Mugshot of Celestino Alfonso, Spanish Republican Anti-fascist Who Fled to France After the Victory of Franco in the Spanish Civil War and Became a Member of the FTP-MOI Anti-fascist Resistance Group in Paris Led Missak Manouchian 1943

Alfonso was one of the FTP-MOI members featured on the infamous “Affiche Rouge” Nazi Propaganda Poster that featured pictures of the captured Manouchian Group members and listed their country of origin and how many anti-Nazi actions they were implicated in, hoping to incite French nationalist fervor against them because they were foreigners. The poster had the opposite effect, with residents of Paris placing flowers by the kiosks on which the posters were displayed and marking them “Mort Pour la France,” (Died for France), a legal expression in France used for national heroes who died in combat. Celestino was murdered by the Nazis at Mont-Valerian, near Paris, along with most of his comrades, in 1944, age 27.

Golda Olga Bancic, Romanian Jewish French Anti-fascist Fighter and Member of the FTP-MOI Armed Resistance Unit Led By Missak Manouchian in Paris Undated

Olga Bancic was one of the 23 members of Manouchian’s group who were arrested in 1943, the only woman in that group. The 22 men were shot at Mont Valerian, near Paris but on account of a French law banning the execution of women by firing squad that for some reason the Nazis chose to recognize, she was deported to Germany where she was murdered by beheading on May 10, 1944, her 32nd birthday.

Mugshot of Armenian-French Anti-fascist Fighter Missak Manuchian, Leader of the Armed Wing of the FTP-MOI Resistance Group in Paris, the Most Active and Militant Anti-fascist Partisan Group in the City, Taken After His Arrest in 1943.

Missak Manuchian was an autoworker and a poet in addition to be an activist for workers’ rights before the war and a partisan leader during the war. He was a survivor of the Armenian Gencide who later emigrated to France. As a poet and writer, he was the first to translate Rimbaud and Baudelaire from French into Armenian. Manouchian, along with many members of his resistance group, most of them Eastern European Jews but also including former Spanish Republicans, Anti-fascist Italians and Germans and his fellow Armenians, were murdered by the Nazis in 1944.

This is a photo of my maternal grandmother, Itl Ramer (later Ethel Kahn) not long after she arrived in the United States. The photo is dated 1915, which would have made her 17-18 years old. It would have been taken in New York City where she, like most poor Eastern European Jews, landed when they came to the this country. She came alone, as a girl in her mid-teens and it was her job to make money in the States and send some back to her impoverished family so they could survive, exactly as poor immigrants still do today. Most of her (and my) family were killed by the Nazis, either murdered in extermination camps, shot by fascist occupiers or starved to death by the fascists. My bubbe was originally from the shtetl of Mikulince, near Ternopil, in today’s Ukraine, which back then was in the Pale of Settlement of the Tsarist Empire, where Jews in that empire were forced to live. My cousin texted me this photo today. I hadn’t seen it since I was a kid.

Uncredited Photographer German Anit-fscist Intellectuals Walter Benjamin and Bertolt Brecht Playing Chess While in Exile, Skovsbostrand, Denmark 1934

I am the neighbor. The one who turned him in.
We don’t want an agitator
here in our building.

When we hung out the swastika,
He didn’t hang one out.
When we asked him why he didn’t,
He asked us if we had any room in our little apartment
Where we live with four children, for a flag pole.
When we told him that we believed in the future,
He laughed.

We didn’t like that they beat him up
In the stairwell. And tore up his jacket, too.
They shouldn’t have done that.
None of us have a lot of jackets.

At least he is gone now, and the building is quiet.
We have enough worries, so
It’s important to at least have peace and quiet.

Of course we see how some folks
Look the other way, when they meet us.
But those who took him away, say
That we did the right thing.

– Bertolt Brecht, “The Neighbor” 1934

Ich bin der Nachbar. Ich habe ihn angezeigt.
Wir wollen in unserem Haus
Keinen Hetzer haben.

Als wir die Hakenkreuzfahne heraushängten
Hat er keine herausgehängt
Als wir ihn dazu aufforderten
Hat er uns gefragt, ob wir in unserer Stube
In der wir mit vier Kindern wohnen
Noch Platz haben für eine Fahnenstange.
Als wir sagten, daß wir wieder an die Zukunft glaubten
Hat er gelacht.

Daß sie ihn auf der Treppe geschlagen haben
Hat uns nicht gefallen. Sie haben ihm den Kittel zerrissen.
Das wäre nicht nötig gewesen. So viele Kittel
Hat keiner von uns.

Aber jetzt ist er wenigstens weg und im Haus herrscht Ruhe.
Wir haben genug Sorgen im Kopf, da
Muß wenigstens Ruhe herrschen.

Wir sehen schon, einige Leute
Schauen weg, wenn sie uns begegnen. Aber
Die ihn abgeholt haben, sagen
Daß wir uns richtig verhalten haben.

– Bertolt Brecht, “Der Nachbar” 1934

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“…There is no document of civilization which is not at the same time a document of barbarism…” Walter Benjamin, “Theses on the Philosophy of History” from Thesis VII 1940

“…Es ist niemals ein Dokument der Kultur, ohne zugleich ein solches der Barbarei zu sein…” Walter Benjamin, “Über den Begriff der Geschichte” von These VII 1940

Saul Leiter Self-portrait Painting, New York City c.1950

“I don’t have a philosophy. I have a camera. I look into the camera and take pictures. My photographs are the tiniest part of what I see that could be photographed. They are fragments of endless possibilities.” Saul Leiter

Photo Booth Strip, Saul Leiter and Soames Bantry (Leiter’s Long Time Lover and Muse), New York City Undated

Saul Leiter Soames Bantry, for “Harper’s Bazaar,” New York City 1960

Saul Leiter Fashion Shot, for “Harper’s Bazaar,” New York City 1962

Saul Leiter Fashion Shot, for “Harper’s Bazaar,” New York City 1959