Researcher: Matthew Chen, Stuyvesant '27

Born during the First World War in Tallin, Estonia in 1915 to Latvian parents, Ernest Amatniek lived in Latvia until he was 14, emigrating to the U.S. in 1929. He had a brother, Karl, who he frequently wrote to in his time during the war. Raised in Latvia during the time of the Russian Revolution, Amatniek was raised around many bolsheviks, likely being a factor of why he grew up to be a communist. Arriving in the Bronx, he attended James Monroe High School. His mother was an avid communist, and encouraged other Latvians to read the Latvian communistic newspapers. As a result, Amatniek was a politically active student, becoming affiliated with the Young Communist League in 1931 being expelled from high school for leading a National Student League Peace Strike. In 1936, he began his journey to Spain to volunteer as a member of the International Brigade.

On February 14th, 1937, Amatniek arrived in Spain and entered the International Brigade on the 17th. He underwent training from June 28th - September 8th, 1937 and joined the fighting with the Transmissionies Squad (Signal Squad) of the Mackenzie-Papineau Battalion (Mac-Paps) after his training. Amatniek joined the Transmissionies Squad because he had a history of radio repair, and spent most of his time repairing telephones. On October 13th, the Mac-Paps were deployed at Fuentes de Ebro in an attempt to take the city and open a path to Zaragoza during the Battle of the Ebro, but it was unsuccessful. During the offensive, Amatniek was shot in his left leg and hospitalized in a villa called Villa Rosa Luxemburg. While hospitalized, Amatniek was moved among many different institutions, and wrote letters to his family and friends, especially to his brother Karl. Amatniek was the one of the only ones who spoke English among the other patients, so he had to work on his Spanish during his time off the battlefield. His letters give insight to his life in the hospital, with Amatniek talking about how he is well fed, and how the staff treated him well, and how he would get bored at times due to how difficult it was to obtain Marxist literature in Spain. On February 16th, 1938, Amatniek was inspected by doctors and was transferred to a different hospital afterwards in order to conduct surgery on his injured leg. He was hospitalized until around April 1st, 1938, when he was assigned to Tarazona as an instructor. Travelling towards the brigade in multiple trips, Amatniek and other volunteers survived multiple bombings during their return to duty.

On April 11th, he was finally assigned to the brigade Transmissiones as a temporary reserve. Sometime between July and August of 1938, Amatniek was moved back to the front lines, enduring shelling in dugouts while writing his letters in his free time. On August 9th, he received his membership for the Federation of Architects, Engineers, Chemists and Technicians (FACET) and emphasized how proud he was of it, boasting that his comrades looked at his membership book and pin with envy. In September of 1938, the Republican Prime Minister Juan Negrin decided to withdraw foreign soldiers, forcing all the soldiers of the International Brigade to return home. In December, Amatniek boarded the Ausonia to return home, arriving back in New York on December 20th, 1938.

During the war, Amatniek’s mother (Anna Amatniece) and his brother Karl collected donations for Latvian volunteers fighting in Spain. His friends and family worked with the Friends of the Abraham Lincoln Brigade organization in order to raise funds. They were able to send five large packages and 16 packages of chocolate to Spain. The Amatniek family continued to support Latvians and communists, offering refuge to two Latvians who were waiting to travel to the USSR during the Second World War.

Amatniek developed and put into production radar identification equipment for the Navy during the Second World War, despite not participating in it directly. He married Sara Berline and had two children in 1949. In the 1950s, he worked at the neurophysiology laboratory of Columbia University’s Medical School, the College of Physicians and Surgeons, and developed a compact, wide band electrometer amplifier. In the 1960s, he founded and was president of Bioelectric Instruments of Yonkers. He was later a consulting engineer in neurophysiology laboratories at the Mount Sinai and Albert Einstein Colleges of Medicine, as well as at Columbia. On April 9th, 2005, Ernest Amatniek passed away in Bucks County, Pennsylvania at age 89. His remains were cremated and he was featured in several articles, including The Volunteer.

Sources

The Abraham Lincoln Brigade Archives. 2005. “Ernest Amatniek.” The Volunteer XXVII, no. 2 (June): 24. https://albavolunteer.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/11/Volunteer_Vol27_No2_June_2005.pdf.
The Abraham Lincoln Brigade Archives. n.d. “Amatniek, Ernest.” Amatniek, Ernest | The Abraham Lincoln Brigade Archives. Accessed April 20, 2026. https://alba-valb.org/volunteers/ernest-amatniek/.
Amatniek, Ernest. n.d. Hospital #10. Letter to Karl, Abraham Lincoln Brigade Archives, Tamiment Library, NYU, accessed on April 24th, 2026. Spain, February 16th 1938 (not available online).
Amatniek, Ernest. n.d. Somewhere in Spain. Letter to Karl, Abraham Lincoln Brigade Archives, Tamiment Library, NYU, accessed on April 24th, 2026. Spain, October 17th 1937 (not available online).
Amatniek, Ernest. n.d. S. R. I. 51-G. Letter to Karl, Abraham Lincoln Brigade Archives, Tamiment Library, NYU, accessed on April 24th, 2026. Spain, August 4th, 1938 (not available online).
Amatniek, Ernest. n.d. Villa Rosa Luxemburg. Letter to Anita, Abraham Lincoln Brigade Archives, Tamiment Library, NYU, accessed on April 24th, 2026. Spain, November 26th 1937 (not available online).
Amatniek, Ernest. n.d. Villa Rosa Luxemburg. Letter to Beatti, Abraham Lincoln Brigade Archives, Tamiment Library, NYU, accessed on April 24th, 2026. Spain, December 4th 1937 (not available online).