up with the express intention of
liquidating Spain’s half-finished revolution.
But there can be little doubt that, with the exception perhaps of the
testimony of Pauline Dobler (note 3, below), the depositions of the ex-prisoners
given here can be relied on, for it is a matter of a few sentences to
demonstrate that the techniques they reveal con be paralleled in other accounts
of GPU interrogations. A whole science of such tortures evidently existed in the
USSR, taught with a rigid methodology and applied with that unfailing lack of
originality of which only policemen are capable.
They can be simply listed:
Systematic deprivation of sleep by frequent night
interrogations (E. Loebl, Stalinism in Prague, New York 1969,
p.2; M. Buber-Neumann, Under Two Dictators, London 1949,
p.29).
Forcing the prisoner to remain standing during long interrogations
(Loebl, p.21; M. Slingover, Truth Will Prevail, London 1968,
p.24).
Interrogation continuing beyond mealtimes to furnish an excuse to
deprive the prisoner of food (Loebl, p.22).
Simulated executions, or
executions halted by a pretended reprieve (Loebl, pp.25-26; Ciliga, The
Russian Enigma, London 1979, p.158).
Attempts to extract confessions
by using fraudulent statements supposedly signed by one close to the accused (V.
Serge, Memoirs of a Revolutionary, Oxford 1963, pp.294-5; Hugo
Dewar, The Modern Inquisition, London 1953,
p.52).
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Katia (Julia) Landau (1895- ) accompanied her husband, whose
political biography appears in this article, in all his work in Austria,
Germany, France and Spain. When the authorities refused to release information
about the fate of Kurt Landau she led a hunger strike of 500 in the women’s
prison in Barcelona, forcing the Minister of Justice to visit her in person, as
recounted in the pamphlet. John McGovern described her in the following
terms:
Our next visit was to the General Hospital, where Katia
Landau was a prisoner and patient after her hunger strike. She had been in
prison for over five months; it was during her imprisonment that her husband was
seized by the Cheka, tortured and murdered. In spite of her ordeal we found her
full of fight. She was fierce in her antagonism to the Comintern and its Cheka
in Spain. She is a little woman, only four feet ten inches in height and five
stone eight pounds in weight, but full of idealism and energy. Katia had two
armed guards at the hospital and no one could visit her without a permit
(Terror in Spain, ILP pamphlet [1938],
p.10).
After her second arrest such distinguished Socialists as
Otto Bauer, Friedrich Adler, and Marceau Pivert interceded with the Comintern
for her release, and this was apparently secured in exchange for French aircraft
(Hans Schafranek, Kurt Landau, in Cahiers Leon
Trotsky, No.5, 1980, p.94). She left for France and, like so many of
the other exiled Spanish left-wingers, then departed for Mexico. Our last
information was that she was still alive two years ago, at the incredible age of
91.
Preface
This is not the first time that an account of atrocities, tortures
practised on prisoners in jail, murders undertaken by ordinary police or by
mercenaries trained in the systematic repression of working class activists, has
come to us from Spain. In the course of the sharp struggle that the
revolutionary syndicalists and anarchists carried on without respite against the
monarchy and the semi-feudal dictatorship, the repression often developed in
such a savage manner, the violence committed against prisoners was so ferocious
and the tortures were so sadistic, that news of them aroused the anger of the
working class in every country. That section of liberal and democratic opinion
which refused to become an accomplice of the hangmen by remaining silent was
outraged. So powerful a movement of solidarity in the unfortunate victims’
favour was provoked that the clerical and monarchist functionaries were obliged
to end their abominable work.
But it is the first time that such repression, the similar recourse to the
most refined methods of torturing prisoners, and the assassination of militant
workers in Spain under the guise of the defence of democracy and the struggle
against fascism amid the indifference, silent complicity, or even the open
approval of those groups and organisations which formerly denounced the crimes
of governments and their execution agents.
The facts reported in this pamphlet are already known, in essence if not in
their odious detail, by all who wish to know about what is happening in Spain.
They are not challenged, and cannot be. But they may not be talked about.
Speaking about them will assist Franco to sow dissension in the anti-fascist
ranks. First of all, it is necessary to defeat Franco. But there will be an
accounting amongst the victorious anti-fascists after victory, and the
revolution will resume its onward march. What wilful blindness or treachery on
the part of those who have allowed themselves to be corrupted by power and no
longer have any faith in the working class! How, in fact, can it be imagined
that a repression so clearly directed and carried out with such implacable
perseverance could only be a secondary, isolated affair, relegated to the margin
of the general conflict? On the contrary, it is obvious that it forms an
integral part of the deliberate policy of the Republican government, and this
policy is explanation of it. A simple account of the events that have unfolded
since May 1936 suffices to show this.
The anarchist, socialist and POUMist workers, and they alone, practically
without weapons, saved Madrid and Barcelona, and the whole country would have
been saved along with the two capitals if the government had not been so
frightened by the socialist character that the defence of the Republic
immediately assumed. The workers did not throw themselves against the
machine-guns out of love for the Republican leaders – whose work they had
already witnessed from 1931 to 1933 – but because revolutionary faith inspired
them. It rapidly became evident that the struggle was no longer between Azaña’s
impotent democrats and the rebel generals, but between socialism and fascism.
The great industrial and feudal agrarian exploiters had no illusions, and all
went over to Franco. Mussolini also understood this. Immediately he sent
reinforcements, helping to assure a clear passage between Morocco and Francoist
Spain that permitted Franco to build up his shock troops of legionaries and
Moroccan riflemen, without which he would have been rapidly forced to
surrender.
The government in France, which is the popular Front, adopted the policy of
so-called ‘non-intervention’ in agreement with the British government.
And the other ‘democracy’ – the Stalinist one? Mussolini sent his aircraft
without losing a moment. But to begin with, a month later in the middle of
August, Stalin himself only gave the Spanish working class the ‘moral support’
of the first Moscow Trial. He was totally taken up with staging this at the end
of July 1936, along with Yagoda, the ‘traitor’ of 1938. And until the end of
September that was all he sent to the Spanish workers, poorly armed and equipped
in the face of an adversary that was dangerously advancing. Even then, he did
not give, but sold weapons to the Republican government. And
he did not do this without imposing conditions; it was necessary to accept his
policy along with the weapons. This essentially consisted in the most rapid
liquidation possible of the socialist revolution. For Stalin, in fact, it was
not a matter of a decisive struggle between socialism and fascism. Whilst
working for its complete destruction, it was necessary to conceal everything
that indicated socialist revolution, to talk about no more than the defence of
democracy, and above all to switch the conflict onto the terrain of
anti-Hitlerism, so alarming France and Britain, and by inciting the worst
chauvinism to induce these countries to intervene and transform the great
working class conflict into a clash between rival imperialisms. If there were
obstacles in Spain, men who placed themselves in the way of this liquidation, it
was necessary to suppress them, precisely according to the method that had just
been installed in Moscow with the first trial of the Old Bolsheviks. To this end
special personnel arrived along with the tanks and aeroplanes, and were placed
under the direction of Antonov Ovseyenko – a ‘traitor’ according to the latest
news [1] – who had been designated
consul-general in Barcelona, precisely where the ‘obstacles’ were most numerous
and disposed of imposing working class power along with the prestige they had
acquired by their conduct in the course of the heroic days at the start of the
uprising. Antonov gave his instructions and planted his agents in the movement;
a state within a state was built up in the whole of Republican Spain, but
particularly in Barcelona and Catalonia, with its own police, its own prisons,
and its own executioners, functioning alongside the police and the regular
authorities with absolute power. It is these whose work can be seen in the
accounts reported here, of torturing men and women after effecting the
kidnapping and disappearance of Berneri, Barbieri, Andrés Nin, Kurt Landau, Marc
Rhein (Abramovitch), Erwin Wolf, Hans Freund (Moulin), and many others less well
known – anarchists, POUMists, socialists, and members of the Fourth
International, who had come from everywhere to struggle at the side of the
Spanish workers, experienced revolutionaries who were far more reliable
anti-fascists than M. Azaña.
And have these crimes prevented the inexorable advance of Franco? Can it not
be seen, on the contrary, that there is a certain parallel between committing
them and the repeated success of the enemy, who today is even installed in
Catalonia, which everyone in the first months of the revolution would have
considered absurdly impossible? Betrayals there certainly have been, but they
are never on the side the Stalinists pretend to find them, but always among
their own allies and troops; Republican generals placed by Stalinist ministers
in front of the enemy in the most critical position have gone over to Franco ...
The Fifth Column is no myth, but the traitors and spies who compose it are
always at liberty and can operate with complete impunity; the Republican police
never discover them – that is, when they are not protecting them – and the
Stalinist police are looking only for revolutionaries.
Stalin sold weapons to Republican Spain. But at the same time he disseminated
demoralisation among the workers and peasants of Spain. Many were grateful to
the USSR to begin with for the aid provided, but could not understand that the
despatch of arms brought along with it as a prime condition the abandonment of
the socialist revolution that had already been realised in what had been done.
Demoralisation and passivity are spread among the working class of every
country. Thus it is that the Federation of French Railwaymen, whose leadership
is Stalinist, has confined itself to watching the munitions trains pass that
Franco’s supporters are directing to him, content, so it seems, to note
ironically: ‘what a good thing non-intervention is’. The bourgeoisie, even of
the democratic sort, acts according to type when it intervenes against a
socialist revolution. This is what it did against Soviet Russia, Soviet Hungary,
and the German Revolution. There is nothing that ought to surprise us there. But
when the representatives of the great working class organisations confine
themselves to platonic denunciations of non-intervention without making an
appeal for direct action from the workers, asking the government instead to take
note of ‘French interests’, it can clearly be seen who, in the last analysis, is
helping Franco. This, which is real betrayal, is the poisoned fruit of Stalinist
politics, a policy of defeat backed everywhere at this time by the murder of
activists who remain revolutionaries. The pages that follow contain fresh proof
of it. Whoever wishes to contribute to the victory of anti-fascism must speak
out.
Alfred Rosmer
Introduction
The workers of the whole world are following the advance of the
fascist bands in Spain with anguish. But despite the gravity of the military
situation in Spain, we are publishing a statement of accusation against the
leadership of a party that calls itself anti-fascist. We know for a fact that
there are some good comrades who agree with us about the character of this
party, but feel that the time has been ill-chosen to accuse it, as it is
necessary to concentrate on one question alone: how can we help our Spanish
brethren?
Whoever has firsthand experience of the Spanish Civil War knows that
effective help is only possible if the causes of the present setback are
understood. We would prefer only to talk about victories and fraternal unity.
But the facts force us to speak about the guilty ones to be found in our ranks;
otherwise, unity will never come about.
The Spanish Civil War made us understand that only the revolutionary
working class will fight fascism. And we know that the proletariat can only
be victorious if it follows its own independent class policy.
Till now, the reformists were the only ones to oppose this independent class
policy; today, Stalinists are no less opposed to a revolutionary policy, but
they hide behind the traditions of the glorious October Revolution. In fact,
they have abandoned revolutionary Marxism, and the experiences of the October
Revolution are a dead letter for them. They have lost faith in the revolution
and in the revolutionary strength of the masses. By virtue of an alliance
between the USSR and the imperialist democracies, mortal enemies of the
proletarian revolution, they have sacrificed their international policy.
In the USSR itself the Stalinists have murdered all the old collaborators of
Lenin, the entire Bolshevik Old Guard. They were murdered after being defamed
and dishonoured. The present leaders of the Communist International did not take
account of the fact that by so doing they were dragging their own political past
in the mud, the Bolshevik Party and the entire October Revolution. Only
international fascism can rejoice and profit from this.
All socialists or communists who dare to oppose the sinister policy of
Stalinism are accused of being agents of the Gestapo, Mussolini and Franco, and
the Stalinist press is demanding their ‘physical liquidation’. Beginning with
calumny, Stalinism does not recoil in the face of any crime to silence the voice
of the opposition. Naturally these Stalinist methods are leading to the
disintegration of the anti-fascist front in the whole world. Substituting
confusion and violence for ideological struggle, Stalinism is pushing the
international working class towards inevitable defeat. The working class must
realise that to fight fascism it must break with these methods. For this reason
we are denouncing publicly those who are guilty on account of the tragic events
that are happening in Spain.
Why have the Stalinists unleashed this campaign of calumny,
this struggle to the death, in the first instance against the POUM?
Because as far as they are concerned, at this point in time the
working class must renounce an independent revolutionary policy, it was only
natural that the Stalinists would of necessity move on to the attack against the
POUM, the most conscious representative of this policy. Two irreconcilable
political systems are opposing each other. One uses the weapons of ideological
conviction, whereas the other proclaims the physical liquidation of its
opponents.
The Stalinists are accusing the POUM, Franco’s bitterest
enemies, of being his agents.
The POUM comrades, the most intransigent supporters of revolutionary war,
are being described as defeatists.
The POUM comrades, who are the revolutionary vanguard, are being treated
as counter-revolutionaries.
In such a way the Stalinists are playing the game of the liberal
bourgeoisie, who are using them to liquidate the revolutionary elements in order
to destroy completely the last of the proletarian conquests of July 1936.
Profoundly attached as we are to the heroic struggle of the Spanish working
class, we cannot keep silent about the methods the Stalinists have used in the
fratricidal struggle that they desired.
Of those who think that it is necessary to keep silent so as not to provide
the reformists on the one hand, and our class enemies on the other, with
arguments, we ask:
Who is providing our opponents with arguments?
The one who is killing off the Bolshevik Old Guard, or he who
condemns these assassins?
Who is providing our opponents with arguments?
The one who is accusing revolutionaries of being agents of Franco,
the Gestapo, Mussolini and Japan, or he who wishes to eradicate these slanderous
methods from the working class movement?
Who is providing our opponents with arguments?
The one who is arresting, kidnapping and killing off the
revolutionaries in Spain, or he who says: Enough of the use of these fascist
methods against revolutionary activists?
I. Stalinism, Hangman of the Spanish Revolution
Russian Weapons: Fraternal Aid or Political Blackmail
19 July 1936 – Unforgettable days of struggle and triumph
against the fascist insurrection in Catalonia: unforgettable heroism of the
comrades of the CNT – FAI and the POUM, who were the first to take to the
streets, armed with revolver, old hunting gun, or often bare hands, and throw
themselves against the enemy. Thousands, dozens of thousands fell, sacrificing
their best fighters in street battles, in Majorca, on several fronts. But no
sacrifice seems too great for them to defeat Franco and lead to the victory of
the Spanish Revolution.
