United Librarians: The International Network That Helped the Spanish Republicans

A handful of letters scattered in archives in Castellón, Paris, New York, and California reveal the existence of a vast and intricate international network of anti-fascist librarians who, during the Spanish postwar period, collaborated from different parts of the world, providing aid to Republican intellectuals interned in French concentration camps. A letter from the Aragonese librarian Juan Vicéns to his American colleague Harriet Eddy in 1936 reveals their passion for their profession: “We are going to win this war. […] The fascists are destroying libraries everywhere. The people are building one in every new place they occupy.”

The Republican refugees survived in these camps without renouncing their culture: they taught classes, organized conferences, and published handmade newsletters. Their "culture hut" operated at full capacity in the middle of the sand, and documents, almost inaccessible until their digitization last year, shed light on their daily life. One of these texts comes from the Saint Cyprien camp and opens with a resounding justification: "Written amidst sand and wind, rain and cold, hunger and filth, without pretensions of any kind, it is intended as nothing more than a documentary contribution to the memory of this episode in our life as exiles." Vicéns told Eddy that upon crossing the border, Spaniards had to show they had two thousand francs to avoid immediate arrest. He had avoided internment by taking refuge in the car of an English journalist friend of his, who rushed him out.

The ramifications of this network of political struggle and humanitarian support had transatlantic reach. A group of archivists based in France, Mexico, the United States, and Venezuela launched an efficient mechanism to assist these refugees who were living outdoors, crowded into the sand "like cattle." Two letters inserted into the testimony"Aspects of Life in a Concentration Camp" reflect this collaboration. One of them, written in English by librarian Annita Ker from the National Library in Caracas and addressed to the Library of Congress in Washington, reported that Vicéns wanted to sell a unique collection of bulletins taken from the concentration camps. The letter emphasized the value of this collection, which "due to its human, artistic, and documentary interest, constitutes an extraordinary bibliographic rarity." The lot was for sale for fifteen thousand francs, which would be used for humanitarian aid while ensuring its preservation in an archive. Another later letter addressed to the philosopher Georges Bataille —who worked as an archivist in Paris—refers to conversations about selling part of the lot to the American library and donating some documents to the National Library of France.

Around the same time, the Progressive Librarians Council was founded in the United States. It defended culture and democracy, opposed censorship, and took a particular interest in the cause of the Spanish Republican refugees, supporting them by sending money and material aid and attempting to pay for some of their passages. They raced to get comrades like Teresa Andrés, who suffered from severe malnutrition, had a small child, and was pregnant, out of France. A letter from this librarian from Valladolid describes the growing anguish of those trapped in invaded France and asks Vicéns to expedite the process: "So that the Progressive Librarians Council can convert its aid into payment for my ticket and that of my son to Mexico […] It is the matter of my son that makes me consider with anguish the approaching winter." Obtaining visas and finding passages was a very costly and complicated process, but the humanitarian network persevered in its work.

A letter from Vicéns to the writer Max Aub refers to the efforts of two American librarians, Harriet G. Eddy and Adele Martin, emphasizing that they were involved in the anti-fascist struggle and dedicated to campaigns "to raise funds to help the underground movement in Spain." Martin ran a branch of the New York Public Library in the Chelsea neighborhood, and her notes reveal the role she attached to her work: "All our activities in 1943 were aimed at winning the war." Eddy worked as a library organizer in California and had been invited to visit the Soviet Union in 1927 to share her professional experience.

The Aragonese writer's letters to Eddy reflect the hardships of numerous intellectuals and artists in the camps. The writer Pedro Garfias had been on the verge of death in a hospital that was "worse than a pigsty," the musician José Castro Escudero was almost blind and without glasses, and the painter Manuel Ángeles Ortiz had been transported on foot to another camp despite his fever. Efforts focused on trying to get them medicine and food, freeing them from captivity, and helping them escape. Constancia de la Mora, from her Mexican exile, mentions a donation of clothing and a typewriter and thanks Eddy for sending a few dollars, commenting that she will send them to Unamuno 's son-in-law, the poet José Quiroga Plá, who remained in France without resources. The Spanish bibliographer Homero Serís writes from Brooklyn, serving as an emissary and translator of the gratitude of Teresa Andrés, who had not managed to escape: “Nothing can be done now because there is no way to leave France (…) As I cannot do it personally, I ask you to convey to the Council of Progressive Librarians my eternal gratitude for the solidarity shown.”

The bulletins and documents created by the refugees in the camps were confiscated by the French police and later returned by order of a judge, but in the midst of the war crisis, the sale was never finalized. The Aragonese librarian left for Mexico a month before the Nazis entered Paris, while Teresa Andrés remained in France, collaborated with the Resistance, and safeguarded the materials during those difficult years until her untimely death in 1946. In 1948, the donation of this documentation to the National Library of France was registered and can be consulted in the Gallica digital repository. The Burgos librarian Ernestina González , Vicéns's sister-in-law, settled in New York after the war to devote herself to the anti-Franco cause.

Within a few years, the "red hysteria" put an end to many of these progressive librarians' activities. They were monitored by the FBI, their passports were revoked, and some lost their jobs, accused of being "un-American." In this stifling environment, Ernestina and many other anti-fascists left for Mexico, which allowed Americans to cross the border with a tourist card. They thus became refugees from McCarthyism. Witch hunts unleashed book censorship: works like Robin Hood became suspect due to the divisive message promoted by a protagonist who stole from the rich to share with the poor. These were difficult times for progressive readers and librarians.