Jumping the Line

Rating:
Summary: An Honest Account of an Abraham Lincoln Battalion Veteran
Review: "Jumping The Line" is a brutally honest and frank account of William Herrick's life on the American Left - as a young Communist who quickly became disillusioned with the excesses of Stalinism and of Soviet Anti-Semitism. An early volunteer in the Abraham Lincoln Battalion fighting Fascism in Spain, Herrick was badly wounded in the first major battle fought by the Lincolns at Jarama. Transferred to a hospital, Herrick witnessed firsthand the betrayals and backstabbing policies of the Soviet Secret Police and their minions. Returning home, Herrick then suffered the emotional wound of the Hitler-Stalin Pact, and being Jewish, promptly broke with the Party - courageously demonstrating as "a veteran of the Spanish Civil War - victim of the Hitler-Stalin Pact. He went on to adventures serving as a majordomo of sorts for Orson Welles - and some of the tales told here about "Citizen Kane" are quite hilarious. Herrick once told Life Magazine that his reasons for going to fight Hitlerism in Spain were that "As A Jew I know what Hitler is doing to my people".While he later admitted that it was the Party who instructed this to say the aforementioned remark, his pride and emotional attachment to his people clearly stands out in "Jumping The Line" as well as his "no prisoners taken" attitude towards both Fascism and Communism. This is indeed a memoir that Jews and all interested in the Spanish Civil War worldwide should read and while Herrick is a man who will admit his faults with candor, he is nonetheless a brave man and excellent writer - "Hermanos" is also strongly recommended by this reviewer.

Rating:
Summary: The American Orwell
Review: "Jumping the Line" is a hobo phrase for "riding the rails," or hitching a ride on a freight car. It also brings to mind crossing boundaries, maybe even switching sides. Herrick has done both. Beginning life as a rail-riding hobo, Herrick developed an awareness of the plight of the downtrodden and eventually became not a member but employee of the American Communist Party. Herrick was hard-working element of the Party and an able union organizer and cell initiator. Willing to put his life on the line in backing his beliefs, Herrick traveled to Spain with the Abraham Lincoln brigade to fight the fascists in the Spanish Civil War. Comintern, the International Communist Party, hoped this effort would lead to a home for Communism in Spain. While Herrick's soldiering was brief (he quickly took a bulled to the neck, nearly crippling him), the Communist atrocities and double-dealing there made him see the Party in an entirely different light. Returning to the States an anarchist at heart, Herrick had a wife to support and was tied to the Party for a paycheck. His outspokenness about the Stalin-Hitler pact led to his dismissal and his full emergence as an anarcho-social democrat. Appearing in these pages as Herrick formalizes his distrust of all power is such figures as Emma Goldman, Cole Porter and Herrick's former employer Orson Welles. This fascinating work is historically enlightening and a textbook in the formation of practical anarchism from an adventurer-author struck from the same mold as George Orwell.

Rating:
Summary: An Honest Account of an Abraham Lincoln Battalion Veteran
Review: "Jumping The Line" is a brutally honest and frank account of William Herrick's life on the American Left - as a young Communist who quickly became disillusioned with the excesses of Stalinism and of Soviet Anti-Semitism. An early volunteer in the Abraham Lincoln Battalion fighting Fascism in Spain, Herrick was badly wounded in the first major battle fought by the Lincolns at Jarama. Transferred to a hospital, Herrick witnessed firsthand the betrayals and backstabbing policies of the Soviet Secret Police and their minions. Returning home, Herrick then suffered the emotional wound of the Hitler-Stalin Pact, and being Jewish, promptly broke with the Party - courageously demonstrating as "a veteran of the Spanish Civil War - victim of the Hitler-Stalin Pact. He went on to adventures serving as a majordomo of sorts for Orson Welles - and some of the tales told here about "Citizen Kane" are quite hilarious. Herrick once told Life Magazine that his reasons for going to fight Hitlerism in Spain were that "As A Jew I know what Hitler is doing to my people".While he later admitted that it was the Party who instructed this to say the aforementioned remark, his pride and emotional attachment to his people clearly stands out in "Jumping The Line" as well as his "no prisoners taken" attitude towards both Fascism and Communism. This is indeed a memoir that Jews and all interested in the Spanish Civil War worldwide should read and while Herrick is a man who will admit his faults with candor, he is nonetheless a brave man and excellent writer - "Hermanos" is also strongly recommended by this reviewer.

Rating:
Summary: The best memoir of the Spanish Civil War by an American
Review: This book is, very simply, the best memoir ever published by an American volunteer in the Spanish Civil War. It is a relentless autopsy on the murdered idealism of the young Communists who went to fight the fascists in Spain but ended up serving as hard guys for Russian dictator Josef Stalin and his secret police. It also shows clearly that the native supporters of the Spanish left were out for more than just a repudiation of fascist aggression: they were fighting for a social revolution, based on the labor movement, of a kind Stalin hated and feared much more than he did the fascists. This book also stands as a uniquely truthful and beautiful account of the lives of American and international Communist cadres; Bill Herrick speaks for every comrade who risked his or her life fighting for the world revolution in the 1930s, only to be brutally betrayed by Stalinism. It is extremely doubtful that a better book about the appeal of revolutionary Communism or the experience of its youthful militants will ever be written, at least in English.