- Abraham Osheroff
Abraham Osheroff (
October 24 ,1915 –April 6 ,2008 ) was an American social activist, carpenter, war veteran,documentary film maker, and lecturer.Biography
Born into a family of Russian-Jewish immigrants in Brooklyn, he spoke
Yiddish and "a good smattering of Russian" [http://www.ravenchronicles.org/northwest/amerconversation A Conversation with Abe Osheroff] , Interview by Rita Fritz Amer, "Raven Chronicles," Vol 11, No. 1-3] before English.In the early 1930s, he began political work. In 1931, during the
Great Depression , the police arrested him for moving the furniture of evicted families back into their houses. A policeman, who was a member of the American Nazi Bund, beat up Osheroff while he was incarcerated and called him a "Goddamn Jew." Around this time he joined the Communist Party. In 1935, aged 20, he was organizing miners' unions on behalf of the party and raising aid for striking workers.When the
Spanish Civil War came in 1936, Abe felt no real compulsion to go and fight, until he saw thebombing of Guernica by theLuftwaffe . This convinced him to fight, as he believed no one should be allowed to inflict such suffering on others and get away with it. He joined theAbraham Lincoln Brigade and was wounded at theBattle Of Belchite (1937).When
World War II broke out, he enlisted in the US Army to fight the Nazis inEurope .After the war, he taught at the Jefferson School Of Social Science in New York, a
Marxist adult school with ties to the Communist Party. He left in 1951, under persecution from theHouse Committee on Un-American Activities .He left the Communist Party in 1956, in response to the revelation of Stalin's
purges . After splitting from many of his best friends in the party, he threw his efforts into the Civil Rights Movement building a community center in 1965, inHolmes County ,Mississippi , where he was threatened by the police because he was working with Negroes. (The police were allied withKu Klux Klan elements.)In 1974 he completed the documentary "Dreams and Nightmares", on the Spanish military bases sold to Franco's dictatorship by Nixon, which shocked many, as at the time Nixon was still a popular president. "Dreams & Nightmares" won the top award at a documentary film festival in
Leipzig , then inEast Germany .In 1985, he organised a village building brigade in America to travel to
Nicaragua to aid theSandinistas . Later, he was highly active in movements opposing theGulf War andIraq War , and he drove the Peace Mobile.In March 2008, Osheroff was taken by friends to
San Francisco for the unveiling of the United States's first monument to the Abraham Lincoln Brigade. He was determined to go, and it took great effort to get him there. But Osheroff was the guest of honor, one of the last survivors of the Brigade. Osheroff used to say, "I have one foot in the grave but the other keeps dancing." After more than seven decades of deep involvement with what he called "radical humanism," Osheroff died onApril 6 ,2008 .References
External links
* [http://abeosheroff.org/ AbeOsheroff.org] , official site, now a memorial site.
* [http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/11/us/11osheroff.html?ref=obituaries New York Times: Abe Osheroff, Veteran of Abraham Lincoln Brigade, Dies at 92 ]
* [http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/local/156359_osheroff13.html From Spanish Civil War to Iraq, activist Abe Osheroff looks back]
* [http://www.geocities.com/roav1945/osheroff.html Abe Osheroff: International Brigades, US Army]
* [http://thirdcoastactivist.org/osheroff.html Abe Osheroff: On the joys and risks of living in the empire]
* [http://www.ravenchronicles.org/northwest/amerconversation Article with proof of date of birth]
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