The international working class, and above all the workers in the fascist and
semi-fascist countries, are following with enthusiasm and hope the struggle of
the Spanish comrades in all its phases. But neither in France nor in Britain is
the pressure of the working class movement upon the ‘democratic’ governments
strong enough for arms to be delivered to Red Spain in sufficient quantities.
Whilst Hitler and Mussolini unceasingly send Franco weapons and troops in
abundance, the international working class more or less contents itself with
demonstrations of sympathy and platonic protests.
July, August, September, October, long months pass of vain and anxious
waiting, deeply compromising the principles of international solidarity. Only
one exception: Mexico sends a cargo of weapons, as a gesture of solidarity with
the Spanish Revolution. And when the Russian arms arrive at last, at the tragic
point where the fascist bands have already invaded the Madrid avenues which
already seem lost, the Spanish workers throw themselves on these weapons like a
drowning man onto a plank. They paid in gold for these Russian weapons, and
swallowed the political conditions of Stalinist support.
We shall not hold back from any sacrifice to save Madrid, they said. And it
was not only in Madrid, but also on the Aragon front, that arms were lacking. On
the Aragon front it was the militias of the CNT-FAI and the POUM who were
waiting. With modern Russian weapons they could have gone on to the conquest of
Saragossa, so contributing in a most effective and decisive fashion to what
would have broken the encirclement of Madrid. And on this occasion, the weapons
are no longer a remote dream; they are there – in the port of Cartegena.
But the militias of the anarchists and the POUM wait in vain on the Aragon
front; slowly, they understand the cruel reality; Russian weapons are political
weapons, directed against the revolutionary elements in the CNT, the FAI, and
the POUM. They are there to help the political intervention of the USSR into the
affairs of Spain; they are assisting in the development of the miserable little
group that the Catalan Communist Party represented at the start of the
revolution; they are helping to strangle the revolution and its most fruitful
and intransigent defenders.
The first blow is effected by the pressure of Russian weapons; the expulsion
of the POUM from the Generalitat. Then the struggle is directed at the base,
against all the conquests of the revolution, the committees, the revolutionary
militias, and the street patrols. The atmosphere in the whole of Catalonia
becomes more and more tense. The workers feel themselves deceived and provoked.
When Rodriguez Sala, police chief and member of the PSUC, on 3 May unleashed an
assault upon the Barcelona telephone exchange, which had been controlled by the
workers of the CNT and UGT since the revolution, the revolutionary workers took
this action as a cold and calculated provocation; resistance was organised
immediately with unexpected vigour. A general strike broke out, and shortly
afterwards barricades were set up everywhere.
And the POUM? The POUM did not abandon the proletariat in struggle, nor did
it restrict itself to giving it good advice, but placed itself fraternally by
its side, following the finest revolutionary traditions. Marx and Engels were
not unaware that the [Paris] Commune isolated could not be victorious, but they
did not hesitate for a minute in solidarising themselves with it. The
Spartakusbund understood that the January [1919] Insurrection in Berlin was only
the isolated struggle of a minority; but that did not prevent it from taking
part in it. But the Stalinists misrepresented this defence of a spontaneous
revolutionary movement (which is all the POUM did in the May days); they made it
into a putsch prepared and organised by the POUM on the orders of the
fascists.
Immediately after the May events a gigantic campaign of calumny began against
the POUM, a campaign preparing for the outlawing of the party, the arrest and
the most furious persecution of its leaders and supporters.
June 1937 – Hardly a year after the outbreak of the
revolution, thousands and thousands of anti-fascists fill up the prisons of
Republican Spain. The slogan is Moscow’s: Physical liquidation of the
vanguard of the revolutionary proletariat. Stalin mobilises his
international press and his international GPU apparatus. The socialist press
keeps silent; it cannot risk the weakening of the Popular Front simply over the
interference of Stalin into the affairs Of Spain! Veteran revolutionaries are
cast into prison, physically and morally tortured, and murdered. But this time
it is not happening in mysterious Russia, hermetically sealed off from the rest
of the world, but in a neighbouring country of the great French democracy’. The
self-styled independent press of the bourgeois left, keeping a shameful silence
over all this, becomes an accomplice of Stalinism.
What Are Our Comrades Accused Of?
The Negrin government has set some foreigners at liberty to show
the outside world that it is not covering up the crimes of the Stalinists, as
one of its ministers has said. We ‘Trotskyite fascists’ have been released to
bring to an end the annoying interventions and campaigns in our favour, and
finally to show the Stalinists that they are no longer absolute masters in
Spain.
Two dozen comrades have been released: but 15,000, of whom hardly less
than a thousand are from the POUM, remain in the official and clandestine
prisons of Republican Spain. The same accusations they raised against us
are held against them – high treason, ideological and military preparation for
the May Days, relations with Franco, Hitler and Mussolini, and preparing
attempts, not even directed in the first instance against the leaders of the
PSUC or the PCE, but against the ‘Father of the Peoples’, the ‘Sun of
Socialism’, Stalin.
A thousand times even more dishonest are the accusations against the comrades
of the FAI, and above all against the commanders and the political commissars of
the glorious anarchist battalions. Many of them have been for long months in the
Stalinist prisons of Santa Ursula, Vallmajor, etc. They are not treated as
political prisoners, but as common-law criminals, accused of theft, pillage and
murder.
We know only too well what the crimes of our comrades consist of. They were
the first in the struggle against Franco, and they were the most far-sighted and
courageous defenders of the idea that the war and the revolution are
inseparable. During the May Days they demonstrated that they would not keep
silent in the presence of the destruction of the gains of the revolution by the
Stalinists.
Calumny, defamation, murder and assassination; such are the weapons of the
Stalinists against the Spanish comrades. We shall not silence then lying, venal
press, and we are under no illusions about their international GPU apparatus. We
ourselves dispose of very few means of expression and protest, but we denounce
murder as a political weapon; for us there is only one weapon: the truth.
When we were expelled from Spain we were very kindly asked what we would do,
and not to make a scandal. Whoever thinks that we are wanting to create a
scandal is deceiving himself. We wish to tell the truth, and no more than that.
That, so it seems to us, is the most effective way of defending our Spanish
comrades and at the same time is an elementary duty of solidarity towards
them.
Here we provide the account of comrade HL. The falsity and ludicrousness of
the accusations levelled against the EC of the POUM come out clearly in it.
Along with him, many foreign comrades belonging to the POUM are ready to appear
before any legitimate court to testify that all the accusations are the product
of Stalinist imagination. Some of them were with the POUM militia at the front
from the first day of the revolution. Among them are some who occupied important
posts at staff headquarters. Would they not have noticed any acts of sabotage or
continual relations with the fascists? That would be too grotesque!
Evidence of Comrade HL
I personally was accused of participation in the May events whilst I
was actually a militiaman in the Rovira shock battalion. I was accused of having
thrown a hand grenade into the Moka Cafe, a building next door to that of the
executive committee of the POUM. As during all this time I was at the front, it
was really quite impossible for me to be throwing grenades in Barcelona. When
the investigator claimed that there were witnesses to prove my participation in
the May events, I asked to confront them. I was told that on principle,
witnesses would not be summoned.
In the interrogations the POUM was accused of the following crimes:
preparation by the executive committee of the POUM of the May insurrection and
open participation by the Rovira shock battalion, acts of sabotage by
the POUM militiamen at the front, refusal to fire on the fascists, disobeying
orders by going on leave, abandoning their posts, and acts of sabotage against
agricultural collectives near the front.
It was asserted that long before the May events the EC of the POUM
had fully prepared for an armed insurrection; that tanks, armoured cars,
cannons, machine guns, rifles and ammunition had been transported unceasingly
from the front to the rear, that the arms transportations had been going on
since the start of the month of April, and that the local committees, the
executive committee and the editorial board of La Batalla had a great
number of hand grenades, machine-guns and cannons at their
disposal.
On the Aragon front General Pozas ordered the suspension of all
leave, but the POUM militiamen took no notice. On the contrary, the Lenin
Division sent comrades to Barcelona so that they might devote themselves to the
tasks of fortifying party buildings, erecting barricades, etc. The POUM was
accused of giving the order not to fire on the tower of Huesca church, on the
pretext of the historic character of this monument; but the truth is that it was
not the POUM, but the People’s Army and the Valencia government who gave this
order.
It was supposed that whilst the fascists made speeches to the
militiamen, the POUM officers forbade opening fire, adding cynically that, as
the Valencia government had not provided ammunition, it should not be
wasted.
On the other hand, it is alleged that on the occasion of the
offensive against Huesca on l6-l9 June l937 the POUM militia, that is to say the
Rovira shock battalion, made an attack on the Green Hill, an attack that
amounted to a real act of sabotage. Instead of providing 700 Assault Guards to
reinforce the lines, they were used as substitutes for the POUM militia.
Moreover, two hours before the start of the offensive the fascists were alerted
by the explosion of a hand grenade.
I replied: No preparation for the May events took place; the POUM
buildings were without weapons, with the exception of some rifles belonging to
the permanent guard. In replying to these accusations invented out of whole
cloth, I recalled the theft of 11 tanks by the PSUC in the month of April in
full view of the whole of Barcelona. It wasn’t the places of the POUM that
resembled fortifications, but those of the PSUC, as anyone can easily
perceive.
The POUM disposed of very little war material at the front, and
would never have dreamed of transporting whatever there was to the rear, as this
would then have weakened the front.
And as far as the suspension of leave goes, it is very easy to
verify that ail the comrades who went to Barcelona at this time had special
permission from staff headquarters.
POUM officers never forbade firing on the fascists. There are
thousands of witnesses who will testify that all these accusations are mere
intentions of the GPUists!
With reference to the accusation that the POUM wished to spare its
militiamen to the detriment of the Assault Guards, this is equally false. The
700 guards were armed to the teeth with good Russian rifles and machine-guns,
weapons that the POUM militiamen had never seen. But the guards never even dared
stick their heads out of the trenches. The hand grenade was indeed thrown, but
when the militiamen of the shock battalion were already at a distance of some
metres from the Green Hill occupied by the fascists. In vain did they wait for
support from the Assault Guards.
Who Are the ‘May Criminals’?
Not only is the executive committee of the POUM accused of having
close relations with Franco and Hitler, but it is above all said to be the
originator of the May events of 1937. The mass arrests of POUM activists equally
are justified to this day by their participation in the May Days. But at the
same time the Stalinist press is foolish enough to show that the coup against
the POUM has been carefully prepared for a long time by itself giving the date
of the preparations as the month of April. We have known the preparation date
for some time now: The destruction of the POUM, and the persecution of our
anarchist comrades was one of the political conditions of the first shipments of
Russian weapons.
In its May Day appeal the POUM warned the proletariat not to allow itself to
be provoked into a putsch, an isolated action. But it did not abandon the
workers when they had taken up arms. With all its forces it tried to transform
the armed struggle into a political struggle for the defence of the gains of the
revolution.
The PSUC openly defended the slogan Win the war by giving up the
Revolution, and placed itself immediately on the side of the state power.
Although it gave orders not to interfere in the conflict, bursts of fire issued
from the building of the Catalan Communist Party which mortally wounded numerous
revolutionary workers.
But the PSUC did not limit itself to so little; we firmly declare that
its party buildings, such as the Pedrera and the Paseo di Gracia for example,
and its Carlos Marx and Voroshilov barracks, were real death-traps and dens of
murderers. It was in the Pedrera that witnesses saw for the last time the
two comrades from POUM radio who had ‘disappeared’. It was to the communist
barracks that the anarchist youth were taken, to be tortured in a most
hair-raising manner, to mutilate them, and finally to kill them off. Their
bodies were found by accident. Those of many others were never recovered. The
CNT-FAI leadership, faithful to its ill-fated policy of retreating in front of
the Stalinists, was forced to submit to mass pressure and decide to publish the
simple facts at least of the kidnapping and murders of the 12 comrades of the
Anarchist Youth.
Thus we read in the Soli (Solidaridad
Obrera) of 12 May:
A Macabre Discovery
Close examination of the 12 bodies proves that their deaths were not
only brought about in a violent manner, but that they had been clearly subjected
to horrible tortures, to judge from the mutilations, bruises and terrible blows
that their bodies exhibited.
From the diagnosis made by forensic experts it transpired that it
was a matter of these young people having been dead for at least two days. It
was established at the same time that before dying they had been tortured in a
barbarous fashion, as was proved by the fact that the bodies showed serious
bruising and blood clotting on the abdomen, which seemed inflamed and deformed.
In particular it should be added that certain traces upon one of the bodies
showed clearly that it had been suspended by the feet; the head and neck
appeared to be very purple. The head of another of these unfortunate young
comrades bore obvious signs of blows from a rifle butt.
When the identification of these unfortunate young people was
undertaken in Barcelona, it was established that they had all been members of
the Libertarian Youth of the old district of San Andre (now the Armonia de
Palomar).
Let us quote Marcel Ollivier on the murder of Berneri and
Barbieri:
In its own good time the press has announced the death of the
Italian anarchist Professor Berneri, a victim like so many others of the bloody
days of Barcelona. What it didn’t say is that Berneri, along with Barbieri, his
companion, had been cowardly murdered by the Stalinists, on whose orders can
only be surmised. When their bodies were found it was noticed that the former
had been disembowelled and the latter had been so frightfully mutilated that his
wife could only recognise him by the colour of his socks.
In such a way did the Stalinists proceed during the May Days, and
thus did self-styled communists conduct themselves towards anti-fascist
revolutionaries. For the first time in the history of the working class movement
methods were used that in principle we reject towards fascists – not out of
pity, but because we fear the ill-fated effects and repercussions of them upon
our own movement. For the first time a party calling itself anti-fascist and
revolutionary has resorted to methods that we only knew from the Nazi cellars of
fascist Germany, from Mussolini’s prisons, and on the occasion of the
destruction of the Hungarian Commune in 1919.
And if anyone should one day dare to put our comrades on trial for taking
part in the May Days, they will reveal all these crimes. And it will not be the
first time in the history of the working class movement that accused
revolutionaries will become transformed into the prosecution. If they are not to
be tried behind closed doors they will proclaim at the top of their voices who
are the real ‘May Criminals’.
