Researcher: Lily Diehl-Yue, Stuyvesant '26

Hilda was not a New Yorker, but she left for Spain from New York. Additionally, the organization that sent her to Spain (AMB) was based in New York.


Hilda Bell was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania on December 21, 1915 to Theodore and Sarah Bell. Theodore and Sarah were Russian Jews who immigrated to the United States in the early 1900s. Both were socialists, and Hilda began her activism at a young age, picketing with her mother for the International Ladies Garment Workers Union. In high school, Hilda had the choice of taking a commercial or academic course. Because her parents couldn’t afford to pay for college, she ended up taking the commercial course, where she learned typing, shorthand, and bookkeeping. Even so, Hilda was determined to get a good education, and also took academic classes. After graduating, she decided to go to nursing school and attended the Jewish Hospital School for Nursing, borrowing money from a friend’s mother in order to pay. Shortly after graduating in 1937, Hilda volunteered to work as a nurse in Spain. To her, going to Spain wasn’t a sacrifice or an act of courage- it was the right thing to do. She was inspired by the Spanish people’s willingness to fight for democracy, and disillusioned with Britain, France, and the United States for failing to provide aid to a struggling democratic government. And, as a Jew, Hilda was worried about the spread of fascism.


After signing up with the American Medical Bureau to Save Spanish Democracy (AMB), Hilda sailed to France on the SS Normandie in May of 1937, and took a train into Spain two days later, arriving on May 29. The AMB, organized by Dr. Edward K Barsky, was based in New York and recruited medical staff to serve in Spain, in addition to raising money and attempting to increase public support for the loyalist cause in Spain. Once in Spain, Hilda worked as a staff nurse in the operating room at the Universidad Hospital and at the Cruz Roja Hospital, both of which were in Murcia. Medical instruments, sterilizing equipment, medicine, and nurses were all in short supply. Later, Hilda was sent to Vic, where she worked in a hospital set up in a nut factory where lice were rampant. She was then sent to the Aragon front and traveled with an autochir- automobiles fitted with equipment to make them traveling hospitals. Hilda would help treat patients in surgical units that had been set up in temporary locations, which ranged from a railway tunnel to a mansion. The lack of basic medical supplies like antibiotics and painkillers made treating patients very difficult. At one point, Hilda gave her own blood to a soldier she was treating in order to save him. She also worked in field hospitals at Teruel, Brunete, and the Ebro River. In 1938, the Prime Minister of Spain Juan Negrin ordered the withdrawal of all international brigades in an attempt to get Hitler and Mussolini to withdraw their troops. Hilda returned home in December of 1938 aboard the SS President Harding. Although she was excited to come back to the US, Hilda was also sad and disappointed that she had to leave Spain before the war was won.


Back in the United States, Hilda earned an advanced degree in psychiatric nursing from UCSF and taught psychiatric nursing at various colleges in California. In World War II, Hilda served as a nurse in Papua, New Guinea and Australia. During her time in the military, she was awarded two bronze battle stars, one for saving patients during enemy attack. In 1946, Hilda married Kristian Kirk, with whom she had one son, Theodore, and raised two step-sons, Neil and Keith. Both Hilda and Kris left the Communist Party because of their disillusionment with Stalin, but the family still had their passports taken in the 1950s. Kris died in 1964 and Hilda married Bob Roberts in 1965. Up until very late in her life, Hilda continued her activism and was involved with various social causes, including the Civil Rights movement, the Berkeley Free Speech movement, and with the Berkeley Women in Black, who held a weekly vigil protesting the Israeli occupation of the West Bank and Gaza. In 1993, at the age of 78, Hilda went on a 23 day hunger strike when a bus she was on that was transporting computer and medical supplies to Cuba was stopped and held at the border. Hilda continued to attend protests until a few months before her death, an attest to her lifelong devotion to working people’s struggles. Hilda Bell died on September 23, 2009 from Waldenstrom’s macroglobulinemia, a rare form of blood cancer. When Hilda died, she was the last surviving US woman volunteer in the Spanish Civil War. February 23rd has been declared Hilda Roberts Day by the Berkeley City Council.


Special thanks to Eric Kirk and Ethel Kirk for their help in the research process.

Sources

Bartley, Sylvia E. Hilda Bell Roberts: Nurse in the Spanish Civil War & World War II, Warrior for Peace & Justice. Noyo Hill House: Fort Bragg, California, 2017.


“Bell, Hilda.” n.d. The Abraham Lincoln Brigade Archives. https://alba-valb.org/volunteers/hilda-roberts/.


Bermack, Richard. 2005. The Front Lines of Social Change: Veterans of the Abraham Lincoln Brigade. N.p.: Heyday Books. https://www.rb68.com/frontlines/pages-fsl/introduction.htm.


Kirk, Ethel. 2009. “Added to Memory’s Roster.” The Volunteer XXVI, no. 4 (December). https://albavolunteer.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/11/59044VolunteerDec09.pdf.


Kupfer, Peter. 1997. “Out on the Frontlines in Battle After Battle.” San Francisco Chronicle, August 3, 1997. https://www.sfgate.com/news/article/Out-on-the-Frontlines-in-Battle-After-Battle-2814600.php.


Welford, Jane. 2009. “Hilda Bell Roberts, 1915–2009.” The Berkeley Daily Planet, December 3, 2009. https://www.berkeleydailyplanet.com/issue/2009-12-03/article/34203?headline=Hilda-Bell-Roberts-1915-2009--By-Jane-Welford.


Zane, Maitland. 2001. “Brigadistas remember the Spanish Civil War.” San Francisco Chronicle, July 13, 2001. https://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/article/Brigadistas-remember-the-Spanish-Civil-War-2900176.php.