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    Joe Zameret, an Unknown Family Hero
    Joe Zameret, an Unknown Family Hero
    Joe Zameret, an Unknown Family Hero
    Ebook97 pages56 minutes

    Joe Zameret, an Unknown Family Hero

    By Yair Zameret

    ()

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    About this ebook

    Until two years ago we did not know the exact circumstances of our uncle Joe’s death.
    In 1942, my father found that a few years earlier his brother had been killed as a volunteer in the Spanish Civil War. No more information was known. I was sure, however, that this ‘unknown uncle’ was a hero, and started a research to find who he was. While researching his life, I found many vital, exciting details not only about him, but also about his brother, my father Shmarya, about our family, about our culture and history, and a lot about myself.
    This memorial is the product of my research.
    Hopefully the readers will find Joe’s story interesting and exciting as I did.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherYair Zameret
    Release dateApr 26, 2011
    ISBN9781458161161
    Joe Zameret, an Unknown Family Hero
    Author

    Yair Zameret

    Yair has born 61 years ago in the Kibbutz Beit Hashita in Israel, married (second marriage) to the American Carolyn, and the father of two adult sons. He studied at Haifa University, in an interdisciplinary program for honors students, with the main focus of Judaism, and later was a teacher in the kibbutz and an editor in the Israeli publishing house ‘Yad Ben Tzvi’. He then switched to computers, joined the American company Computer Associates, and eventually was transferred to its headquarters in Long Island, NY, where he met his current wife, and where he now resides. He is currently writing the (Hebrew) blog ‘Scapegoat’, and developing a non-profit workshop for personal-digital-projects, called ‘Zameret-Stories’. If you have questions, suggestions or comments regarding this book, please feel free to contact him directly Yair.Zameret@Gmail.com

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      Book preview

      Joe Zameret, an Unknown Family Hero - Yair Zameret

      Introduction

      (Written in March, 2009)

      April 1st 2009 is the 71st anniversary of Joe’s death.

      Until a year ago, we did not know the exact circumstances of his death.

      In 1942, my father found that a few years earlier his brother had been killed as a volunteer in the Spanish Civil War. No more information was known. Even about other areas of Joe’s life, not much was known. In the biography of my father, published after his death, only a few details appeared about Joe.

      It was said there that in the visit my father made in 1932 to his family in L.A., he met Joe (see picture) and was surprised and impressed by him - the child he left seven years previously had become an energetic activist, involved in struggles for the rights of workers and blacks.

      Several years later this brother volunteered to fight against Franco in Spain and has been killed.

      My father, my mother, Aunt Rose, Grandfather Meir, grandmother Bathya, all died long ago.

      Letters, photographs, and detailed information about Joe were not available to me.

      For years I felt, even with what little I knew, that Joe was a hero who deserved to be remembered.

      So I started to look for more information, and began by posting a question on a Spanish Civil War internet site. It yielded an answer:

      His name appeared in the list of volunteers of the Abraham Lincoln Brigade.

      This was an exciting beginning to the trail. I kept looking, and got more pieces to the puzzle. A photograph of the brothers’ meeting in L.A. in 1932; a photo of Joe leading a demonstration of unemployed workers; a photo from a Leftist archive in New York, in which he holds a Longshoreman hook.

      I enlarged the face of this last photo, printed it, and put it on the shelf near my computer desk.

      Throughout the last year this picture has reminded me that a story needs to be told here.

      Finally, I found a list that had been concealed for years in Moscow, and was only revealed recently - a causalities list of the Lincoln battalion in the retreat they had on April 1, 1938, near Gandesa.

      There, on page 30, Joe’s name appeared.

      No graves remained from that terrible battle. Most of the soldiers were killed, and only a few were able to save themselves by swimming to the other side of the Ebro River. The dead remained where they fell, and were probably buried later in mass graves, with no markers, no gravestones.

      Spain is full of such unknown mass graves.

      As the 71st anniversary of his death approached, we created a site and a book, a memorial to Uncle Joe, with all the information we could gather.

      Due to the lack of information, I allowed myself to interpret those details we did have by the context of the historical circumstances, and even made some assumptions regarding Joe’s possible responses to those circumstances.

      There are many ‘holes’ in the ‘puzzle’, and so this memorial describes less of the ‘real’ Uncle Joe, and more of the Uncle Joe who lives inside me.

      The Uncle Joe with whom it is possible to make an ‘internal’ dialogue.

      To ask questions and to listen for answers.

      To argue, and to be quiet with.

      To touch.

      Beyond the seventy year gap.

      Addition, July 20, 2009

      After the site was published, we received additional materials about Joe: letters (mainly his letters to Shmarya during the years 1925-1935), audio-taped-interviews of Aunt Rose, and pictures.

      These materials contained hitherto unknown facts, causing us to change several chapters.

      Roses’ recording has yet to be fully transcribed. Once done, it is likely that additional updates will be needed to the website.

      We are also planning to add a chapter for comments received after the publication of the memorial. You are all invited to send your comments and thoughts.

      Joe’s Childhood

      Joe was born in 1912, in Cleveland, Ohio, to Bathya and Meir Zameret (Gelfand), Jewish immigrants from Russia that were just recently married (a Shiduch marriage, with no prior introduction). Shmarya, the elder brother, was born two years before, and the young sister, Rose, was born five years after Joe.

      Meir, who was a Zionist (and even changed the family name from ‘Gelfand’ to ‘Zameret’, a Hebrew abbreviation for ‘Zion will be a sovereign country’), made a journey in 1920 with Shmarya to his desired land, Palestina-Israel, following that he intended to make an Alyah (emigration to the land of Israel).

      Unfortunately, upon returning from the trip, Meir contracted tuberculosis, and instead of Alyah, the family moved to Los Angeles, a more

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