The Infiltration of the GPU into the State Apparatus
Hardly six weeks after the May events, on 16 June, Nin was arrested
with Maurin, the most well-known POUM leader, and the most popular and
well-loved militant of the Catalan proletariat.
At noon on 16 June policemen came into the building of the executive
committee of the POUM at 10 Rambla de los Estudios, with a warrant for the
arrest of the members of the executive committee of the POUM. They made no
search, in the course of which they could easily have found Gorkin, Arquer, and
other leading comrades. They were ‘satisfied’ with Nin.
Almost all the members of the executive committee were arrested on the same
day and taken to the police prefecture, and then transferred to Valencia, from
where they were taken to Madrid for them to disappear into the prisons of the
GPU for some weeks.
During the night of 16-17 June mass arrests were carried out of the
supporters and sympathisers of the POUM. The Stalinists boasted afterwards that
we had been picked up like rabbits. In a word, like real spies!
Did we not know that they were preparing a decisive blow against the POUM? To
be sure, we did take account of the fact that given the policy of retreat of the
CNT-FAI leadership, the POUM could not escape illegality. The only thing that we
can reproach ourselves for is that up until 17 June we were like naive children,
who in spite of the Moscow Trials and all that had happened in the May Days had
not grasped that the Stalinists were no longer political adversaries, but
political gangsters, ready by any means to suppress us.
We were prepared for normal illegality, such as the Spanish comrades had
already lived through more than once. The PSUC knew this. Its agents, who had
infiltrated the ranks of the POUM, had given them all the necessary information
and had prepared blacklists, by means of which much later they were able to
proceed against us, on 17 June, and had handed over photographs to help identify
us.
The Stalinists not only came to arrest us, they looted us, they stole all our
clothing and books (we possessed no other riches); they did not hesitate to
break open the cases of comrades who were at that time at the front, and fought
among themselves over the division of the spoils. All sorts of documentation,
passports, and certificates, etc, were taken from us. For months to come we ran
the risk of being arrested for the future crimes of such and such a GPU agent
who was travelling on our passports.
Was 17 June an act of violence on the part of the PSUC in the sense of an
illegal action on behalf of a stronger political party against a weaker one,
with the more or less tacit approval of other parties? Basically, it was that,
and no more, from a formal point of view.
From a formal point of view, insofar as it was the official police who moved
against us in Barcelona, it was possible to permit us the luxury of not being
conducted, as formerly, into the buildings and barracks of the Communist Party,
but instead into the police prefecture, the ‘Brigada Criminal’ section. But
whilst the best militants of the POUM and the CNT-FAI had been giving their
lives in the struggle against Franco, the Spanish Communist Party and the PSUC
had been conquering the police. Then, dominating the police apparatus and
leaning upon the structure of the state, they moved quietly, firstly against us,
and then some weeks later against the revolutionary elements in the CNT-FAI.
The Stalinists not only used the official police apparatus. As in all other
countries, there was in Spain a secret state police, a counter-espionage. At the
beginning of the revolution all the anti-fascist parties were represented in it.
The Russians had not despatched their weapons without imposing political
conditions. One of these had been to hand over the state secret police to the
Stalinists. What was called in Spain the ‘cheka’, and which we called the GPU,
and what was none other than the Communist Party’s secret police could, under
the pressure of Moscow, be integrated into the state apparatus. The GPU became a
division of the Ministry of the Interior bearing a very simple and colourless
name, the ‘Grupo de Informacion’, or better still, the ‘Departmento Especial de
Informaciones del Estado’ (Special Section of State Information). Its centre to
begin with was at 24 Puerta del Angel Street; at the end of September it was
moved to l04 Paseo San Juan; and since 18 December its offices were to be found
at 321 Muntaner Street. Each of these official buildings of the ‘Ministry of the
Interior’ was at the same time a secret prison. And these clandestine prisons
cellars, garages, or better still, the first floor of the block served as
prisons.
Secret Prisons – Official Prisons
On 17 June many foreign comrades were arrested. Here are the
stories of these comrades.
The foreign comrades who were members of the POUM only spent a few hours at
the prefecture of police. In the morning we were at once separated from our
Spanish comrades, and each of us, flanked by guards armed to the teeth, was led
in single file at a distance of 10 metres apart along narrow and gloomy
alleyways to our first secret prison at 24 Puerta del Angel.
There we traversed luxurious offices with upholstered armchairs and silk
curtains. Down we went; a floor below it was already little less hospitable –
filthy and bare cellars, with grills before the windows, no daylight, air, beds,
mattresses or coverings. But a large portrait of Stalin right in front of the
door of our cell compensated us for a certain lack of comfort. We no longer
doubted that we were, as had so often been repeated to us, in the hands of the
Spanish state police, but what seemed to be rather strange was that in this
curious state police, strangers of every nationality played a dominant role,
often without speaking a single word of Spanish.
From our cells we went down yet another storey lower. This building was
really a secret prison, expressly designed as such. There was even less
ventilation, and the conditions of hygiene were intolerable. To each of our
protests they replied by discharging revolvers, or by giving the guards the
order to fire if we did not immediately keep silent.
At the end of 10 days we were led into another secret prison. This time it
was a more official building than the other, one that each of us had already
seen and visited at least once; for these were the offices of the foreign
police, the official service for delivering passports which is at 299 Corcega
Street.
Apart from the offices there was a garage. What we did not know was that
before our arrest there had been constructed in great haste, a sort of little
box inside it, almost without any ventilation, along the main wall. We were
locked up in this garage, both men and women, for weeks and months. There was
only one wash-basin and one WC, the stench of which filled the entire garage.
Lice and fleas were not lacking, and made us suffer a great deal. Our sole
contact with the outside world consisted of food provided for us by the POUM Red
Aid twice a day. Who can tell what this meant to us, and for our morale, this
help from our ‘party!
During the first months a very few people were let out. First it was a
question of the American comrades alone, then the Dutch, and then the English.
The French consul himself refused his support. In the jails remained scapegoats
without a nationality, Polish, German and Austrian emigres, with whom they hoped
and thought that they could do whatever they wished.
At the end of the third month we began to be transferred into the official
prisons. We were taken away with papers saying that we were spies and we were
brought before the special espionage tribunals in Madrid.
Doubtless in the official prisons our position was more favourable. The
conditions of hygiene were better, and we had some small rights, for example,
those of receiving newspapers, and visits, etc. Above all the Barcelona women’s
prison, under the direction of Gironella, a POUM comrade, represented a real
model prison from the point of view of hygiene and good taste. Felicien Challayé
did not fail to mention it in his pamphlet about Spain.
But something had changed from the judicial point of view. We were outside
the law, and we realised that our position could only change with a drop in the
influence of Stalinism and a new rise in the revolutionary movement.
Here are some remarks from Comrade Witte [2]
about the ‘care’ provided for the sick in Stalinist prisons:
My case is only of interest from the point of view of the treatment
of the sick in the prisons of the GPU. Many militants entirely lost their health
there, and, alas, their lives as well without the greater part of these matters
becoming publicly known.
On the same day as our arrest – June 1937 towards midnight, we were
taken to the “cheka”, 24 Puerta del Angel. Two other comrades and myself were
thrown into a cell in the cellars without a window, right at the side of the WC
whose pipe passed by the cell. Since this pipe had large holes in it, an
asphyxiating stench filled the cell. The door was always locked, and the police
received strict orders not to leave the door open, or even ajar.
The WCs were used by 35 prisoners, and in addition the numerous
guards who were watching us used it as well. The suffocating stench was so
unbearable that we suffered terribly from headaches and nausea.
After two or three days I felt stabbing pains in the lungs, and I
realised that my old chest illness would not be long in coming back. I lost my
strength at an alarming rate, the pains got worse, and at the end of the first
week fever and blood spitting began.
As I was in a state that led me to expect the worst, I had to
struggle for many weeks to be transferred to a hospital. And this is not only a
question of the Puerta del Angel, but I have experienced several other Stalinist
prisons by now with similar conditions. I declare that I escaped what already
seemed certain death, as though by a miracle But we should not forget that
hundreds of other comrades have died in the dungeons of the GPU, in
inconceivable hygienic conditions and a complete absence of the most elementary
attention which sick people need.
Some Details about Methods of Interrogation
We spent weeks and months in the secret Stalinist prisons. During
this entire time we did not see a single guard who was not a member of the Young
Communists of the PCE [Spanish Communist Party], nor an agent who did not carry
a PCE membership card, most often with a very recent date upon it. We had no
papers other than the Stalinist papers, such as Frente Rojo,
Treball, Mundo Obrero,
L’Internationale and La Correspondance
Internationale.
The grotesque side, if you like to call it that, of all the
cross-examinations, was that we had nothing to confess.
Had we really been fascists or spies, the normal police methods would have
been sufficient. But what explains the cruelty and brutality used towards us to
a certain extent is that they wanted to force us to incriminate our comrades,
and in spite of the physical and moral tortures, it all came to nothing. We
deprived the agents of the GPU in Spain of any hope of forcing us to make
confessions after the manner of Moscow. They never forgave us for it. All the
comrades known to us, whether socialists, anarchists or POUM members, preferred
all the suffering, to allow themselves to be beaten up, or to be shut up in the
notorious cubicles of the Santa Ursula (copied from the ‘Bunkers’ in the Nazi
prisons) rather than betray a single comrade. Even the youngest and least
experienced gave moving proof of their faith in our ideas and their steely
contempt for the pseudo-communists of the GPU.
The interrogations generally took place at night, often between 11 o’clock at
night and six o’clock in the morning. Otherwise the prisoner was woken up
several times a night to wear him down, and they came to take him for
questioning in the morning, when they thought that he had already been broken by
fatigue. The interrogations always began in the same way. ‘Everything is
going badly for you. Your friends have all confessed. You know that we can do
whatever we want with you. You know that you will never come out of this
building alive.’ A revolver was thrown on the table to emphasise these
words, or was placed against the temples of the accused, or was fired into the
air. If this was not enough the prisoner was put into a car. Once outside
Barcelona, he was told to get out, a bandage was placed over his eyes, the
guards cocked their rifles, and fired them. Then the bandage was taken off, the
prisoner was put back in the car, and told: ‘We have time to kill this dog
tomorrow.’ And the next day the same game was repeated.
Everything was put to use to intimidate and demoralise our comrades. Even
corruption was tried. Young comrades, who had not been long in the movement,
were told:
You’re an honest lad, a sincere communist. You don’t want to defend
the fascists of the POUM or the FAI. Come with us. You will find real friends in
our anti-fascist club. You must understand that it is necessary for us to win
the war. We always need devoted young men who know how to work. You speak
foreign languages. You could go a long way. We will set you at liberty, and you
would have no more work to do than stroll round Barcelona, accompanied by a
comrade, naturally, and you would help us to find these dirty POUM fascists.
Here is L’Internationale, and La Correspondance
Internationale. Read them. You will understand many
things.’
When they understood that neither intimidation nor corruption had
the slightest effect upon us, the tone changed.
‘So, you do not wish to tell us the names of these fascist
criminals. Well then, you will rot in prison. And if by chance you escape from
us, if you are set at liberty, and you think that you can all tell lies –
our apparatus is international. You would be wise to understand this, for we
have ways of making you keep silent.’
When nothing was provided to eat for 36, 48 or more hours to
prepare for the interrogations, comrades were asked to sign a paper saying: ‘I
certify that I have been well treated’. This reminds us of something that some
comrades have experienced already once before; but that was in Germany, in the
Nazi prisons.
Comrade H. describes:
At the start of the interrogation a revolver was always thrown on to
the table and played about with, and bullets were brought out, making it appear
as if they wanted to shoot. It was repeated: “You understand that we can shoot
you whenever we wish”. Otherwise I would be told: “If you do not do what we
want, revenge will be taken on your brother” (a militiaman in the International
Brigades). When I refused to sign, they shut me up in a cellar without giving me
anything to eat for several days.
He quoted for us a striking example of the methods of
falsification:
A day before my release a piece of paper was given to me and I was
asked to write out my curriculum vitae (my political career) – how I
came to Spain, with the help of what organisation, etc. The paper was returned
to me a little later, but with astonishment I read at the top:
“International Brigade, Barcelona Section, Calle Sicilia 22”, and I
was coolly told that from then on I could consider myself as a member of the
International Brigade. It was revealed, moreover, that next an article of mine
would appear in the journal Libertad in Albacete. I asked,
“About me, or by me?”. They replied to me, “One of your own articles, signed by
you”.
I never had any intention of going to Albacete, or of writing
articles for the Stalinist press. But following this falsification I have been
considered as a deserter from the International Brigade.
Comrade PD [3] went
through nearly 60 hours of questioning. It was found to be particularly
suspicious that there was no contradiction between her first and her final
statements. She was not forgiven because the brilliant career that had been
promised her had not tempted her.
Here is her testimony:
I was also arrested on 17 June 1937. After spending 10 days in the
Puerta del Angel, and nine weeks in the “Calle Corcega 299”, on the 28 August I
was transferred to the women’s prison at Las Corta along with EH [4] and KL [5].
On 11 September two agents of the “Grupo de Informacion” came to
look for me, under the pretext of setting me free. I refused to leave the prison
before seeing a certificate attesting that I was free. After a long altercation
I was shown a certificate made out by the prefecture, according to which I was
not to be set at liberty, but was to be transferred to the Puerta del Angel.
When I got there, I was conducted to a room that had previously been the
building’s private chapel. The first night, and all the other nights, we were
quite often woken up by rats coming from the older areas. All sorts of
precautions had to be taken to safeguard the next day’s food.
If I wanted to go to the WC I had to knock and shout for a good long
time, and on every occasion a guard came with me. I was not brought anything to
eat on the third day. At 10 o’clock next morning I was called for and brought
into an office, two floors above. There were four foreigners there, including
the agents Anton and Benjamin. They asked me to sit on a chair in the middle of
the room. A lamp upon the table behind which the four people sat, was
illuminated in such a way that its light directly lit up my face. For five
minutes the four men did not cease looking at me. Then they began to talk to me,
and their first remarks were the following: “You are secretary of the POUM
military committee, and you can tell us many interesting things”. I replied that
neither at the time, nor previously, did I ever have that post. Then another
said: “Be reasonable, if you wish to save your life”. I said that I knew that I
was in the hands of the GPU and that they could ask me whatever they wished, but
that my reply depended on me alone, and I would not be forced, even by threats.
