Jewish Volunteers, the International Brigades and the Spanish Civil War discusses the participation of volunteers of Jewish descent in the International Brigades during the Spanish Civil War, focusing particularly on the establishment of the Naftali Botwin Company, a Jewish military unit that was created in the Polish Dombrowski Brigade. Gerben Zaagsma analyses the symbolic meaning of the participation of Jewish volunteers and the Botwin Company both during and after the civil war. He puts this participation in the broader context of Jewish involvement in the left and Jewish/non-Jewish relations in the communist movement and beyond. To this end, the book examines representations of Jewish volunteers in the Parisian Yiddish press (both communist and non-communist).In addition, it analyses the various ways in which Jewish volunteers and the Botwin Company have been commemorated after WWII, tracing how discourses about Jewish volunteers became decisively shaped by post-Holocaust debates on Jewish responses to fascism and Nazism, and discusses claims that Jewish volunteers can be seen as 'the first Jews to resist Hitler with arms'.

-- Introduction: From 'Chosen Fighters of the Jewish People' to Jewish Resistance Fighters -- PART I Jewish Volunteers in the International Brigades -- 1. Backgrounds and Contexts -- 2. The Naftali Botwin Company -- PART II Jewish Volunteers in the Parisian Yiddish Press -- 3. Analysing the Yiddish Press in Paris in the 1930s -- 4.'Chosen Fighters of the Jewish People': Jewish Volunteers in Naye Prese -- 5. Jewish Volunteers in Parizer Haynt and Undzer Shtime -- PART III Postwar: Becoming Jewish Volunteers -- 6. Jewish Volunteers and Jewish Resistance: Setting the Stage -- 7. Debating Jewish Volunteers: The Long 1970s -- 8. 50 years: Jewish Volunteers as Jewish Resistance

Published version of EUI PhD thesis, 2008