Red Apple: Communism and McCarthyism in Cold War New York

Notes

165 Notes Introduction 1. E. B.White, Here Is NewYork (NewYork:Warner Books, 1949), 54. 2. Sidney Hook,“The Future of Socialism,” Partisan Review 14:1 (1947), 29. 3. “CPUSA Membership,” FBI New York Field File 100-80638, Domestic Intelligence Division Inspection Report by R. T. Harbo, 3 June 1955. At the beginning of 1956, the total party membership was approximately 20,000, 8,800 of them in New York; David Shannon, The Decline of American Communism: A History of the Communist Party of the United States Since 1945 (NewYork:Harcourt, Brace, 1959), 360. 4. U.S. News andWorld Report, 1 April 1955 (speech by Attorney General Herbert Brownell, 21 March 1955). 1.The Doctor: Edward Barsky 1.Herbert Arthur Philbrick,I LedThree Lives:Citizen,“Communist,”Counterspy (NewYork: McGraw-Hill, 1952), 251. 2.The new HUAC was not merely a reactivation of the Dies Committee; it was, uniquely, a permanent committee. It was approved by the House by 207 votes to 186 with 40 (including Lyndon B. Johnson) abstaining. As the initiator of the motion, John E. Rankin, rejoiced:“I caught ’em flat-footed and flatheaded .” Cited in Walter Goodman, The Committee (London: Secker & Warburg, 1969), 169. 3. Two examples are Robert Justin Goldstein, Political Repression in Modern America (Cambridge, Mass.: Schenkman, 1978); and William Preston, Aliens and 166 Notes to pages 12–14 Dissenters: Federal Suppression of Radicals, 1903–1933 (Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1995). 4. “Statement issued by Honorable John S. Wood, of Georgia, Chairman, House Committee on Un-American Activities,” 24 January 1946, in Charlotte Todes Stern Papers, 1925–1956, #70, Box 2, Folder 1, Tamiment Library and Robert F.Wagner Archives, NewYork University (henceforth Stern Papers). 5. Medicine was in the marrow: his father was also a surgeon at Beth Israel, and his two brothers, George and Arthur, also became doctors. (Arthur was a pioneering plastic surgeon who treatedVietnamese children during theVietnam War.) Barsky’s private practice focused on industrial injuries (i.e., workers’ compensation cases) that required surgery. 6. Joseph North,“A Case for the Doctor,” New Masses, 19 August 1947, 7. 7.Peter N.Carroll,“Introduction,”in Peter N.Carroll and James D.Fernandez (eds.), Facing Fascism: NewYork and the Spanish Civil War (NewYork: Museum of the City of NewYork and NewYork University Press, 2007), 15–16. 8. Edward Barsky,“The Surgeon Goes toWar,” 12–13 (from chapter 1,“Someone Had to Help”), undated and unpublished manuscript, Edward K. Barsky Papers, 1936–1970, Abraham Lincoln Brigade Archives (ALBA), 125, Box 5, Folder 4,Tamiment Library and Robert F.Wagner Archives,NewYork University (henceforth Barsky Papers). 9. See Nelson’s eulogistic recollections of Barsky in Spain in New Masses, 19 August 1947. Nelson joined the Communist Party in 1925, Barsky in November 1935. 10.Barsky,“The Surgeon Goes toWar,”214–15,Barsky Papers,Box 5,Folder 4; NewYork Journal,19 July 1937;NewYork Post,19 July 1937:NewYorkWorld-Telegram, 19 July 1937 (clippings in Barsky Papers, Box 2, Folder 13). 11. See James Neugass, War Is Beautiful: An American Ambulance Driver in the Spanish Civil War (New York: The New Press, 2008), frontispiece; this book is dedicated to Barsky.The 1937 tour allegedly raised“hundreds of thousands of dollars ” for more medical equipment. NewYorkTimes, 13 February 1975 (obituary). 12. Howard Fast, Being Red:A Memoir (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1990), 143. In 1945, too, a reporter described him as “a tall . . . youngish-looking man of not quite fifty, with thick dark straight hair and a clipped, graying moustache.” Mary Braggiotti,“For a Forgotten People,” NewYork Post, 13 March 1945. 13. Howard Fast,“WhyWeWere Sent to Prison,” NewTimes, No. 26, 1950, 10. 14. Ernest Hemingway to Milton Wolff, 7 May 1950, cited in Peter N. Carroll , The Odyssey of the Abraham Lincoln Brigade:Americans in the Spanish CivilWar (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1994), 316; NewYorkTimes, 13 February 1975.(Hemingway met Barsky in Spain;Wolff was the last commander of the Abraham Lincoln Brigade.) For glowing character references from JAFRC staff, see Joseph North, “A Case for the Doctor,” New Masses, 19 August 1947, 8–9. North judged Barsky to be“great in heart as in talent”and“totally absorbed with the pain of mankind” (7). Notes to pages 14–16 167 15. See Veterans of Abraham Lincoln Brigade Records, ALBA 0.19, Box 10, Folders 15 and 25,Tamiment Library and Robert F.Wagner Archives, NewYork University. 16.The British Consul in Madrid...