Then another added: “But you also know that we have ways of making you talk”.
Saying this, he took his revolver and placed it upon the table. Then I was asked
what my relations were with the executive committee of the POUM. After replying
that I had none, I was told that this was a lie, that four members of the
executive committee of the POUM had been arrested in my apartment, that every
day I had been in the house where they were found, and that proved that I had
direct links, and probably intimate ones with one, several, or even all of the
members of the executive committee.
Every day of the two weeks that followed I was questioned for
several hours, and that often, moreover, when the food distribution took place.
When I was led back to my cell after questioning I found that there was nothing
there for me. The food was very bad in general, and as often I didn’t even
receive it, I suffered from hunger. I learned by chance that every day the POUM
had two meals brought for three of the comrades who were also in this building
and for me, but I never received anything. I protested at this treatment in the
course of the questioning. I was told that we were involved in a full-scale war,
that everyone had to make sacrifices, that the provision of supplies in any case
was far better than in any bourgeois country, and finally, that I was not there
for my health, but because I had done actions harmful to the Spanish state.
I was asked why my party was doing nothing for me, and if I did not reckon
that my comrades had abandoned me. Knowing that nothing of what the Red Aid
of the POUM had brought for me had been allowed to pass, I replied: “If my party
has done nothing for me, that does not mean that it has abandoned me, but that
it needs the money for more deserving cases. But if; as I expect, food was
brought for me, and has not reached me, I understand perfectly.” They did not
return to the subject.
They questioned me on this basis, always pretending that I was the
secretary of the military committee of the POUM. Questions were put to me about
at least l00 people, and I was asked for information on them. It was a matter of
members of the POUM, foreigners and Spaniards, and above all militiamen of the
Lenin Battalion. At each name I was presented with a photograph [6] whilst they stared fixedly at me, and it was all too
clear that they wanted to know the names of comrades who had not yet been
arrested, and who would be the last to believe their accusations of
espionage.
A letter for the Swiss consul in Barcelona had been found on me at
the time of my arrest. Then I was told that all foreign embassies in Spain
without exception were nests of fascists, and that my links with the consul were
yet further proof confirming that I was a fascist.
During the interrogations I was often told that with my contacts and
my knowledge of foreign languages I could render immense services to the
world revolution. Above all, thanks to the intervention of my brother-in-law, a
good Stalinist, who had intervened to save me inside the Spanish Communist
Party, I would be fraternally helped to find the true path. I understood
all too well the sense of this “fraternal” aid, so once and for all I asked that
no further such offers should be made to me. I said that I did not fall into the
hands of the POUM as a poor innocent victim, but that I had joined that party
because I understood the POUM’s policy, the only revolutionary policy in Spain,
and that none of us would betray the party, even to save his own
skin.
At the beginning of October, we were transferred to another prison,
Calle Vallmajor 5. As usual, nothing was provided there, naturally; there were
no mattresses, no coverlets, and on the first day nothing to eat. We were shut
up in the smallest little cells in threes and fours, with the windows and
shutters dosed and barred, and were told: “If you try to open or break a window,
the guards have orders to shoot immediately”. As there was no electricity we
were without light starting at four o’clock in the afternoon, and it was
impossible to read until the following day. We received neither newspapers nor
visits, and we were rigorously isolated. Exit from the cell was only allowed for
going to the WC. As there were only three of them in the entire building, they
were always in a repugnant state. Despite everything, we were always being
blamed for going too often, and we were threatened that we would not be allowed
to go there at all. The guards, and the police above all, all of them communists
without exception, showed extreme brutality towards us.
When I fell ill, the doctor of the “Grupo de Informacion” came to
see me and diagnosed quite a serious angina. He gave me a prescription. I gave a
policeman 10 pesetas with a request to buy me some medicine. I never saw the
money again, nor did I receive the medicine.
In the Cheka of Corcega Street
In this instance it is not a question of the state authority, but
of a particular building in the same street that had been transformed into a
Stalinist private prison. We have since learned that it was here that the GPU
agents led our comrade Kurt Landau.
Comrade J.H. Tr– [7] spent over two months
there, and gives us the following account of it:
I fought for over a year in the ranks of the Durutti Column; I was
wounded twice, in the left leg by shell-fire, and in the head by a bullet. On 11
September 1937 I was arrested in the Moka Cafe in Barcelona. I was taken to the
secret prison of the Calle Corcega, where the head was Gaspar Daiman Carbonell,
well-known for his extraordinary brutality. For 28 days I remained there; and in
all this time none of my comrades succeeded in locating the place where I was
staying. As they could find nothing against me, I was transferred to the
“Lechera”, and later to the police prefecture. An order was sent to set me at
liberty, but it was not carried out, because the police of the GPU were waiting
for me at the door of the prefecture with a car to take me once again to Corcega
Street.
About midnight I was led up to the third floor into the chiefs
office and the first interrogation began. The setting was in harmony with the
interrogator. I was seated on a sofa, and Dalmau was on one side of me, and one
of his lieutenants, Calero, on the other, playing with an enormous tapering
dagger; yet other policemen were there who at all times questioned me in chorus.
At the same time an accusing voice behind a screen affirmed that I had been seen
in a particular car in front of the Palace of Justice on the day of the criminal
attempt upon Andreu, the president of the Court of Justice.
The spectacle was capable of crushing the nerves of the very
strongest. Fatigue, weakness, questioning, insults, the enormous electric lamp
that lit up my face, and the dagger that threatened me, all mingled together in
my brain. Hoping to get through the nightmare more quickly, I swore: “Yes it was
me. Yes, that was me with Azaña and Companys!” It was the breakdown of all their
hopes to make me confess. So the time had come to change the procedures. Dalmau
stood up. “You know what you have to do – usual”, he said. Down we went. I was
made to go into a bathroom. They threw a piece of soap into the bath and turned
the taps on. I watched the spectacle without being able to grasp the intentions
of these men. When they had finished their preparations, the questioning
continued. After about half an hour Calero spoke to his aides: “What do you
think about it? It only remains to put him in.” And without my being able to
understand why anyone should want to make me take a bath at night and in outdoor
clothes, I was thrown into the air, with my head towards the floor and my feet
towards the ceiling.
Then the real torture began. A fresh question was put with my head
touching the surface of the water. Naturally my replies were similar to the
preceding ones. I already had no more than vague memories. My head was submerged
to the bottom of the bath. I remember that my wrists, swollen by the pressure of
the handcuffs, made me suffer cruelly.
At the bottom of the bath I tried to resist as far as possible. For
some seconds I held my breath, but then I could resist no longer. The air gave
out on me. I began to take in water by the mouth, the nostrils and the ears.
Then I lost control of myself. The instinct for self-preservation alone
survived, which defended itself passionately.
I do not know absolutely how long I remained in this position. When
I came to, I had been thrown on to a chair, with my head hanging down one side
and my legs over the other. I had vomited up a great amount; the soap was an
excellent emetic. My head spun round as if I were drunk. But when I regained my
strength, the interrogation began. Before systematically launching the
questioning, in the middle of police injuries, I was yet again plunged into the
bath. The police had lost total control of themselves. They struck me with all
the brutality of which they were capable, punctuating their hand blows and kicks
with vulgar phrases: “Son of a whore! Pimp of an anarchist! We are going to
finish with all of you!”
After long hours I was led into another room. The police undressed
me and sat me on a mattress. They took away all my clothes, and there I
remained, completely nude, for four days. I did not even have a covering when I
went out to cater for my needs. Shortly after I recovered, again I was summoned
to be set down on the third floor. It was repeated on two further occasions. I
lived in a state of hyper-excitement, convinced that all these arrangements
would end with me being sent to the bathroom. One night they ordered me to climb
into a certain car. The car took Salmeron Street and led towards the Babassada.
Once out of Barcelona, they forced me to climb out. “You may prepare yourself
for death”, they told me. Again they offered me a reward if I would reveal the
names of those responsible for the attempt on Andreu. Then they made me get back
up into the car, and we returned to the prison. “We are going to give you one
more day to repent”, they said.
After two months of such treatment comrade Tr– was transferred to
the police prefecture and then to the Barcelona model prison. His body will bear
forever the marks of suffering undergone in the Stalinist
prison.
(Published in an illegal POUM pamphlet Los Antros del
Terror Stalinista [Stalin’s Caves of
Terror].)
Santa Ursula, the ‘Dachau’ of Republican Spain
It is impossible to talk about all the secret and semi-secret
prisons of Republican Spain. A whole book could be written about the details of
the famous ‘state prison’ of the Calle Vallmajor 5 in Barcelona. We are tempted
to make a comparison between the prisons that the Stalinists prepared specially
for us in the old monasteries with the prison for fascist ladies at Torrente,
near Valencia, about which Madeleine Jacob has just composed a eulogy in an
article that appeared in the Oeuvre of 24 February 1938:
Ah, it is so good in this prison! The pretty prison that lies there,
at Torrente, an avenue of Valencia. The prison of the Cuas is lost in the midst
of orange trees. An immense park, with sunlit terraces ... I have seen many
prisons, in France and elsewhere, but I have never known more attractive,
approximating less to the definition of a prison than that of the fascist ladies
shut up in the beautiful college of Torrente ... They have nothing to complain
of. In no way have they been better housed, better looked after, better treated
... better protected.
We do not wish to compare either the ‘care’ or the food. We are
simply going to describe one prison: Santa Ursula, the ‘Dachau’ of Republican
Spain.
The ancient convent of Santa Ursula, transformed into a prison and
exclusively under the control of the Spanish Communist Party, has acquired a sad
reputation even beyond the frontiers of Spain. It is not by accident that
prisoners have called it ‘the fascist factory’. For many who entered it as
anti-fascists left it as burning enemies of Republican Spain.
We shall refrain from speaking about conditions of hygiene, lack of beds, of
mattresses and of covers. That is nothing out of the ordinary in Stalinist
prisons. Let us rather take a look at the semi-medieval tortures practised all
the time at Santa Ursula, and the treatment of prisoners that partakes of the
fascist manner. It is in the interests of the cause of anti-fascism that all
revolutionary workers should come out vigorously against the procedures of the
GPU with regard to anti-fascist prisoners. Such methods should equally be
condemned towards class enemies. The revolution may eliminate its enemies, but
should not hand them over to sadistic tortures. We continue to affirm that the
tortures at Santa Ursula were above all used against revolutionary workers, and
not against fascists.
The interrogations at Santa Ursula took place at night. The interrogations
were conducted by Russians, Germans, Hungarians, etc, all of them members of
their respective communist parties. In view of the complete impossibility of
obtaining confessions by the normal procedures, they have resorted to the most
bestial brutalities. The hands of the prisoner are tied behind his back, and if
the accused does not confess (generally there is nothing to confess) he is
beaten. All night long the prison echoes with the groans and cries of tortured
comrades. With broken teeth, holes in the head, lacerated sides and
haemorrhages, in such a manner they are returned after the interrogations to
their cells, sometimes carried along by guards. We spent six months in Santa
Ursula. We did not know a single case of a real spy or a saboteur among those
who were questioned in this manner.
We will quote only one case among thousands. Engineer E was arrested for
espionage by the GPU. He waited in vain for his trial for seven months. Gravely
ill and tubercular, he was finally transferred to hospital. In the middle of his
treatment he was led back into the prison, where there was nothing provided for
sick prisoners. The comrade died in the month of August. He was not the only one
to succumb to the tortures and the very special conditions in Santa Ursula.
An account of the tortures in the cubicles would make up a chapter all of its
own. There are some where the prisoner can only stand upright, and others only
crouched up. Two small holes in the door are the only openings for ventilation.
When shut up there for several days without eating, the physical and moral state
of the prisoners can only be imagined, for men as well as women, without our
needing to describe it.
We would recall only the case of a young Belgian militiaman who had been
wounded at the front; after some weeks spent in hospital he was to return to the
front. The night of his departure he was arrested and shut up in one of the
cubicles, one metre high or slightly less He spent three days crouched up there
with nothing to eat; after this he was cynically returned to the front, saying
that this punishment had been inflicted upon him because he had been found drunk
in the street!
Comrade Th, who spent some weeks in Santa Ursula, had occasion to speak with
many prisoners and to verify their statements. He adds the following cases:
The R case. R is a man of about 50 years old. He has been
in Spain for 10 years. He is a German, but he left Germany 26 years ago. He has
never been interested in politics.
One day he was arrested and taken to Santa Ursula. During the interrogation
all his teeth were smashed, and he did not retain a single one. As he had
nothing to confess, he was shut up in a cubicle for eight days where he was not
able to stand upright,
One day, a GPU agent entered his cell. Comrade R refused to confess to what
he had not done, so he was threatened with having his fingers cut off one by
one, and having his eyes torn out. He was beaten up several times in a most
brutal fashion. The interrogation was given up, but he was still not set at
liberty.
The Br case. Br underwent the most terrible tortures. He
had been weak all his life. He was twice shut up in a cubicle, on each occasion
for several days. On 19 August I had occasion to overhear a violent altercation
between Br and the head of the GPU. I saw Br only three days afterwards,
fainting in his cell. He had to remain for three days and nights on a chair on
the orders of the chief. The guards, who were changed every 10 hours, had the
strictest orders not to allow him to sleep.
The K case. Immediately upon his arrival at Santa Ursula,
K was shut up in a cubicle 1.8 metres high by O.8 metres wide. In the door was a
hole with a diameter of four centimetres. K suffered greatly from lack of air
and caught a fever that weakened him to such an extent that he could no longer
even go to the WC alone. When he was already nearly dead he was finally put in a
cell. That same night he was taken to the commissariat at Calle Salmeron 8,
where for an entire night he was forced to listen to the cries of his fellow
prisoners. He was beaten with iron bars and his hair was torn out in order to
force his friends to sign falsified dictated statements.
In the cellars of Santa Ursula are to be found the coffins of nuns. A
suffocating odour of decomposition fills the cellars when these are opened, and
phosphorescent bodies everywhere lie partly exposed. And in the cold and damp
cellars prisoners are shut up clad in shirt and underpants, without covering and
without food.
On the other hand, prisoners who do not ‘wish’ to confess are warned that
they are to be shot in an hour’s time. They are permitted to draw up their
wills. Afterwards, they are led to the cemetery, and the guards cock their
rifles; then the execution is countermanded and remitted to the following day.
