Researcher: Faith Choi, Stuyvesant '25

Sidney Horowitz was born September 21, 1909 in New York City. He grew up in the Bay Ridge area in Brooklyn, in a working-class Jewish family during a period when his neighborhood was rapidly developing. Living in such an ethnically diverse community taught him the value of all human life, and combined with his own occupation as a machinist in the midst of widespread industrialization, he naturally joined the Communist Party to fight for workers’ rights and advocate for social justice.


By the mid-1930s, he became deeply disturbed by the civil war unfolding in Spain. General Francisco Franco’s Nationalist forces, backed by Hitler’s Nazi Germany and Mussolini’s fascist Italy, were fighting against the democratically elected Republican government. As a Jewish-American, Sidney felt a personal push to combat fascism, especially as Hitler’s aggressive anti-semitic beliefs began gaining popularity across Europe.


On January 20, 1937, at the age of twenty-seven, Sidney packed his few belongings and, with other like-minded volunteers, boarded the RMS Berengaria (formerly known as the SS Imperator). He crossed the Atlantic Ocean to arrive in Europe, where he had to trek across the Pyrenees mountain range into Spain. This was a very dangerous journey featuring narrow mountain paths and freezing winter temperatures. There was always a constant fear of detection by Spanish border guards and the French police. Many International Brigade volunteers crossed the Pyrenees secretly, because of strict U.S. neutrality laws that forbade citizens from directly fighting in the war.


Sidney was part of the first few waves of American contingents arriving in Spain. He became part of the XV International Brigade, specifically the Abraham Lincoln Battalion. Training at Albacete was rushed and inadequate as weapons were scarce and often outdated. Many volunteers, Sidney included, had little to no prior military experience. However, morale was still high as these volunteers truly believed they were fighting for the future of global democracy.


He first fought in the Battle of Jarama in February 1937, an infamous bloody battle in which Republican forces attempted to block Franco’s advance towards the capital, Madrid. The Lincoln Battalion suffered immense casualties: nearly one-third of the army was killed or wounded. Sidney was wounded in action, but he was able to recover. He was deemed fit to fight at the Battle of Brunete, a Republican offensive, in July 1937. However, with dwindling supplies and the brutal summer heat, Sidney was wounded a second time and was among the first groups of American volunteers to be repatriated.


He returned to the United States aboard the SS De Grasse and arrived home on September 24, 1937. He spent his twenty-eighth birthday at sea, reflecting on his experiences in Spain. Back in New York, Sidney continued to remain active in leftist groups. His stories were later collected alongside those of other Jewish veterans in the novel Lebns farn Lebn: vegn di Yidishe Volonṭirn in Shpanie 1939 (Lives for Life: On the Jewish Volunteers in Spain), compiled by author Bezalel Friedman. By using the third person in his chapter titled Er Vet Aza Farblaybn (He will Remain Thus), he distances himself from the actions of the soldiers, when “hard grenades were thrown without pity” at the “enemy who brings with him death and destruction.” He focuses on describing the relationship between the environment and the soldiers in poetic lines like: “When the rain poured over the earth, and the thunder hit the mountains like a hammer, the crack of machine guns was heard.” His poetic writing extends to his critique of technological warfare: “And like an eagle, which descends after its prey, the planes flew down and sprayed the tree with lead. The tree dropped its fruit, like a scared child drops its toy” and the need for comradery in the midst of such a grisly and traumatic war: soldiers proceeded to “pick up their wounded comrade.” Through his work, Sidney shed light on the horrors of war but also on a selfless generation of regular citizens that refused to stand idly in the midst of an ideological war.

Sources

“Horowitz, Sidney | the Abraham Lincoln Brigade Archives.” 2019. The Abraham Lincoln Brigade Archives. December 10, 2019. https://alba-valb.org/volunteers/sidney-horowitz/.


Simkin, John. 2014. “Abraham Lincoln Battalion.” Spartacus Educational. 2014. https://spartacus-educational.com/SPlincoln.htm.


Friedman, Bezalel. 1939. Lebns Farn Lebn: Vegn Di Yidishe Volonṭirn in Shpanie 1939. (Translated by Clara Shapiro, Harvard class of ‘26)