Authors Notes
Acknowledgements
I thank the National Endowment for the Arts for making possible the completion of this book.
I also wish to give my heartfelt thanks to the following: Kim Chernin for her warm encouragement and advice; my American mother Julia Davis for a line-by-line edit of the first draft; Peter Carroll for his help on a final restructuring; above all, my wife Judith Levy-Sender whose fluency in the language and personal warmth made contacts with my Spanish family easy and understandable.
I wish to acknowledge the collaboration of Fernando Primo Martínez in Zamora in conducting interviews and researching addresses of informants.
Also, I would like to thank friends of my mother and Spanish relatives who gave unstintingly of their time, especially my aunt Concha Sender Garces whose detailed recollections did so much to make this book possible, my cousins Magdalena and Melchora Maes Barayón for their unswerving loyalty to Amparo’s memory, and cousin Mercedes Kemp who corrected some translations and subsequently translated the book for the Spanish edition. My first stepmother Elizabeth Sauzon, my aunt Marcelle, my mother’s sister Eugenia contributed vital details. Dionisia Diaz Cortes’ children and her cousin María, my childhood friends Maruchi and Pepi Rivera, all added important information as well as Amparo’s piano student María Uria. For details of prison conditions in Zamora I am indebted to Palmira Sanjuan, Leonor Martínez Robles and to Pilar Fidalgo Carasa as well as Dionisio Heredero.
So many of my Spanish family assisted us that it is impossible to name them all here. All I can do is offer my sincere thanks for their collaboration and their warm inclusion of me once more into their lives.
Bibliography
Julia Davis. The Sun Climbs Slow, E.P. Dutton & Co. Inc., New York, 1942. A fictional treatment of our arrival in Julia’s life, although many of the scenes with the children are accurate portrayals.
Pilar Fidalgo. A Young Mother In Franco’s Prisons, United Editorial Ltd., London, 1939. A major source of information on the conditions in the women’s cell in Zamora. The Southworth Collection at the University of California, San Diego has a copy.
Pilar Fidalgo. Nine Months In The Hands Of The Fascists, A Personal Testimony, El Socialista, May 20, 21, 22, 1937, Madrid. Testimony Pilar Fidalgo gave before the Spanish consul in Bayonne shortly after she was repatriated from Zamora.
Enrique Lister. Nuestra Guerra, Colección Ebro, Editions de la Librairie du Globe, Paris, 1966. Lister’s colorful autobiography as the communist ironworker who evolved into one of the Republic’s top military leaders during the civil war. I quote his opinion of Ramón J. Sender.
Joaquín Maurín, Letter to Ramón J. Sender, from the large collection of Maurín/Sender correspondence in the Archives of The Hoover Institute, Palo Alto.
Further Acknowledgments
Ramón J. Sender. Letters to Joaquín Maurín, Archives of The Hoover Institute, Palo Alto.
Ramón J. Sender. Los Cinco Libros De Ariadne, Ediciones Destino, Barcelona, 1977. My father always referred to this novel when I asked him for details of Amparo’s childhood. I have translated selections that seemed appropriate. Also it contained important information on their last hours together in San Rafael.
Ramón J. Sender. Selecciones De Poesia Lirica Y Aforistica, bilingual edition with translations by Florence Talamantes, El Sol de California, San Diego, 1979. His sonnet to Amparo is included.
Ramón J. Sender. Seven Red Sundays, Liveright Publishing Co., New York, 1936. An early novel set during a proletarian uprising in Madrid. It recounts the tale of Amparo’s placing of a bomb in the telephone building.
Ramón J. Sender. The War In Spain, Faber & Faber Ltd. London, 1937 Counterattack In Spain in the American edition, Houghton Mifflin Company, Boston, 1937. An autobiographical account of the author’s activities during the first six months of the civil war. I have utilized it as a source for the chapter on my father.
Suggested Readings
Hugh Thomas. The Spanish Civil War, Harper & Row, Revised & Enlarged Edition, New York, 1977.
Gabriel Jackson. The Spanish Republic & The Civil War, Princeton University Press, 1965.
Ronald Fraser. The Blood Of Spain, An Oral History Of The Spanish Civil War, Pantheon Books, New York, 1979.
Dan Kurzman. Miracle Of November, Madrid’s Epic Stand, G.T. Putnam’s Sons, New York, 1980.
George Hills. The Battle For Madrid, St. Martin’s Press, New York, 1977
Claude G. Bowers. My Mission To Spain, Simon & Schuster, New York, 1954.
Arturo Barea. The Forging Of A Rebel, David-Poynter Ltd., London, 1972.
Frederick Benson. Writers In Arms, New York University Press, New York, 1967.
Robert A. Rosenstone. Crusade On The Left, Pegasus, New York, 1969.
Helen Graham. The Spanish Republic at War 1936-1939, Cambridge University Press; 2003