The report that burning paper is placed beneath the soles of prisoners to make
them talk one would hope is a malicious invention of the fascists. But it
equally is part of the interrogation methods in Santa Ursula.
We have no intention of complaining about the insufficient food; we know that
supplying the front must take precedence over all other needs. But we cannot
disguise our indignation seeing that fascist prisoners never lack for anything.
Their families are allowed to bring them food, tobacco, soap, beds and covers,
whereas the revolutionary workers are lying upon the floor, lacking practically
everything. All this is taking place under a ‘Popular Front’ government!
What was the social composition of the prisoners in Santa Ursula? During the
months of March and April they were for the most part doctors, priests, lawyers,
and big businessmen, political adversaries of the Republican regime. But the
greater part of these prisoners were soon released, even those who openly
proclaimed themselves to be fascists. In their place have come workers, old
Socialist Party members, syndicalists, anarchists, and POUM members. This change
was so striking that even the bourgeois elements noticed it. Whereas real
fascists were set at liberty, revolutionary anti-fascists were once more forced
to go on hunger strike to protest against their arrests by the GPU and the
tortures they had endured.
Airmen, journalists, specialists and volunteers also fill the cells of Santa
Ursula. The Italian emigre B, who made the famous flight over Rome scattering
anti-fascist leaflets is also there. And he came to Spain to work for the
anti-fascist cause!
Yet another category of prisoners must be mentioned; aircraft and war
materials suppliers, who often came as representatives of important foreign
manufacturers of war materials. After delivering one, two, or several planes,
the GPU arrested them as spies or saboteurs. Technicians coming from every
country to offer their inventions, having reached the lobbies of the government
departments, have been shut up in the private prisons of the GPU. We knew one
such ‘spy’, a Norwegian trade unionist who got together a million pesetas in his
own country and brought them to Spain. There was another such ‘fascist spy’
there, a French airman, a member of a pacifist organisation of veterans, who had
brought to Valencia an aeroplane armed with a machine-gun. The representative of
a great war materials manufacturer was arrested, among others, after the GPU had
taken all his plans and designs for the most modern and up-to-date machine-guns.
In this way the Minister for War never got to see them.
The guards, almost without exception, all members of the Communist Party, who
were there were all corrupt and demoralised, and very often drunk. On more than
one occasion they openly fraternised with the fascists in their cells.
The old convent of Santa Ursula belongs to the Spanish Communist Party. It is
not listed among the official state prisons. It is one of numerous GPU prisons
into which the Stalinists have caused our comrades to disappear. Strong pressure
from abroad has put an end to some of the more scandalous abuses in Santa
Ursula. But the Stalinist methods, copied faithfully from fascist methods, have
not, however, disappeared.
Editors’ Footnotes
1. V.A. Antonov-Ovseyenko
(1884-1939) had led the storming of the Winter Palace in 1917, and at one time
had been a supporter of the Russian Left Opposition. He was recalled from Spain
in 1937 and died in prison at the end of 1938 or the beginning of 1939.
2. Witte – the pseudonym of
Demetrius Giotopoulos (1901-1965), leader of the Greek Archeio-Marxists, at one
time part of the Trotskyist movement. Comrade Rogers met him in Paris shortly
after his release from prison in Spain.
3. PD – Pauline Dobler was a Swiss
national. Considerable doubt hangs over the whole of her testimony. She was
actually an agent of the GPU planted in the ranks of the POUM by her controller,
Nerst (Leopoldo), and had been imprisoned along with Gorkin’s wife Luisa in
order to avert suspicion. She was later denounced to Gorkin by the Menshevik
leader Abramovitch (J. Gorkin,
Les Communistes contre la Revolution
Espagnole, Paris 1978, p.206, n14)
4. Else Honberger, a German
companion of Kurt Landau’s wife (J. McGovern,
Terror in Spain,
ILP pamphlet, n.d. [1938], p.1l, n).
6. The extensive series of
photographs of POUM militants in the hands of the GPU had been taken by the spy
Narvitch. In February 1938 he was shot by four members of a POUM action squad in
revenge for his betrayal of Andrés Nin. Grandizo Munis and one of the two
Trotskyist groups in Spain were arrested and accused of the killing
(
Cahiers Leon Trotsky, no.2, July/ September 1979, p.131).
7. J.H. Tr–. Juan H. Trepat
(Gorkin,
op. cit., n3 above, p.203).
Katia Landau
Stalinism in Spain
(cont’d)
Revolutionary History, Vol.1 No.2, Summer 1988. Used by
permission.
II. Comrades who have disappeared
Stalin purges the Revolutionary Vanguard
Commencing with a slander campaign the Stalinists did not hesitate
to move into action for the physical destruction of the revolutionaries.
We wish to tell here how they set about executing the direct orders of
Moscow. Until now the arrest and murder of the best militants of the
revolutionary movement has been the prerogative of fascism. Stalinism, a
political tendency that calls itself anti-fascist and socialist, and recruits a
large part of its supporters from the ranks of the proletariat, is today
committing the same crimes as fascism.
The Case of Andrés Nin
No-one knows what has become of him, what has become of one of the
most passionate advocates of the proletariat of Spain. (Victor Serge,
Farewell to Andrés Nin).
The story of Nin is one that requires no comment. We will therefore
sketch out the salient features of his life, and recall his mysterious end.
As a young pioneer attached to the Socialist Party in 1919, Nin announced to
the congress of the CNT that he had passed syndicalism. The dictatorship of
Martinez Anido forced him underground. His comrade Cornella was slain alongside
him by the gunmen of the ‘Free Trade Union’.
We now reproduce the account of our comrade Victor Serge, an intimate and
faithful friend of Andrés Nin.
Nin was more than an old friend to me, more a sort of brother – by
his ideals, the paths he trod, the trials he underwent, and all that there could
be of what cannot be expressed in the contact between one man and another. I
knew him, I know what he is, and what he meant to all of us. This is not the
first time that I have written “For Andrés Nin” at the head of an article. It
was necessary to carry on a tenacious campaign to get him out of prison in 1922
in Correspondance Internationale, L’Humanité
and all the Communist papers.
As a young militant of the CNT, he lived a while in Egypt, and then
was a delegate to the third Congress of the Communist International. At the same
time he met there Joaquin Maurin, his companion along the road, Francesco Ghezzi
[8], and several others who since have not
betrayed, who never will betray. In the meantime Edouardo Dato, the President of
Alfonso XIII’s Council, was killed in the open Madrid Street by Ramon Casanellas
who took refuge in Moscow. The Madrid government wished to find the hand of
Moscow in this attempt, and blamed Nin – in defiance of common sense, but that
wasn’t the point. He was arrested by accident in Berlin. With the support of the
Soviet legation we succeeded in wrecking the extradition procedure, and he
returned to Moscow. Elected by a Congress to be the second secretary of the Red
International of Labour Unions, he carried out these functions for some years,
working with Lozovsky, when he was becoming more and more flabby and weak. He
told me about its deceit in all our meetings. The RILU, instead of becoming a
living and healthy international focus, became more bureaucratic month by month,
ending up by becoming no more than a vast machine for mounting intrigues and
disseminating occasional aberrant slogans. In 1923 Andrés Nin joined the first
Left Opposition of Preobrazhensky, Piatakov and Trotsky. But he was not as yet
entirely ready for these struggles; he suffocated in the offices of the
Profintern and it should be said that the very atmosphere of these offices
suffocated him. He gave way. He gained all the more credit when, three years
later, he took up completely the decisive struggle amongst those who, at great
personal sacrifice, wanted to make one last attempt to reform the Bolshevik
party, and the Stalinist bureaucracy that was confidently holding onto power.
Then he gained even more credit by sending a short but categorical letter to the
Central Committee, more to the point than most that the CC received: “The
Opposition is right. I am with it without reservations”, declared the secretary
of the RILU. I do not know what the statutes of the International made of it,
but he was no longer secretary of the RILU the next day. And he continued to
joke, for he was a comrade of rare good humour, while he waited for them to come
to arrest him along with the others. For my part, I was waiting for the same
thing, for the same reasons. We would bump into one another either at my place
or his, in Leningrad or in Moscow, somewhat amazed to be still at (relative)
liberty. We had to do various jobs in order to survive. Nin set about
translating, Dostoyevsky first of all, and then Boris Pilnyak, into Catalan. He
wrote a book defending the idea of the dictatorship of the proletariat against
Monsieur Cambo, the Catalan theoretician of the dictatorship. He collected texts
and memoranda. A hard worker, and rather home-loving, he lived only for his
work, along with his companion, Olga Kareva, and their little daughters. We lost
a mutual friend, George Andreychin, from the American IWW, who “capitulated”,
and told us, with his face turned away, “I am a coward”. (in which USSR prison
is George Andreychin now?) While surveying the Spanish Revolution, Nin sent the
CC another really extraordinary letter, with a view to forcing them to let him
leave or imprisoning him – and took a great risk. There was a strong chance of
his being deported to some Siberian place. But finally they decided to deport
him. He found himself in a street in Riga, with his wife and kids, utterly
penniless.
Back in Spain, Andrés Nin threw himself into activity. Although
free, he was several times imprisoned again. He edited the press of the
Communist Left, the Trotskyist Opposition, translated books, wrote leaflets and
gathered people together without sparing himself, refusing careers both easy and
advantageous. He broke finally with Leon Davidovich Trotsky over theoretical and
tactical matters, though he remained attached to him by an old and lasting
friendship. He drew closer to Joaquin Maurin, and it was from the fusion of
their two groupings that the Workers Party of Marxist Unification was born in
1935. In 1933, when the star of Señor Lerroux and Gil Robles was rising, the
Republican police attempted a quite serious blow against Nin. Arrested in
Barcelona and conducted to an unknown destination, he arrived, no one knows how,
in a prison in Algeciras. Events were to save him.
A minister, or rather, councillor of justice in the Taradellas
cabinet that had been formed the day after the workers’ victory of 19 July 1936,
Andrés Nin tried to push this government in the direction of the revolutionary
gains, and for his part proceeded to the most radical conceivable reform of the
apparatus of justice. He was the creator of the new Popular
Tribunals.
He was only 45 years old, but he had already lived more than twenty
years of activist life. For six years he quietly risked his life and liberty
every day, with a healthy optimism, though without any illusions, as I know
well. His conversation and writings reveal an active and far-sighted
revolutionary thought. His entire life was a straight path.
Andrés Nin was arrested on 16 June 1937, two days before the date
set for the POUM congress. It was an isolated arrest, and it was only later that
we understood why the police, who had come to arrest the entire EC of the POUM,
had been so little ‘demanding’. The Stalinists understood better than anyone
what the loss of Nin would mean to the POUM. Nin had not only dared to tell the
truth about the role of Stalinism in the Spanish Revolution and within the
international revolutionary movement; he had committed the unpardonable crime of
counterposing to Stalin in Spain a party, doubtless not very large, but growing
more and more because of its ideological solidity. The leader of this party,
Nin, the old ‘renegade’ of the Communist International, had to disappear. Olga
Nin saw her husband in the police prefecture in Barcelona on the afternoon of 16
June. When she came back to bring him food and blankets an hour later he could
no longer be found, and no one could inform her what had become of him.
The Stalinist press was not lacking in cynicism on this subject. Let us look
at the facts.
Some days after his arrest the famous Agence Espagne
(Spain Agency), and then all the Stalinist journals in the
peninsula and in other countries, announced the discovery of a document
devastating for the POUM. It was a question of a plan of Madrid found upon a
fascist by the name of Golfin, and on the other side a message to Franco was
written in invisible ink, in which it was a matter of a certain N, deemed to be
an active agent in Republican territory. The journals in question allowed it to
be understood that the initial stood for Nin.
The inquiry carried out by the first International Delegation consisting of
Fenner Brockway, the secretary of the ILP [Independent Labour Party], Louzon and
Charles Wolff came to the conclusion that the document had been stolen (we can
well imagine by whom) by a police chief and that the part written in invisible
ink had been added afterwards.
To become better informed about Nin’s destination, the above-named inquirers
made their way to Valencia, where they were able to talk with several members of
the government. M. Irujo then made the following declaration, which referred not
only to Nin but also to the other members of the EC of the POUM: ‘I can assure
you that none of the detainees has suffered either a scratch or bad treatment,
nor any pressure other than that of their own consciences’.
About 25 July it became known beyond the borders of Spain with some
astonishment from a speech by Frederica Montseny, who had previously been a
minister in the government of Largo Caballero, in which she represented the CNT.
Word for word she said: ‘But it has ended by us being told that the corpses of
Nin and two other comrades have been found in Madrid’.
In the face of the indignation arising inside and outside Spain, on 29 July
the minister of justice addressed a note to the newspapers listing the activists
of the EC of the POUM held in official governmental prisons.
The name of Andrés Nin did not figure there.
Some days later, the Spain Agency recorded the disappearance
of Nin ... and concluded that he had escaped! This reminds us of the shameless
rumours about Joaquin Maurin, whom the Stalinists claim to have seen arm-in-arm
with Queipo de Llano in Seville! [9]
A second commission of inquiry on which were represented in
particular James Maxton, president of the Independent Labour Party and a member
of parliament, and Andre Weil-Cariel, a member of the executive committee of the
Socialist Federation of the Seine (SFIO) left for Spain on 19 August and
returned on 26 August. It reported:
1. Confirmation that the N document was
worthless.
2. A certain number of declarations about the fate of Andrés Nin.
Indalecio Prieto, the war minister, admitted that the arrest of Nin and the POUM
leaders had not been decided by the government.
M. Irujo, the Minister of
Justice, asserted that ‘Nin has never been in a governmental prison’.
M.
Zugazagoitia, the Minister of the Interior, affirmed that the disappearance of
Nin had occurred against the will of the government.
Nin’s Odyssey
From a certain number of indications provided, whether by the
second delegation, the Spanish anarchists, or imprisoned POUM comrades, it
emerged that before the disappearance of Nin, he had been transported from one
prison to another, all of them secret, and all GPU!
When he had come from Barcelona he was first of all imprisoned in the
building of the Special Brigade, Paseo de la Castillana in Valencia, then in the
Cheka of Atocha in Madrid, and then in the Cheka of the Pardo, again in Madrid.
Then he was taken to its isolated villa at Alcala de Henares, where all trace of
him is lost.
