John Gerlach RIP

Kyt · Oct 23, 2008

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/obituaries/article4991531.ece

John Gerlach was an American who served as a Republican intelligence officer during the 1936-1939 Spanish Civil War. He joined almost 3,000 Americans who volunteered to fight with the International Brigades to defend the government from General Francisco Franco’s Nationalist forces.

Gerlach was born Ivan Rujevcic, in Vurota, north-western Croatia, in 1915. When he was 13 years old he sailed to the US, where he joined his mother, Maritza Rujevcic, and his stepfather, Anthony Gerlach, in Detroit.

Anthony was a labour leader and exposed his stepson to leftwing politics from an early age. John Gerlach quickly joined the ranks of trade union organisers and, as a 20-year-old, was responsible for Detroit’s restaurant workers.

In 1935 the Soviet Union awarded Gerlach a two-year scholarship. He moved to Moscow and studied engineering and political science at the University of the National Minorities of the West.

The Spanish Civil War broke out in July 1936 when a faction of the army rebelled against the Republican government. Months later, in December 1936, Gerlach was recruited in a New York café to fight in Spain. He agreed to join his former university professor, the Yugoslav Mirko Markovic, who would later command American volunteers in the George Washington Battalion. Gerlach’s family attempted to dissuade him, but to no avail.

Gerlach arrived in Spain in early 1937 and travelled by night to Albacete, the training centre and headquarters of the International Brigades. He was immediately promoted to lieutenant and, as an intelligence officer, was responsible for both the English-speaking and Slavic battalions that made up the XV International Brigade.

Gerlach, who in Spain was known as Ivan, was ideal for the post because he was a native speaker of both English and Serbo-Croat, and also spoke fluent Russian. While in Spain he also learnt fluent Spanish.

One of Gerlach’s duties was to escort foreign journalists to the front line. In August 1937 he drove reporters Ernest Hemingway, Martha Gellhorn and Herbert Matthews to the Republican positions around Belchite, in Aragon. At one point the Nationalist shelling was so intense that Gerlach’s staff car was forced to take shelter in an olive grove to avoid being ranged by enemy artillery. Gerlach also met the English poet Stephen Spender and recommended that he curb his open criticism of the International Brigade’s leadership. Spender was devastated by the death of a close friend in February 1937 during the bloody fighting in the Jarama valley.

After nine months at the Albacete base, Gerlach volunteered for active service at the front, where he also served as an intelligence officer. Gerlach later published an account of his combat experience in Spain in Our Fight (1987), edited by fellow veteran Alvah Bessie. Gerlach described the frightening situation of being caught behind enemy lines during the confusion of a fast Nationalist offensive in March 1938. His only option was to push “forward to the Ebro \ our side, or perish”, and Gerlach managed to lead a small group of Americans to safety.

When Gerlach finally crossed the Ebro in a canoe, he met Hemingway for a second time on its eastern bank. The correspondent later filed an article quoting “Scout Officer Ivan” as his source. Gerlach was then posted to the rearguard, where he commanded a training camp for Spanish Popular Army recruits in Barcelona. In October 1938 he was repatriated along with all other members of the International Brigades.

At the start of the Second World War, Gerlach volunteered for active service with the armed forces. However, he was turned away following a medical examination because he had tuberculosis. Gerlach instead spent the war as a mechanical engineer, designing aeroplanes for the US Air Force. In 1943 he married his first wife, Madelyne Benjamin, and together they had two sons.

After the world war Gerlach settled in California where he designed locks and door handles for Kwikset Locks Corporation. In 1962 he married his second wife, Sonya Slutsky, and had another two sons.

Gerlach returned to Spain after the civil war and in 1996 the Spanish Government granted him honorary citizenship, along with other surviving veterans of the International Brigades. Gerlach wanted to record his experience of the conflict and, in the last decade of his life, helped his son Quentin Guerlain to compile a historical novel based on his fight in Spain that will shortly be published as When Freedom Called.

Gerlach also lived to see the first public monument to the American volunteers unveiled in the US, in San Francisco, in March.

Gerlach is survived by his four sons. His wife Sonya died on August 22.

John Rujevcic Gerlach, Spanish Civil War veteran, was born on June 21, 1915. He died on August 12, 2008, aged 93
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Antipodean Andy · Oct 23, 2008

A varied life for a clever man. What a wonderful grasp of languages. RIP.

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John Gerlach RIP

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