And Clarence Kailin has died at the age of ninety-five. He was one of the last survivors of the Abraham Lincoln Brigade, a group of American volunteers who fought against fascism in the Spanish Civil War in the late 1930s. Kailin fought in defense of Spain’s democratically elected government against a military coup led by Gen. Francisco Franco, backed by Adolf Hitler and Italian dictator Benito Mussolini.

Clarence Kailin: “We were fighting against fascism. And we were political enough to understand that, so it wasn’t for an adventure, and it wasn’t for money. It was fighting against Italy and Italian fascism and German Nazism, is what it was about. And we felt that if we lost the war, that World War II was pretty much inevitable, which is what happened. And it happened because Britain and France and the United States refused to give us any help at all. And so, we fought bare-handed at times.”