The names of the three policemen who arrested Nin are known (Ramallo,
Valentin and Rosell). According to the comrades of the CNT the man who brought
about his disappearance was a Russian commander from the General Staff of the
International Brigade, Orlov. [10]
The police chief, Ortega, who was under suspicion of complicity, and who in
any case could not find Nin again, was dismissed. But he was replaced by a
Stalinist called Moron, who once the investigation opened, set at liberty the
police who had been arrested on the order of the investigating judge.
What Became on Nin?
This question can only be answered by guessing. Two things,
however, seem to be definite.
The first is that this act of calculated terror is marked by the hand of
Stalinism. The extent of the communist attacks against the POUM in the month
preceding, the origin of the accusations of espionage, the transport of
prisoners to the headquarters of the GPU, the assassination and disappearance of
other revolutionary comrades (Berneri, Barbieri, Erwin Wolf, Marc Rhein, Kurt
Landau), and finally the more or less veiled confessions of the ministers to the
Second Delegation, all incriminate the gentlemen of the Third International.
The second is that Nin has not been found. If he did appear, he would have
far too much to say, and we know that he would not keep silent.
In the period that extends from the month of August 1936 (the first Moscow
Trial) to the days we live in now, a time that has witnessed the extermination
of all the Old Bolsheviks, all those who had taken part in the October
Revolution or the building of the Third International, a militant like Nin, who
had been a witness and participant in the struggles of old, had lived through
the Moscow years, and had an international reputation, could not have been
spared.
The ‘isolated villa’ at Alcala de Henares is close to a Soviet aerodrome. Was
Nin taken to be questioned by the Russian officers who were to be found there?
Was he taken off and transported to Russia? [11] Was he killed where he was? No one knows.
Andrés Nin was one of those who compel respect by the whole assemblage of
their human and intellectual qualities. He is one of the greatest victims of
this new tyranny which is called Stalinism.
In the extent to which eyes are opened and illusions fall, the degenerate
leaders of the Third International are obliged to resort to ever more violent,
ever more cynical, and ever more odious practices to maintain their domination
and to rid themselves of those who stand in their way.
But the time will come when blood cries out for justice, and when one of
those changes of opinion will happen that stays the hand of the assassins.
Slowly, but surely, one such movement is in the process of happening. Coming in
the middle of a series of atrocities, the disappearance of Nin and so many other
revolutionaries has aroused an immense movement of indignation both in Spain and
in the entire world. The death of Nin will prove unfortunate for those who
perpetrated it.
The Landau Case
Kurt Landau was arrested on 23 September by two persons claiming to
be policemen, accompanied by a guard. We soon understood that this time as well
it was not a matter of an arrest, but of a kidnapping. On this subject the
comrades of the Der Funke group in Paris wrote:
Thursday 23 September 1937. Kurt Landau, known under the pseudonym
of Wolf Bertram, was kidnapped from a small building in the neighbourhood of
Barcelona. From the circumstances of his disappearance it is evident that it can
only be a question of kidnapping by Stalinist agents. It was in this way that
Nin, Marc Rhein, Wolf, and many others had disappeared. Neither the official
police, nor the government, can give any information with regard to their case.
For months the Stalinists had been accusing Wolf Bertram of being “the leader of
a band of terrorists” and the liaison agent between the Gestapo and the POUM.
With reference to his revolutionary past and his activity in the immediate
present, the accusation of being an agent of the Gestapo only appears to be a
delirious invention.
As secretary of the Der Funke communist group, Wolf
Bertram had to flee Germany before the agents of the Gestapo in March 1933. All
the supporters of his group Der Funke before 1933, with the
exception of Bertram, his wife, and one comrade alone, have been arrested,
tortured, and thrown into solitary confinement and concentration camps. And it
is against Bertram, himself pursued by the Gestapo, that the Stalinists have
launched the accusation of being an agent of the Gestapo!
The hatred of the Stalinists concerns the theoretician of the
Communist opposition. It concerns the author of the pamphlet Spain 1936,
Germany 1918, in which he had already shown that the crushing of the
revolutionary workers in Spain by the Stalinists ... to which since May they had
contributed ... was an inevitable consequence of their policy.
Their hatred concerns a man who dedicated his life exclusively to
the revolutionary movement, in the ranks of the Austrian Communist Party since
1923, a member of the Editorial Board of Rote Fahne of Vienna
and of the Propaganda and Agitation Section of the Central Committee of the
Austrian Communist Party and who joined with Trotsky in his struggle against
Stalin since 1923.
The hostility of the Stalinists took in more nourishment when he
formed the Bureau of the International Left Opposition with Alfred Rosmer and
Trotsky in 1930. It in no way diminished when he broke with Trotsky in 1931 on
account of differences over organisational questions, nor in 1933 when he
energetically opposed Trotsky on the subject of the founding of the Fourth
International.
The hatred of the Stalinists continually followed him, rightly on
account of his international activity, which whether in Austria, in Germany, in
the emigration, or in Spain, drew upon the foundation of Marxism to combat the
policy of Stalinism.
In the emigration he dealt with the problems of the international
working class movement in numerous conferences and articles. In November 1936 he
left for Spain and placed himself at the disposal of the POUM to offer his
strength to the Spanish Revolution.
Incapable of competing with their antagonists on the political
plane, and from fear of seeing their criminal policy revealed, the present
leaders of the Communist International are substituting murder and terror for
discussion.
The Kidnapping
On 9 October Comrade CD [Carlotta Duran] passed in front of the
tribunal and made the following declaration:
I had staying in my apartment in Barcelona a man called Kurt Landau,
an Austrian by nationality, and a well-known Marxist writer.
On 23 September about seven o’clock at night two police agents along
with an Assault Guard came to arrest Kurt Landau. No search was carried out, but
the prisoner was taken off rapidly.
Investigations made in the General Commissariat of Public Order as
well as in all the official prisons have produced no result. Since his arrest it
is no longer known to where Kurt Landau has been taken nor where he is to be
found now. Even the Deputy General of Public Order, Paulino Gomez, told those
who took an interest in the disappearance of Kurt Landau that he had not been
able to obtain any information from Valencia in response to his intervention.
All these facts permit us to suppose that Kurt Landau was arrested under the
very eyes of the responsible authorities without informing the Deputy General of
Public Order. Were these policemen working on their own account? Were they
obeying the orders of their superior, the Police Chief, M. Burillo? Where was
Kurt Landau taken after his arrest? What has become of him?
On the assumption that the facts as stated show the following
offences: illegal kidnapping, deprivation of liberty and perhaps murder, the
undersigned informs the authorities.
She requested the court to take action on it and open an
investigation with the object of finding out what has become of Kurt Landau, and
to punish those guilty of it.
Now we provide the statement of Katia Landau:
When I was told that Kurt Landau had been arrested by two policemen
and an Assault Guard, to begin with I thought that it was a normal arrest. But
later, when I myself was taken to the seat of the GPU at 104 Paseo San Juan, I
understood that the GPU had been able to proceed “legally” using the state
apparatus, and into the bargain using a certain number of “especialemente
elegidos” (specially chosen) guards, as they called them, from amongst the most
trustworthy of the Young Communists.
“No one knows where, or for whom we are working. And when our term
is finished we have seen nothing and heard nothing. Yes, that’s blind obedience
if you like, but that is fitting for whoever agrees to become a convinced
militant”, they told me.
Yes, I do know them, these young “idealists”, who go for a few
hundred pesetas or more a month are willing to lend themselves to anything, and
gave quite disgusted us with their “pride” at being militants of the “first
rank”. There was never the slightest doubt about who arrested Landau. We know
that the house had already been watched for some days before by a couple, a man
and a young blonde, at first sight strangers. The description of the young woman
leads us to suspect that it is a matter of SK [12], an agent of the GPU in Barcelona. Moreover, the time had been
chosen when Kurt Landau was alone in the house. Witnesses say that he was given
at the most three to five minutes to change his clothing, and then the waiting
car, a grand and elegant Rolls Royce, disappeared in the direction of Barcelona.
There has since been no trace, and no news.
Of what did the Stalinists accuse Kurt Landau? I will only quote the
main accusations, repeated in all the interrogations of the foreign comrades who
were POUM members. The most serious accusation, the one to which they ascribed
the most importance, was that Kurt Landau had been a member of the Executive
Committee of the POUM. It goes without saying that this was an invention pure
and simple, since the EC of the POUM only contained Spanish comrades. Afterwards
the international Stalinist press even made him the “theoretical head” of the
POUM (special number of L’Internationale for the month of
September 1937). During the questioning of Comrade P [13], Landau was accused of setting up the POUM German group, a
real terrorist organisation, to prepare for the May events. Political letters
were transformed into documents proving the preparation of terrorist acts, not
only against Stalin, but against all the leaders of the Third International! The
Stalinist leaders really had no chance here, accusing an activist of terrorism
who had always opposed individual terror with all his ability...but the truth
means little to them.
One of the foulest agents of the GPU, Moritz Bressler, alias von
Ranke, brought the whole accusation down to rock bottom. He and his wife, Seppl
Kapalanz, arrested a comrade and accused him of knowing where Kurt Landau was to
be found. “If you do not give us his address”, they said, “you will never get
out of prison. He is an enemy of the Popular Front and of Stalin. As soon as we
know where he has gone, we are going to kill him.”
The Hunger Strike
The kidnapping took place on 23 September. The Spanish comrades and
their foreign friends undertook all the appropriate steps and interventions as
in the case of a normal arrest. None of this produced any result. And on behalf
of us, who had been imprisoned for months and months without being examined and
without any formal charges, our comrades asked themselves: ‘Is it possible that
we can keep silent in view of the fact that yesterday they made Andrés Nin
disappear, and today Kurt Landau; whose turn is it to be tomorrow? Do we have to
give up in the face of such methods of political gangsterism?’ There is no other
means of protest for the political prisoner than the hunger strike. I have to
say that my comrades did not support me out of pity, but from political
conviction, to shout at the tops of our voices that we, although being prisoners
condemned to political inactivity, could not and would not keep silent. We spoke
up, and we were heard where we wanted to be heard – in the factories, wherever
our comrades were working, the workers understood the political message of our
hunger strike.
And the Minister of Justice, a ‘worthy’ Catholic, M. Irujo, also understood
it; he understood that this strike was going to spread, and that by Sunday 22
November hundreds of anti-fascist prisoners were going to support it to protest
vigorously against the methods of the Stalinists. M. Irujo’s sole intention was
to put an end to this annoying tale at all costs, if possible in a conciliatory
fashion. On 22 November the minister came in person to pay a woman prisoner a
visit. For this reason he spoke of the murderers of Nin and Landau. He spoke
without any proof, to put an end to the strike and to give a sharp slap to the
Stalinists, who had been making themselves utterly ridiculous by accusing me
formally of being implicated in the disappearance of Andrés Nin, to punish me
for having talked about another disappearance.
A week after the hunger strike I was set at liberty. But a week after my
release the ‘Grupo de Informacion’ arrested me again. It was a classic arrest,
that is to say without a warrant and by sheer brute force. Along with me Comrade
EH was also arrested. Before climbing into the car I wanted to call out to
someone to note down its number; but then I perceived that there was none. Some
days earlier, on 2 December, the Director of the Police, M. de Juan had told me:
‘Unfortunately, you are right. There have been kidnappings, and there are motor
cars without a number, but I can assure you that there will be no more of them.’
And after my arrest carried out by the ‘Grupo de Informacion’, the Minister of
the Interior, M. Zugazagoitia, replying to numerous interventions in my favour,
declared that he was powerless in the face of the GPU, a part of his own
ministry!
The Basis of the Accusation
If I dwell upon my second arrest, it is to show on what the
accusations against the revolutionaries are based, and who these ‘men’ are who
came to Spain to ‘judge’ us.
We finally arrived at 104 Paseo San Juan, the GPU building in Barcelona. We
quickly entered an office, and the first interrogation began immediately, the
first, moreover, that was carried out by a Spaniard. He asked about the May
Events, and my participation in them. Afterwards, he asked me at least three
times if I was Jewish. Given his insistence, I asked him why it interested him
so much. He told me, ‘For us it is question of race’. I replied that for us
Communists and Socialists the question of race does not come up. But it did
remind me of the language of the German fascists. He wanted me to believe that
we were in the Ministry of the Interior. I asked to see the Minister of the
Interior who, I said, had set me at liberty only a week earlier. Then he
admitted that it wasn’t the Ministry, but a ‘departamento’(a department), which
amounted to the same thing according to him.
The director of the ‘departamento’ arrived at six o’clock at night,
accompanied by a foreigner. This foreigner was shut up in an office with me. As
I complained about being arrested by force, without a warrant, he told us: ‘We
are the Ministry of the Interior, we arrest whoever we wish and we absorb our
arrest warrants from the prefectures’. And referring to the recent arrest of
Gaston Ladmiral, he said: ‘We have arrested – and without a warrant – men who
have been freed on the direct intervention of the French government. We are
working independently of everyone.’
He told me that I was not being detained, but only held, because I knew a
great many people. What they were waiting for was for me to supply them with
some precious information. I answered firstly that I knew very little in
general, and secondly that I was not disposed to supply information to the
‘Grupo de Informacion’. After this statement the atmosphere changed. He very
quietly told me that I would never come out of this building alive, and that in
eight days time I would be shot. I replied that it was more likely that they
would allow me to starve slowly. As he spoke with an Austrian accent I asked him
some questions, from which it emerged that we must have known each other from
the Austrian Communist Party. Finally, I remembered having seen him at the ACP
centre in Vienna 10 or 12 years ago, and at last I remembered his name, Leopold
Kulcsar.
After an hour of conversation with him, his secretary, a little Hungarian
guttersnipe called Harry [14], and the
director of the ‘departamento’, I went up to the first floor. I was admitted
into a luxurious apartment with its own morning room, bedroom, toilet and
bathroom. It was the director’s apartment. The same night I asked for
information about the other comrades. I was told that everyone was alright, and
that all had beds and blankets. Afterwards I found out that these brutes had
left Else in a lumber room without either light or blankets for five days, and
that another prisoner, a shop assistant who moreover had a weak heart, had
been left for 10 days and nights on a chair, without a bed, mattress or covers.
