When an aging Abe Osheroff recalled why, as a 21-year-old kid from Brooklyn’s Brownsville neighborhood, he had volunteered to join the International Brigades in the Spanish Civil War in 1936, he framed it as a personal, ethical decision.
“Some of my friends were already going over. Some of them had been killed and wounded. … Then I began to see pictures of what was going on. … Bombardments, civilians getting plastered all over the place. … I knew that if I didn’t go, I’d be ashamed all my life.”
