Talk:Robert Klonsky

message: By    JOHN F. MORRISON morrisj
@phillynews.com
Source: Philadelphia Daily News (PA); 658 words
Published: 2002-09-11
Section: LOCAL   |   Page 44   |   Edition: 4STAR   |   Memo: DEATHS
ROBERT Klonsky was just a teen-ager at the bloody battle of the Jarama Valley in Spain in 1937, armed with an old rifle he had picked up, watching his comrades die around him in volleys of machine gun fire.
Klonsky was a member of the Abraham Lincoln Brigade, which fought on the side of the Republicans in the Spanish Civil War that historians view as a prelude to World War II.
He was with green troops, untrained and sparsely armed, who emerged from their trenches to charge up Pingarron Hill, dubbed "Suicide Hill," in the face of withering fire.
Of the 500 who went over the top, 300 were killed or wounded. Klonsky was one of those who survived, only to be wounded later and sent home.
The Spanish war was just the first battle in the lifelong ideological wars of this former Philadelphian, who spent most of his life in conflict with forces that he believed were oppressing the common man.
Klonsky, Communist, civil rights firebrand, anti-war activist, and occasional movie actor, died Saturday.
He was 84 and lived in Chicago.
While living in Philadelphia, he became one of the defendants in a famous trial in the mid-1950s of nine local members of the Communist Party.
The marathon 71-day trial, widely covered by the press of the time, was then the longest criminal trial in the history of the Philadelphia federal courts.
The nine were convicted in 1954 of violating the Smith Act, which outlawed "teaching or advocating the overthrow of the American government by force."
Klonsky was sentenced to two years in prison, and served a little over a year at the federal penitentiary at Allenwood before the Justice Department withdrew charges in 1958.
He lived in Philadelphia from 1938 to 1958, taking various jobs, including driving a delivery truck, while he pursued his many leftist activities.
He even traveled to the Pennsylania coal fields to help organize miners.
When others who joined the party in the '30s and '40s became disillusioned and quit after revelations of the horrors of Stalinism, Klonsky stuck with it.
"He was a die-hard," his son, Michael, said.
"He was one of the true believers. He hated the capitalist system. That was his credo."
"The war in Spain was the highlight of his life," Michael said.
"It was an experience he really valued. In fact, on his death bed, he asked that his ashes be taken to the Jarama Valley where so many of his comrades died."
And someday, Michael and his brother, Fred, will travel to Spain to fulfill their father's wish.
It wasn't all blood and death in Spain.
He spent time drinking with Ernest Hemingway, who was there as an ambulance driver for the Lincoln Brigade.
"He drank with Hemingway - and without Hemingway," Michael said, indicating that his father wasn't one to turn away a drink.
In 1958, Klonsky left Philly for California, where he became active in organizing workers in the film industry, supported jailed Communist professor Angela Davis, demonstrated against the Vietnam War - and even had a few acting parts in movies.
"He was involved in every kind of left-wing, progressive cause that was out there," his son said.
Klonsky grew up in Brooklyn, the son of a rabbi. He was a self-educated man who was curator of a museum in California and operated a book store near the University of California campus before it was burned down by Nazi sympathizers.
He was in the import-export business for a while, and ran an art book store in Santa Fe, N.M.
In later years, he lived in a trailer in Watsonville, near Santa Cruz, Calif., with his second wife, Peggy Margulies. She died a year ago. His first wife, Helen, died in Los Angeles in 1976. He moved to Chicago to live with Michael when he became ill.
He and other survivors of the Spanish war were made honorary citizens of Spain in 1998.
Besides his sons, he is survived by five grandchildren and one great-grandson. *
Illustration/Photo: Klonsky
© Philadelphia Daily News (PA)  —Preceding unsigned comment added by Richard Arthur Norton (1958- ) (talk • contribs) 18:35, 19 November 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: '''Robert Klonsky, Spanish Civil War vet'''

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