Synopses & Reviews
No man ever entered earth more honorably than those who died in Spain.”Ernest Hemingway
In 1937, Hank Rubin, a twenty-year-old Jewish pre-med student at UCLA, volunteered for service in the International Brigades combating fascists in the Spanish Civil War. In his illustrated memoir, Rubin reflects on those events, making no apologies for his youthful impulsiveness, bravado, and ideology, but recalling the heroics and sufferings he witnessed and experienced in Spain, as well as the disappointing treatment he received upon his return.
Review
[Rubin] tells the gripping story of the seventeen months that he served in the International Brigades, sometimes as a soldier, mostly as a medical officer who gave blood transfusions to the wounded and who helped develop the triage system thats used in hospitals today.
Spains Cause Was Mine is about Rubins own personal journeyby bus and boat and trainfrom Los Angeles to Barcelona and back to Los Angeles. Its also about his own rite of passage, his coming of age as a young manhis initiation in battle and bordellogrowing a mustache, becoming a lieutenant, and making love for the first time.
For readers who dont know the complex and often tangled history of the Spanish Civil War, Rubins memoir is an excellent place to begin.”The [Santa Rosa] Press Democrat
Review
Spains Cause Was Mine is not just a soldiers account of battles lost and won, but a moving and important book that offers a fresh look at the unforgettable journey that the author and his comrades took, a journey that spans most of this benighted century, and is not yet concluded.”The Volunteer
Review
Synopsis
On a fine April day in 1937, a fellow UCLA student casually approached Hank Rubin about fighting for the Republic in the Spanish Civil War. Impulsively - astonishing both himself and the International Brigades recruiter - Rubin promised to forsake his studies, go to Spain, and join the antifascist volunteers. In a narrative voice that inspires both trust and affection, Rubin tells of being alternately delighted and sardonically amused by the cloak-and-dagger routines during the clandestine train ride from Los Angeles to New York. He re-creates the tension of being a member of a secret army in New York, of life as a third-class passenger aboard an ocean liner, and as a soldier at loose ends in Paris. He takes the reader on the perilous night journey over the mountains from France into Spain, describes training routines, and details the conditions of war. And through it all, he sets his compelling personal story against the larger backdrop of history: the Great Depression in the United States, the Spanish Army, the Vatican, the Catholic clergy and Germany and Italy supporting Franco's fascists, the Nonintervention Pact upheld by Britain and France, and Roosevelt's arms embargo against Spain. Rubin's memoir about life in the medical branch of the International Brigades, in fact, is not a book about abstract concepts; it is the story of an idealistic young man who for various and complex reasons decided to risk all to extinguish an inhumane form of government - fascism.
Synopsis
"No man ever entered earth more honorably than those who died in Spain."--Ernest Hemingway
In 1937, Hank Rubin, a twenty-year-old Jewish pre-med student at UCLA, volunteered for service in the International Brigades combating fascists in the Spanish Civil War. In his illustrated memoir, Rubin reflects on those events, making no apologies for his youthful impulsiveness, bravado, and ideology, but recalling the heroics and sufferings he witnessed and experienced in Spain, as well as the disappointing treatment he received upon his return.
About the Author
Hank Rubin is a restaurateur, freelance writer, teacher, and wine critic.