She fell gravely ill. She was taken from the Calle Vallmajor to hospital
through the intervention of the Director of the Prison. She had been quietly
left to die in the Paseo San Juan. I was often told: ‘If you want to start up
the hunger strike again, go ahead. These Spanish idiots don’t know how to work,
so we will let you quietly starve.’ In all these altercations this individual
spoke of the Spaniards with great contempt, as imbeciles to whom it was
necessary to give lessons. Other comrades questioned by the foreigners told me
the same thing. Adventurers who had come from every corner of the world thought
they were masters of Spain.
When, in the course of an interrogation, I talked about the Police Chief,
Paulino Romero, or of the Security Director who had received us and given us our
provisional identity papers, he threatened to punish them. ‘We will drive out
all these people. Now we have taken charge of everything.’
On the second day of my arrest, Thursday 9 December 1937, Leopold Kulscar
dashed into my room at seven o’clock in the morning with a few scraps of paper
in his hand. He pretended that these bits of paper were plans, drawn up by me,
that he had found in my room. He said that he had known that I was a spy
beforehand, but that he did not expect to find such striking proof of it.
As I had not been present during the search of the apartment where I lived, I
supposed that these papers had been introduced after that event, and were
perhaps real plans. But it was not even a question of that. The room I had lived
in with EH for a week belonged to a leading young designer of the time. The
so-called plans were designs drawn up by him to participate in a conference. But
that didn’t help me at all. When it emerged clearly that I had never seen these
scraps, I was told. “So much the worse for you. There is a fresh proof. In
addition you were carrying on espionage even in the women’s prison’, supported,
apparently, by the Director whom he had promised to drive out, as well as by M.
Tassis, the Director General of the Prisons, who, it seems, was too indulgent.
‘We know’, he told me, ‘that you wrote illegal letters to your friend M, the
editor of the Journal des Nations in Geneva.’ ‘How could it be
to my friend M, as I do not know him?’ The man broke out laughing. ‘That’s
ludicrous; are you going to deny that for years you lived with him, in a
menage à trois? Proof is not lacking’, he told me.
M was known to me as a 100 per cent Stalinist. Was he no longer as faithful
to the Stalinist line as formerly? I do not know. He was ill-chosen in any case,
as I did not know him personally. But when I insisted that I should be shown a
single illegal letter written by me to M, Leopold Kulscar very quickly subsided.
He said that it was ‘not me but Kurt who had carried on this correspondence with
M, a character who would be particularly suspect as he was directly maintained
by the English government in the capacity of an agent of the Intelligence
Service’. But as Kurt could not be found, they had to content themselves with
me, and make me the principal defendant in a future trial for military
espionage.
I was threatened with being transferred to a military prison to effect the
quickest trial possible and have me shot in eight days.
Leopold Kulcsar told me word for word:
I have come on a special assignment for the Landau case. My historic
mission is to furnish proof that out of twenty Trotskyists, eighteen are
fascists, agents of Hitler and Franco. Perhaps subjectively you are a good
revolutionary, but you are convinced that the victory of Franco would be more
favourable to the realisation of your Trotskyist ideas than the victory of
Stalinism.
He spoke about Kurt with a particular personal hatred. The phrase, ‘I can
take a bloody revenge on Landau’ came up on every occasion: ‘If he falls into my
hands one day, I will make him pay dearly for it’. He never told me, however,
what it was he wanted to avenge. I often had the impression in this man’s
presence of being in front of a pathological case. The man no longer appeared to
know what he was saying. I will always remember certain phrases, for example
such as: ‘I am a deeply religious man. Your blood will be on my head. I am
convinced that you are a spy, but if I am mistaken, what does it matter? I will
take responsibility myself.’
‘If Kurt has escaped from Spain’, he said, ‘all has already been prepared to
denounce him to the French police for espionage in the South of France in
alliance with fascist elements.’ He also threatened to denounce to the French
police other comrades who figured in my correspondence in order to make it
impossible for them to stay in France.
I was accused in the first place of having sold plans to France, whereas Kurt
had been organising the transport of weapons for the FAI and the POUM. My visit
to the Austrian Consulate on the night of my arrest was above all emphasised; I
was charged with carrying on espionage with the Austrian Ambassador in Paris.
And the proof: that my passport had been extended for five years.
Occasionally Spaniards, functionaries of the ‘departamento’ like Alfonso
Martinez, assisted at the interrogations. They came to see me afterwards to make
fun of the foreigner who could not make me talk, or so they said.
Released without Trial
On 18 December I was transferred to Calle Vallmajor 5, a
semi-secret prison directly and solely responsible to the ‘departamento’. Three
weeks before my release the real head of the ‘departamento’ came to see me in
prison, and asked me: ‘Tell me really, Madame Landau, why are you here? This
question was being put to me by the same Señor Ordonez (a socialist who had
called openly for the fusion of his party with the Communist Party) who on 9
December had signed the self-styled warrant for my arrest (arrested on strong
suspicion of military espionage). I asked him who had authorised the coming of
Leopold Kulcsar, as he himself said, on a special mission to take bloody revenge
upon Landau. Unfortunately, Ordonez did not reply.
During the night of 29-30 December 1937, at two o’clock in the morning, my
cell was abruptly opened. ‘Corre, corre, en libertad’ (‘Run, run, you are
free’). I was given barely two minutes to dress. As everything had been taken
from me, right down to the last chemise, I had no case to pack. Some hope!
I was taken along with EH to the Calle Corcega 299 (the Foreign police). Was
it to be deportation, then? When I refused to accept it point blank, I was
threatened with being thrown into the dirtiest and most wretched jails. ‘Are
there any more wretched, then, than those of your own secret prison? No one
answered this indiscreet question.
Then there was a resort to moral blackmail. If I refused deportation, none of
my friends would leave. After speaking with VS, the director of the building, I
gave in. He assured me in the presence of other comrades on his word of honour
that Kurt was still alive, that he was in a Spanish prison, and that he would
shortly be deported. When I straightaway asked him not to deceive me in order to
get me to go, and that I would go if he had told me the truth, he said: ‘That
would be a shameful game to play with you. I would never lend myself to playing
such a part.’
And to give me more confidence, he told me of his past as a militant, and
ended with these words: ‘Kurt will be deported, I promise you that, and in
exactly the same way as yourself. Go quietly. Perhaps happiness is already
awaiting you in Paris.’
A few more words about Leopold Kulcsar (Maresch), who had come to Barcelona
in the capacity of an ‘examining magistrate’ in the Landau case. I always had
the impression that he did not belong to the apparatus, but that he wanted to
make his career out of the Landau case. I rather think that someone in the GPU
had something on him, but that he had been allowed through because he had come
from high up.
He and his wife, Ilse Kulcsar, had been expelled from the Austrian Communist
Party in 1927 under suspicion of being police informers. Their moral reputation
in the working class movement was most deplorable. Whereas she was a completely
unscrupulous careerist, Leopold Kulcsar was accused of stealing money from the
Social Democratic Party, a party he had joined after his expulsion from the
Communist Party. Both of them, moreover, had belonged to the Neubeginnen Group
in the same manner as Marc Rhein.
Having left Austria after the insurrection of February 1934, they made their
way to Prague. Finally, Leopold Kulcsar worked for the Spanish embassy in Prague
as head, so he said, of the News Service, but in fact as a military attache.
To get an idea about this Prague embassy we will quote the following case:
The mother of a foreign member of the POUM who had been arrested along with us
in Barcelona applied to the embassy to request an intervention on behalf of her
son. ‘Your son is a brave lad,’ she was told. ‘But his friends are all agents of
the Gestapo. Give us the names of two or three of them, and your son will be
released. To prevent the worst happening we could even send a telegram
today.’
Leopold Kulcsar died in Prague on 28 January 1938. M. Asua, the Spanish
Ambassador in Prague, did not fail to render warm tributes to the deceased and
to speak of the great services of LK during the Spanish Revolution. ‘Overwork’,
he said, brought on the death of this brave man.’ The truth is that LK wore
himself out questioning us for whole nights; he had overworked himself by
continually inventing new methods of physical and moral torture.
M. Asua knew better than anyone, so it seems, how to estimate such services
and sacrifices.
So perhaps he could tell us who authorised Leopold Kulcsar to go to Spain,
who gave him absolute powers, and who opened for him the generally hermetically
sealed doors of the Paseo San Juan.
Leopold Kulcsar is dead. But Ilse Kulcsar is ‘happily’ still alive and
continuing the good traditions of her family. We saw her twice in the Paseo San
Juan, assisting in the interrogations. She is at the moment in Paris, married
again to a Spanish student. Ilse Kulcsar-Barea is spreading the story here that
the Spanish government committed a grave error in releasing me, since I am very
deceitful and I should have been made to talk (with the methods of Santa Ursula,
isn’t that so, Ilse Kulcsar?) because it appears that I know very well where
Kurt is, in Rio de Janeiro!
You can indeed spread the fabrications of the GPU when you are directly
involved with it, but you should put a bit more spirit and intelligence into
it.
However, Ilse Kulcsar, like Moritz Bressler and a number of others, are
showing their devotion to the cause of Republican Spain in the course of the
tragic hours that they are now quietly passing taking coffee in the ‘Dome’ in
Paris.
We will end with the account of comrade EH, whom they wanted to make into a
hostile witness against Katia Landau.
I was under arrest from 17 June 1937 to 29 November 1937 and placed
at the disposal of the Special Tribunal of Espionage in Madrid. Having been
released following the direct intervention of the Minister of Justice, then
Irujo, I was again arrested along with Katia on the 8 December 1937, when I had
gone to visit some female comrades in prison. The agent gave as an explanation
that Katia had had to provide some details on a document issued by her Consul; I
was only to be taken as security for Katia.
When we got to the building where the offices of the “departamento”
were, our immediate separation was effected and I was locked up in the WC. Along
with me in this strange cell was put a brutal-looking policeman, who incessantly
threatened me with his revolver.
It was announced that I had been arrested on the order of the
Minister of the Interior. I protested immediately against an action taken
without a warrant of arrest.
I was led into an antechamber, where I found the same policeman who
arrested us. He told me in conversation, “A fortnight ago I saw Landau in a cafe
in Paris.”
All the policemen left the building during the dinner hour, and for
three hours, in spite of our rigorous “isolation”. I had the opportunity of
exchanging impressions with Katia.
When taken next up to the second floor, I recognised that apart from
offices the building contained an entire prison. During the five hours that I
had to spend on a chair, guarded by a policeman, I had occasion to see one
prisoner in handcuffs and another shut up in a sort of cubicle with a double
door.
At 23 hours I was led into another building in the block, where a
foreigner, Leopold Kulcsar, who was later to interrogate me, looked at me for 10
minutes. Then he took my date of birth, and asked me for my handbag which had
already been searched, which, however, he handed back to me. He sent every piece
of a book of cigarette papers for them to examine in the laboratory. With
reference to a piece of writing paper, he pretended to be able to disclose
writing in invisible ink without a quartz lamp. Then he pretended that a simple
case key was that of a strong box. Then he showed the extent of his imagination
by a sensational discovery; a bead necklace of wax worth a hundred francs was
made of real pearls. He took no notice of my observation that no one carries
treasure in a handbag, pretending that this was really an old trick to disguise
the value. He maintained that five photos of my husband represented five
different men. Suddenly, placing one of these photos in front of my eyes, he
exclaimed: “That’s Landau!” Then his secretary called Harry” who understood
Spanish appeared, whereas his chief was almost totally ignorant of the
language.
At dawn I was taken into a luxurious apartment to which Katia had
been taken under the pretext that she had to identify me. Whilst leaving the
chamber I was asked if the surroundings where Katia was staying did not lead me
to think again, and when I replied “No”, I was told, “Well, she has confessed
everything”. I was taken back to my cell after eight hours of questioning. This
was a little room filled like a junk shop, with lamps, tables, etc. A metal
bedstead without a mattress had to serve me for a bed, and a music stand for a
pillow. There was no coverlet, and the shutters were hermetically sealed. There
was no electricity, no air, and no light. At this time the cold was severe.
Thanks only to continuous massaging was I able to prevent my legs and hands from
freezing; and I was not able to get to sleep all night. The police had orders
not to allow me to open the doors other than for going to the WC three times a
day. All complaints on the subject of soap or towels were rebuffed. Thus I was
not able to wash for 10 days.
During the nights they came to look for me for short interrogations
and confrontations; and one day the Commissar came. He brought me the warrant of
arrest forwarded by the same department, saying that I had been arrested on
suspicion of military espionage. He took advantage of this visit to certify the
“perfect” state of my accommodation.
Confrontations took place with comrades and also with unknown
persons, among them Ilse K, the wife of LK.
When after 10 days I was given back my case, I quickly noticed that
a box of films and photographs had been taken from it; and immediately I
protested.
All the questions of the interrogation dealt with the activity of
Katia and myself during our brief spell of liberty.
As I took care not to give the names of comrades, I was unceasingly
accused of protecting fascists. When I spoke of a visit to the Austrian Consul
the Commissar ascribed a tremendous importance to this interview, and talked
about arms traffic that Landau had organised with the Consul. The main point of
the interrogation turned upon the following question: “With what personage did
Katia Landau make an appointment after coming out of hospital?” This question
was repeated in a monotonous tone for half an hour, and when the Commissar lost
his voice he passed over the talking to his secretary, who went on, and then
they all questioned me in turn.
During this half hour in front of the desk I was made to remain
upright. Even though all movement was forbidden me, in spite of the terrible
cold I was forced to leave my coat. The question was always repeated in the same
rhythm by tapping the measure with a comb upon the table.
‘ During the course of the questioning I was shown plans,
illustrations, etc, that had been found in my room; these were designs drawn up
by a young designer for an official conference, and no more than that. I was
informed that I was to be judged in eight days. The Commissar, however, declared
that he was prepared to save me the shame of being shot as a fascist on
condition that I finally name my accomplices. Even though he was convinced of my
innocence, he could not help me, because I had rendered this impossible. He
pretended that all the correspondence (that reached me in the prison after being
passed by the double censorship at the frontier and,the prison) had been sent by
very suspect persons. He identified some English friends who owned a hotel in a
little seaside resort near Barcelona (News Chronicle correspondents) as agents
of the Intelligence Service. But as I had seen GPU agent — [15] and — [16] at their place
in the March of the same year, both employed in the same “departamento”, I cited
them as witnesses.
The declaration of the Commissar was always repeated, that he had no
interest in pursuing the POUM comrades, but only fascists and the leaders of the
conspiracy, whom he wanted to call Landau and his wife.
