Gina Herrmann – författare

The intense struggle of political ideals that blazed through early-twentieth-century Europe reached its climax in Spain, where Spanish and foreign revolutionaries, liberals, and reactionaries found themselves caught in a ferocious civil war. For many intellectuals who fought and chronicled the conflict, the war became a political test case that either strengthened their political convictions and commitments or caused them to question their own and others' service to a particular cause. In Written in Red: The Communist Memoir in Spain, Gina Herrmann looks at the memoirs of six Spanish Communist writers to reveal the fascinating and often painful evolution of their politics from the beginning of the war through their long years of exile. While Spanish Communist authors initially shaped their identities and autobiographies along the lines of Soviet models, Herrmann shows how, with the recognition of Stalinism's betrayal of the Communist ideal, the writers increasingly came to experience those models as straitjackets unfit to contain the stories of their rich and difficult lives. The six writers studied here--Dolores IbÁrruri, MarÍa Teresa LÉon, Rafael Alberti, Jorge SemprÚn, and Teresa and TomÁs PÀmies--devoted their lives to the cause of the revolution. Though they have told their separate stories, this book is the first to gather, compare, and interpret them within their historical and intellectual context and from a comparative perspective that takes into account recent developments in Soviet studies.

Spain has for too long been considered peripheral to the human catastrophes of World War II and the Holocaust. This volume is the first broadly interdisciplinary, scholarly collection to situate Spain in a position of influence in the history and culture of the Second World War. Featuring essays by international experts in the fields of history, literary studies, cultural studies, political science, sociology, and film studies, this book clarifies historical issues within Spain while also demonstrating the impact of Spain's involvement in the Second World War on historical memory of the Holocaust.Many of the contributors have done extensive archival research, bringing new information and perspectives to the table, and in many cases the essays published here analyze primary and secondary material previously unavailable in English. Spain, the Second World War, and the Holocaust reaches beyond discipline, genre, nation, and time period to offer previously unknown evidence of Spain’s continued relevance to the Holocaust and the Second World War.