Researcher: Anisa Foreman, Stuyvesant '26

Luba Brisker was born in modern-day Gomel, Belarus, in 1898. Her family was “quite poor,” and their financial situation only seemed to worsen as she got older. Despite this, because her mother was unable to produce milk, she had a nurse to feed and take care of her. She attended school in Gomel, but after completing all her courses there, she was sent to Chernigov to finish her education. In a university-like setting away from home, Brisker was engaging in conversations about injustices around the world and what could be done about them. She claims that “this is how [she] came to be so anxious to help out the Spanish people” (L. Brisker, personal communication, June 1, 1980).


In 1922, Brisker immigrated to the United States and began attending the NYU physical therapy school at the Hospital for Special Surgery which was known at the time as The Hospital of the New York Society for the Relief of the Ruptured and Crippled. After working as a nurse and physical therapist at a first-aid clinic, she moved to D.C. to work as a physical therapist at Doctors Hospital. When war broke out in 1936, Brisker began travelling to New York every weekend to see about starting a medical group to go to Spain. She had kept this a secret from her father, planning on telling him she was leaving for New York to find work, but when the first medical group was getting ready to leave, he became very sick. He begged her to stay, and so she remained by his side in D.C until his death in the fall of 1937.


Brisker left her spouse in January 1938 to travel to Spain with the American Medical Bureau (AMB). She was sent with a group with two ambulances and X-ray equipment. Initially, she was sent to Paris to collect funds. Her unit would drive around the Paris suburbs in ambulances while waving the Spanish flag and collecting donations that the workers would throw at them. After a month, the ambulances, along with an envoy of military vehicles, were sent across the border, continuing to collect donations along the way.


When Brisker arrived in Figueras, she and her unit spent the night in an old Fortress. That same night, Figueras was bombed, but luckily, the only casualties were a cow. Brisker stayed in Barcelona for half a week before being assigned to Benicassim, a former beach town resort for the wealthy. During the war, Brisker’s fluency in Russian brought her in close proximity with Soviet Union volunteers, and she would occasionally transport injured men to special hospitals in Valencia. Her Spanish was much worse, but through facial expressions and hand signs, she was able to communicate well enough.


From Benicassim, Brisker was transferred to Mataro Hospital near the frontlines as a physiotherapist. The bombings were much more frequent here, so power outages were common. During these outages, Brisker had the idea to entertain the men while she helped them with basic physical therapy in their non-injured limbs. She asked boys to play music for the injured soldiers while leading them in exercises to do while in bed. Her experiment seemed to prove successful because the soldiers she helped exercise were able to return to the field in half the time as their sedentary counterparts.


Brisker also began to take care of 18 orphaned children from the bombings. She was incredibly generous with packages she received from family in the US and in the Soviet Union, giving out her Turkish delights and Russian sausages to the children and her cigarettes to the soldiers. She also tried to find bread to give to the children to supplement the diet of garbanzo beans and rotten fish.


When the International Brigade was recalled from Spain, she was heartbroken at having to leave. To her, it was “the worst return home [she] ever had – there was no joy in it”(L. Brisker, personal communication, July 10, 1969). She spent a few days in Paris with her host family before returning to the United States. By the time she returned home, she had lost 25lbs and developed an ulcer-like condition. She stayed with her sister while recuperating, but continued to speak out about Spain no matter where she was.


Brisker originally struggled with finding work when she returned home from Spain, but after returning to her workplace, Doctor’s Hospital, as head of the department for 6 years, she was asked to work for the Kabat Rehabilitation Institute. There, she continued studying techniques for the treatment of neuromuscular disabilities. In 1961, Brisker began travelling across Europe teaching courses on these techniques (L. Brisker, personal communication, June 30, 1969). By 1971, Brisker had gone back to working, teaching, and living in Moscow for 22 years before returning to retire in the Hebrew Home in Rockville, Maryland, with her family.


As late as 1993, Brisker was still looking to hear about the experiences of Abraham Lincoln Brigade veterans and reconnect with people she hadn’t seen in half a century (R. Pinkson, The Volunteer, Vol. XV, No 1, Winter 1993). Luba Brisker died on March 14, 1998, at 99 years old. She had written that “trying to help the Spanish people fight fascism [was] one of the most satisfying two years of [her] life” and that she had “never regretted going to Spain” (L. Brisker, personal communication, June 30, 1969).

Sources

Brisker, Luba. Letter to Freddie
Moscow, June 30, 1969. (not available online)
Abraham Lincoln Brigade Archives, Tamiment Library, NYU, accessed on April 24th, 2026


Brisker, Luba. Letter to Freddie
Moscow, July 10, 1969. (not available online)
Abraham Lincoln Brigade Archives, Tamiment Library, NYU, accessed on April 24th, 2026


Brisker, Luba. Letter to Anne Taft
Moscow, April 12, 1971. (not available online)
Abraham Lincoln Brigade Archives, Tamiment Library, NYU, accessed on April 24th, 2026


Brisker, Luba. Letter to Freddie
Moscow, June 1, 1980. (not available online)
Abraham Lincoln Brigade Archives, Tamiment Library, NYU, accessed on April 24th, 2026


Pinkson, Ruth. The Volunteers 15, No. 1
Winter 1993, 21.
Abraham Lincoln Brigade Archives, Tamiment Library, NYU, accessed on April 24th, 2026