The final interrogation unfolded as follows: the Commissar was
alone, and in a mysterious tone he asked me to confess everything now. He
pretended that he wished to profit from the time that his secretary was absent
to give me one last chance to acquit myself, to give him the possibility of
saving me. He even held out the hope of an impending journey to Paris along with
him. Finally, he announced to me that the following day would be the final
interrogation and the presentation of the final transcript for my signature, but
he produced neither the one nor the other. On 18 December l was transferred to
the remand prison, Calle Vallmajor 5. I was placed in a small cell where there
were already three Spanish women. There was no ventilation, as in my former
cell. Three days before my release “Harry” appeared once more in my cell and
gave me an unknown photo.” As I said that I did not recognise the figure, he
insisted: “This is Landau”.
About two o’clock in the morning on the night of the 29-30 of
January I was informed that I was released.
The Marc Rhein Case
During the night of 9-10 April 1937, the journalist Marc Rhein
disappeared from the Hotel Continental in Barcelona where he was staying. Marc
Rhein was a member of the French Young Socialists. Politically he was not a
direct antagonist of Stalinism. He had defended the Popular Front and had
collaborated with the Stalinists in France. Despite the desperate efforts of his
father to find him, even with the help of the Spanish authorities, he did not
succeed.
Marc Rhein was the son of the Russian Socialist Abramovitch, who played an
important part in the emigration. He was a member of the editorial board of
Courrier Socialiste the bimonthly of the Russian Socialist
Party [Mensheviks], which is in touch with militants living in Russia.
The interest shown by the GPU in regard to people linked with it can well be
understood. Was it only because of his family connections with the leaders of
the Courrier Socialiste?
The visit of Marc Rhein to Barcelona was no secret to the GPU. Either its
agents hoped to draw out of Marc Rhein some information that interested them, or
they hoped to operate a blackmail on his father. [17] It is not impossible that they wanted to extract the name of
the ‘Old Bolshevik’ who a year ago published a long letter exposing the crimes
of Stalin in the USSR. [18]
He was a tempting possibility for the GPU. Marc Rhein, no supporter of the
political ideas of his father, became a victim of the manipulations of the GPU.
He was kidnapped from Barcelona and many of those who know Stalinist methods
believe that he was taken back to Russia, either to make him accuse his father,
or as a hostage.
Marc Rhein left his hotel on 9 April without either his coat or hat. Nobody
has seen him since. After his disappearance only one letter arrived, coming from
Madrid, addressed to his friend Nicolas Sundelevicz (since July 1937 under
arrest on the scarcely original accusation of wanting to kill Stalin). [19] The handwriting was recognised by Abramovitch as
being that of his son, the date of 12 May being doubtless added by an unknown
hand. We might add that Leopold Kulcsar, the individual who came to Barcelona on
a ‘special mission’ for the Landau case, and who arrested comrades Katia Landau,
EH and others under the accusation of military espionage, belonged not only to
the Austrian Socialist Party but at the same time to the Neubeginnen (Miles)
group, of which Marc Rhein was part. Can we exclude the possibility that the
wife of Leopold Kulcsar, Ilse Kulcsar, who was in Spain from October 1936
onwards, could especially inform us about the disappearance of Marc
Rhein?
The Erwin Wolf Case
Erwin Wolf, a Czechoslovak citizen, came to Barcelona at the end of
the month of May 1937 as the correspondent for an English journal supporting the
Popular Front,
Spanish News.
[20] Immediately after his arrival he presented himself to the
Spanish authorities and joined the official organisation of foreign journalists
in Barcelona.
Towards evening on 27 July 1937 Erwin Wolf was arrested for the first time.
He was taken to the Puerta del Angel 24 along with another journalist, and it
was there that P and KTh saw him for the last time. Wolf was released the
following day. It is extremely interesting to note that whereas the Spanish
press published nothing about the arrest of Wolf and the other journalist, the
Italian fascist journal Corriere della Serra of 29 July
published the following note: ‘On the 27 July 1937 the Spanish Secret State
Police proceeded to arrest journalists Erwin Wolf and RSt. They were taken to
the Puerta del Angel 24, to open a preliminary investigation into their
political activity.’
The arrest of these two journalists was only known to ‘insiders’ – yet
another proof that the Italian fascists have placed their agents as well in the
midst of the GPU. [21]
After being set at liberty, Wolf returned to his habitual domicile. Learning
that his journal had ceased to appear, he decided to leave Spain. He had no
difficulty in obtaining his exit visa. On the day of his departure his friend
Tioli asked him on the telephone to pass by his place to pick up his letters.
Wolf promised his wife that he would not be longer than an hour. An hour later
he notified his wife that he would be coming a little later on.
Since that day Wolf and Tioli have disappeared. Tioli’s room at the Hotel
Victoria was watched by the police for several weeks, and all those who asked
for him were arrested.
Wolfs wife, a Norwegian, the daughter of a socialist deputy with whom Trotsky
stayed in Norway, searched for her husband in all the prisons of Barcelona.
Finally, she was advised to leave as quickly as possible so as not to share the
fate of her husband. It was only thanks to the energetic intervention of the
Norwegian Consul that she escaped arrest at the time she was due to leave.
The sister of Wolf intervened in favour of her brother at the Spanish embassy
in Prague. On 10 October 1937 she received the following reply:
Spanish Legation
Prague
Madame,
I have the honour to communicate to you that according to
an official investigation of the General Management of Security, of which the
Ministry of the Interior has informed us, your brother, Erwin Wolf, was in
prison, arrested for subversive activity. He was set at liberty on 13 September
1937.
The Secretary of the Spanish Embassy in Prague
Let them dare to pretend that Wolf was arrested for ‘subversive
activity’! We know only too well why Wolf was arrested, and why the GPU caused
him to disappear. Wolf was Trotsky’s personal secretary, and it seems that he
had to pay dearly for it.
In February 1937 Le Matin published a note saying that Wolf
and Antonov-Ovseyenko had been shot in the USSR. That confirms the supposition
that Wolf was kidnapped and taken to the USSR. [22]
At the same time, Wolfs lawyer officially received the news that Wolf was in
a state prison in Spain, at the disposal of the courts. But he was not permitted
to see his client, and with good reason!
The Moulin Case
Hans Freund, known under the name of Moulin
[23], was one of the most active members of the Spanish Trotskyist
group. A German emigré, he pursued his studies in Geneva. Immediately after 19
July 1936 he left for Spain to place himself at the disposal of the Spanish
revolutionary movement.
In August he was working politically in Madrid. He went as a journalist to
the Guadarrama front, where the Stalinist Galan threatened to shoot him for his
propaganda work among the militiamen.
Since the month of December 1936 he was in Barcelona, working with all his
strength. But the GPU did not lose sight of him in Barcelona. An agent of the
GPU, a Pole called Mink, was specially ordered to watch him.
After the May Days, Moulin was able to hide in a Barcelona street. It was
only on 2 August 1937 that ‘unknown men’ arrested him in that town. There has
been no news since.
Moulin was a dedicated Trotskyist, a passionate defender of the Fourth
International. In spite of the political differences that separated them, the
POUM comrades always regarded him as a pure and devoted militant.
Agents of the GPU With Whom We Have Had to Deal
The real leaders of the GPU in Spain are some old agents of the
Russian GPU – Specialists. The huge number of agents are Stalinists from all the
sections of the Communist International, Germans, Poles, Italians, Hungarians,
Austrians, French, etc. The greater part of them came to Spain after 19 July
1936. Instead of going to the front they preferred to stow away in the apparatus
of the GPU.
- The real head of the GPU, the liaison man between the GPU and the Spanish
authorities, is a Russian [24] he is tall,
strong, with black hair and a boxer’s flat nose. He speaks German, but with a
strong Russian accent. He only interrogates in interesting cases; he
occasionally strikes prisoners, but generally he would rather give the order for
it.
- Another, Georg Scheyer, alias Sanja Kindermann, has long been the head of
the foreign service of the GPU (Departamento Special de Informacion del Estado).
He also has savagely beaten prisoners. Already great is the reputation of — [25], previously a political commissar in the
Thaelmann Battalion. He soon left it to work, first of all at the Puerta del
Angel 24, and later at the Paseo San Juan [26] – works actively in the apparatus of the GPU.
- Fritz, alias Karl Arndt, a German, alias Karl Meives, with blond hair and
blue eyes and athletic, is an agent of the GPU and a member of the PSUC like all
the others.
- Alfred Herz. Works as an informer and an agent provocateur. Whilst working
with the foreign police of Calle Corcega 299, he informs the GPU about the
departure of foreigners, which explains the unexpected arrests at the time of
departure.
- Anton. A Berliner, aged from 45 to 50 years. Medium build. Red faced, with a
large fat nose.
- Hans. Small, very blond, aged between 30 and 33 years, glasses; formerly
worked as an official of the German Communist Party in the Ruhr district. Works
in the GPU in Barcelona and Valencia.
- Gerhardt. Yugoslav. Speaks French very well.
- Benjamin. A Pole, small, with black hair parted in the middle, pale, with a
pointed nose, very nervous, speaks German badly.
- Harry. A Hungarian, of medium build with brown hair. His upper front teeth
are missing. Age: 26 to 29 years. Speaks German, French, English, Spanish.
- Franz Feldmann. [27] Works under the name
of Ferry. Hungarian, aged from 40 to 45 years old, bald. Speaks four or five
languages.
With the exception of the names of Feldmann, Herz
[28], Kindermann, — and Kulcsar, the other names are
generally pseudonyms.
The names erased are those of a GPU agent and his wife. Dedicated Stalinists,
they understood that they were questioning revolutionaries and not traitors.
They succeeded in escaping and reached France, where they fought in the
resistance against the Nazis.
Katia Landau
Editors’ Footnotes
8. Francesco Ghezzi is described
by Serge as ‘the only syndicalist still at liberty in Russia’ (
Memoirs
of a Revolutionary, Oxford, 1963, p.322).
9. When the Civil War broke out
Maurin was attending a conference of the Galician federation of the POUM in
Santiago de Compostella, and was caught behind the generals’ side of the lines.
For a while he went unrecognised, and the POUM and its international supporters
tried to help him by claiming that he had been killed. He was subsequently
recognised and arrested. A plan to exchange him and other prisoners for fascists
held by the Republicans was blocked by the Stalinists (R. Dazy,
Fusilez
ces Chiees enrages, Paris 1981, p.170; Gorkin,
op.
cit., n3 above, p.110).
10. Apparently not the same as
the Orlov who later defected to the USA, according to Elizabeth Poretsky,
Our Own People, Oxford 1969, p.259, n1 (Nikolsky/Orlov).
11. There is some evidence that
Nin, like Erwin Wolf and perhaps Marc Rhein, was taken back to the Soviet Union
via the port of Alicante to be finished off there (Burnett Bolloten,
The
Spanish Revolution, 1979, pp.457-8).
12. Seppl Kappalanz, the wife
of GPU agent Moritz Bressler (Gorkin,
op. cit., n3 above,
p.201).
13. Perhaps POUM leader Luis
Portela.
14. From the age indicated it
appears that it is not impossible that this lightweight is, in fact, Laszio Rajk
(1909-49), the chief victim of the postwar East European purge trials at the
time Stalin completed the drive he began before the war to eliminate the agents
who worked for him in Spain. If this is indeed the case, the sympathy of the
Hungarian people at the time of his rehabilitation and reburial (1956) was
greatly misplaced.
15. This and the following name
were deleted from the original pamphlet during the Second World War, for the
reason explained at the end. Thanks to the work of Pouvoir Ouvrier, French
section of the MRCI, we are able to identify them with Moritz Bressler, alias
von Rank, and his wife.
17. Victor Serge was always of
the opinion that this was the reason for Rhein’s kidnapping. (Gorkin,
op. cit., n3 above, p.57, n4)
18. The
Letter of an Old
Bolshevik was put together by the Menshevik emigré Boris Nikolayevsky on
the basis of conversations with Bukharin denouncing Stalin’s crimes, and
published outside the USSR under this title (S.P. Cohen,
Bukharin and
the Bolshevik Revolution, Oxford 1980, p.366.)
19. Nicolas Sundelevicz was the
son of a famous Menshevik who had spent much of his life in Siberia, and was a
Trotskyist. He was arrested carrying POUM stickers and accused of preparing an
attempt on Stalin’s life (Gorkin,
ibid.; R. Dazy,
op.
cit., p.194).
20. The newspaper for which
Wolf secured his press credentials is identified by Pierre Broué with the
News Chronicle (
Quelques proches collaborateurs de
Trotsky, in
Cahiers Leon Trotsky, no.1, January 1979,
p.7.
21. Some of the personnel of
the Secret State police were double Stalinist/Fascist agents. This was certainly
the case with the later head of the ‘Foreign Section’ of the SIM, Maxim Sheller,
who later fled to France (H. Thomas,
The Spanish Civil War,
Harmondsworth, 3rd ed., 1977, p.809, n1). Perhaps he was the source of this
information fed to the Italians.
22. On 8 February 1938, the
Fournier Agency released a statement that he had been transported to the USSR
and shot at the same time as Antonov-Ovseyenko (R Dazy,
op.
cit., n9 above, p.198).
23. Hans David Freund
(1912-1937), also known as Winter, was born into a family of German Jews, and
became disillusioned with Stalinism after a visit to the Soviet Union. Whilst in
Spain he worked for the German language propaganda division of the POUM, and
tried to unite the two Trotskyist groups there, the Voz Leninista (Munis) and El
Soviet (Bartolomeo) groups. (
Cahiers Leon Trotsky, no.3,
July/September 1979, p.135.)
24. Nikolsky/Orlov cf. n10
above.
25. The gap here should be
filled with ‘Moritz Bressler, alias von Rank’. We owe this research to Pouvoir
Ouvrier (cf. note 15 above).
26. Here again the gap should
be filled by ‘von Rank’. cf. the last paragraph for the reason for these
deletions.
27. Franz Feldman: without
doubt the sinister Stalinist hatchetman Erno Gero, placed by Stalin as one of
the post-war dictators of Hungary. Born in 1898, the age would be about
right.
28. Katia Landau is mistaken
about the names of Feldman and Herz, both being pseudonyms. Feldman is probably
Gero, Herz is another name for the Lithuanian Stalinist George Mink, called a
‘Pole’ in Katia Landau’s text (cf.
Cahiers Leon Trotsky, no.3,
July/September 1979, p.179).
