Spanish Civil War Postcards

As part of my MLIS program at Queens College, I recently completed a 150 hour internship at Adelphi University Archives and Special Collections. 

Postcard from Sandor Voros Spanish
Civil War Collection

One of my tasks during my internship was to locate, in response to a request from a Spanish professor, manuscripts or documents in Spanish and English from the Sandor Voros Spanish Civil War Collection. The professor was planning to incorporate a translation exercise using such material into a class to be held in UASC, while at the same time highlighting for her students the value of the special collections as a research source. 

While mainly composed of military orders, photographs and International Brigade records, the Spanish Civil War Collection also contains significant correspondence from Sandor Voros, who in 1937 was asked by the Communist Party to go to Spain to help investigate the Lincoln Brigade mutiny, including letters written to colleagues, scholars and his girlfriend, Myrtle.

This collection is of particular interest to me as both my parents experienced the war, though on opposite sides. My father was unwillingly drafted to serve in Franco’s nationalist army; while my mother, a staunch Republican, fled with her immediate family across the border into Portugal and eventually to America in 1936. My father rarely spoke about his reluctant service although I do recall his moving remembrance of subsisting on carob beans during a particularly severe food shortage while in Cadiz. In sharp contrast to my father, my mother regularly spoke about the traumatic events leading to her flight, including my grandfather's disappearance for ten days at the hands of Franco’s local Falange. 

Postcard from Sandor Voros Spanish
Civil War Collection

The Spanish Civil War Collection provides researchers with a stark examination of the personal and political conflicts Voros struggled with while in Spain: the separation from his beloved Myrtle and the heartbreaking letter in which he “releases” her from the relationship; the testimony of soldiers against a comrade accused of incompetency leading to the death of fellow soldiers; and Voros’ slow disillusionment with the Communist Party.

While scanning the collection to fulfill the Spanish professor’s request, I came across a trove of postcards from the war. The 63 postcards contained in the collection are fascinating as they reflect the efforts of the Republicans to rally the populace behind their cause. They include several satirical cards that depict Franco as an overweight bumbling general, a few charcoal illustrations of elongated war victims, and colorful Marxist inspired calls to arms exemplifying the brotherhood of soldiers and farmers.  By far the most distressing postcards are pencil sketches by adolescent children under the title “What I have Seen of the War.” Each of these twelve cards meticulously details a child’s personal experience of the war, most showing bleeding victims of bombings, children crying and war planes overhead. The majority of these are signed and the child’s age is noted, with some from children as young as eight years old.


--By Jazmine Mooney