Customer Reviews:
 Aura reminds usthat some things are worth dying for May 2, 1999
3 out of 5 found this review helpful
"Aura" is a picture book of idealists, showing the daily life and death of members of the International Brigades. In 1936 the Spanish Army, with Nazi and Italian assistance, rose to overthrow the elected government of Spain. Only the Soviet Union was then a determined enemy of Fascism, and organized a call for volunteers to help defend the Republic. (England and France were "accommodating" the Nazis) Volunteers from 54 countries answered the call. Many were Jews or Communists (pg. 70), some were neither. Robert Merriman (Hemingway's Robert Jordan in For Whom the Bell Tolls), a Berkeley economist, was studying Socialism in Russia as an alternative to a perceived failure of Capitalism. They voluntarily risked their lives, and a quarter died, out of their belief that they were defending Democracy. This is a pictorial history of their story. But you will also read (pg. 200): "For the first time in the history of the people's struggles, there has been the spectacle, breath-taking in its grandeur, of the formation of International Brigades to help save a threatened country's freedom and independence...they gave us their youth, their maturity, their science or experience, their blood and their lives, their hopes and their aspirations, -- and they asked nothing at all...they did aspire to the honor of dying for us...in face of the shameful , 'accommodating' spirit.." These young men acted at a time which pre-dated Stalin's purges and paranoia, as he tried unsuccessfully to bring the West into a Popular Front against Fascism. There is no doubt that the book does not present the shadow side of the Civil War, the slaughter by the fascists in Badajoz answered by Republican slaughter of prominent fascists in Madrid, burning of convents, execution of capitalists, "Trotskyites" etc, all of which has no connection to our concepts of Democracy. Were these young men Stalin's tools? Perhaps, but the quotation above explains why Capitalists and Christians like myself can find nobility in the voluntary sacrifice of men with whose ideology (with 60 years of hindsight and capitalism's success) we have little in common.
 American volunteers in the Spanish Civil War May 18, 1998
2 out of 8 found this review helpful
"The Aura of the Cause" was the title of a traveling exhibit developed by ALBA, the Abraham Lincoln Brigade Archives. It includes 190 photographs, some of which are said to have been unavailable for public display in the past. This includes some of Robert Capa's famous work, but also raises questions about his work. It is now believed that Capa's well-known photo of the "moment of death" of a white-uniformed Spanish fighter, apparently thrown backward from the force of a bullet, was a fake. (The same person was seen very much alive and well on subsequent frames on the same film roll). More than any modern war up to that time, the Spanish Civil War was one of heavily biased reporting by foreign journalists who gobbled up propaganda. "Aura" does little to provide an even approach to the regime that the American volunteers were supporting. It focuses on their humanity and daily life, and does this supremely, but in doing so it continues the tradition and service of propaganda. What is missing is an objective treatment of the context of the Spanish Civil War. "Aura" treats the conflict as a straightforward battle between good and evil. It avoids showing the huge banners of Marx and Lenin that were held up by the Spanish Republic that these Americans were supporting. It neglects to tell us that the American commander of the Lincoln Brigade, Robert Merriman, came to Spain by way of Russia, and that it was Stalin who placed his henchman Tito in charge of organizing these International Brigades. "Aura" is also remiss, in reprinting Hemingway's "On the American Dead in Spain," in noting that this was initially published by the American Communist party magazine as propaganda. This book could better have been titled: "Americans in Spain: Unwitting Tools of Stalin." The pictures in "Aura" certainly tell a story. - Or perhaps only half of the story.
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