Paying a Dear Price for Personal Choices: Pinchas Chefetz and the Jewish Volunteers Who Left Palestine to Fight in the Spanish Civil War

Abstract

The Spanish Civil War historiography was among the pioneers of using oral history and bringing the individual into center stage when discussing dramatic events. This article focuses on one individual, Pinchas Chefetz. Born in Jerusalem, he was an active member of the Palestine Communist Party and became one of some 200 Jewish youngsters who left Palestine to join the International Brigades. They wanted to defend the Spanish Republic, which was facing a nationalist rebellion, supported by Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy. Most of the Palestinian volunteers were Jewish and Communist, although a few were Zionist and several were Arabs. Notwithstanding their political and ideological convictions, the decision to go to Spain was a personal one and not necessarily dictated by their political party. Chefetz was injured in the Iberian front, was evacuated for medical treatment first in Paris and then in the Soviet Union. His efforts to return to Jerusalem following the end of World Wat II and the establishment of the state of Israel met with Soviet refusal, and Chefetz committed suicide. His trajectory sheds light on the lives and decisions of other members of the Palestine Communist Party, as well as on the constant negotiation between their political-ideological identity component and their ethnic-national one.