New York City’s Civil War Over Spain: The Role of Antisemitism in Catholic-Jewish Disputes in the 1930s

• In Event: Conflict and Protest

Abstract

Although the actual battles took place 3,500 miles away, New York City in the 1930s saw its own form of combat over the Spanish Civil War. Those on the left took up the cause of the democratically elected government in Madrid, holding rallies, handing out pamphlets in subways, and soliciting contributions door-to-door in the city’s five boroughs. Those on the right, who supported the Franco forces trying to overthrow the government, staged their own protests and organized lobbying campaigns. Many left-leaning New York Jews sided with Spain’s Loyalists. Many New York Catholics sided with Franco, whom they perceived as defending the Spanish Church against anti-clerical attacks. One New York City institution ensured it would be not merely a political fight, but a religious and ethnic one as well. The Brooklyn Tablet, the official newspaper of the Brooklyn archdiocese, waged a campaign not just against the Loyalists and their supporters, but also against Jews in general and the city’s Jews in particular. During the almost three years of the Spanish Civil War, The Tablet focused on Jews’ nefarious role, hammered home week after week in incendiary news stories, editorials, columns and letters to the editor. This study establishes the centrality of antisemitism in both the dispute over the Spanish Civil War and subsequent Catholic-Jewish conflicts over Father Coughlin, the Christian Front and the Church’s response to the Holocaust.

Author

• Laurel Leff, Northeastern University