Juan Goldstraj

Juan Goldstraj (born December 28, 1899 in Odessa , † November 2, 1968 in Buenos Aires ) was an Argentine medic , surgeon , writer and translator . In 1937 he joined the struggle for the Spanish Republic in the International Brigades .

Life and work

Preliminary remark

The material for the article comes from Alfred Huebner's personal collection on Juan Goldstraj.

biography

Juan Goldstraj was the son of Abraham Goldstraj and Sara Ghilman. The Jewish family emigrated from Odessa to Buenos Aires at the beginning of the 20th century.

Unfortunately, nothing is known about Juan Goldstraj's activities before his deployment in the Spanish Civil War, except that he was the doctor of the German writer Paul Zech who emigrated to Buenos Aires until the mid-1930s . He spoke Spanish, French, German, some English and Russian.

In 1935 he joined the Communist Party in Argentina and joined on March 20, 1937 as an interbrigadist in the Spanish Civil War on the part of the Republicans against the fascists. He was a surgeon in Hospital No. 1 in Albacete , chief physician at Casa Roja in Murcia (April 16 to September 22, 1937), chief of the surgical team of the 45th Division (until November 8, 1937), group leader and director of the hospital 86th Brigade (until December 1, 1973), director of the hospital of the 63rd Division (until January 22, 1938), group leader and advisory surgeon of the VIII Army Corps (until October 12, 1938). In December 1937 he was raised to mayor médico .

In June 1938 he asked the Spanish Communist Party to be able to interrupt his work as a surgeon during the war. He stated that he was very exhausted and under these circumstances he could no longer treat injured comrades. He expressed the wish to go to Mexico to become active there and to get to know the socio-political conditions. However, his request was rejected on the grounds that at that time the issuing of travel permits had completely stopped and legal or official approval from the government would have been necessary.

After the victory of the fascists, he escaped across the Pyrenees to France with the last freedom fighters at the side of Antonio Machado in January 1939. For political and social reasons, Juan Goldstraj did not want to return to Argentina. He went into exile in Mexico and wrote the book sangre en las estrellas there . He did not return to Argentina until 1946 and worked as the chief surgeon at the Ramos Mejia municipal hospital.

He was on friendly terms with his second cousin, the Argentine playwright Osvaldo Dragún . In the theater play "Arriba Corazon" from 1987, a kind of family biography, the character of Uncle Juan is drawn very benevolently.

Juan Goldstraj died of a brain thrombosis in Buenos Aires.

family

On June 16, 1923, Juan Goldstraj married Esther (Estela) Schargrodsky in Buenos Aires. The daughter Eva Goldstraj de Pogostkin emerged from this marriage. During his time in Mexico he entered into a second marriage with the poet Malkah Rabell , who came from Poland , whose sister Fanny Rabel, as an artist, put him in contact with Frieda Kahlo , Diego Rivera and others.

Argentine Jews in the Spanish Civil War

The historiography of the participation of Argentine Jewish volunteers in the International Brigade in the Spanish Civil War had long gaps. Most studies of Jewish participation in war focus on Jewish-European or Jewish-North American volunteers. Recent studies have estimated the number of Argentine volunteers at 500 to 600. How many of them were of Jewish origin is not yet clear. The most complete list of volunteers was published by Lucas González, Jerónimo Boragina, Gustavo Dorado and Ernesto Sommaro and includes 540 names of people who fought in the Republican Army, International Brigade and Militia.

Writings and translations

• Sangre en las estrellas. Poemas y canciones. M. Gleizer Editor, Buenos Aires, 1958 (collection of poems) ( blurb and book cover , accessed: January 23, 2019)
• Published some writings in El Colono Cooperador , a monthly newspaper of the Fraternidad Agraria (umbrella organization of Jewish agricultural cooperatives in Argentina) that has appeared since 1917
• Translation from Spanish into German of the novel Huasi Pungo - Ruf der Indios by Jorge Icaza , Greifenverlag zu Rudolstadt 1952.
• Translation from Yiddish into Spanish of the novel El Romance de un Ladrón de Caballos by José Opatoshu , Editorial SEM, Cuadernos de Valores Judios, Buenos Aires 1933.

literature

• Jerónimo Boragina; Ernesto Sommaro: Voluntarios Judeoargentinos en la Guerra Civil Española. Centro Cultural de la Cooperación y Federación de Entidades Culturales Judias de la Argentina, 2016.
• Gerald Gino Baumann: Los voluntarios latinoamericanos en la Guerra Civil Española. Ediciones de la Universidad de Castilla-La Mancha, 2009.
• Manuel Requena Gallego, Rosa María Sepúlveda Losa: La sanidad en las Brigadas Internacionales, Ediciones de la Universidad Castilla-La Macha, 2006. ( PDF )
• Alberto Fernandez: Judíos en la Guerra de España. Tiempo de historia, Año I, n.10, 1975.
• Ernesto Goldar: Los argentinos y la Guerra Civil Española. Editorial Plus Ultra, Buenos Aires 1996.
• Gina Medem: Los Judios Luchadores de la Libertad. Ediciones del Comisariado de las Brigadas Internacionales, Madrid 1937.
• Josef Toch: Jews in the Spanish War 1936–1939, Zeitgeschichte 1/7, Vienna 1974. pp. 157–170.
• Arno Lustiger: Shalom Libertad! Jews in the Spanish Civil War. Athenaeum, Frankfurt am Main 1989.

Web links

• Milim (Revista digital): LOS JUDÍOS Y LA GUERRA CIVIL ESPAÑOLA.
• Argentinos en la Guerra Civil española (Blog)

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Lucas González; Jerónimo Boragina; Gustavo Dorado; Ernesto Sommaro: Voluntarios de Argentina en la Guerra Civil Español. Ediciones del Centro Cultural de la Cooperación Floreal Gorini, Buenos Aires 2008; ISBN 978-987-23653-4-9
2. ^ Raanan Rein: Tikkun Olam and Transnational Solidarity: Jewish Volunteers in the Spanish Civil War. Politics and Religion Journal, v. 10, n. 2, p. 207-230, dec. 2016. (PDF)