Carles Brasó Broggi, doctor in History, treasured years and wisdom in the heat of the Civil War. As he confesses to ABC, his grandfather Moisés, a doctor by profession since graduating in Barcelona, was called to participate in the International Brigades. He was more Spanish than a jar of wine, but the lack of men after the French border was closed made the military leadership use all the resources it could. “They covered the casualties at the front with recruits from here,” he explains. That seed germinated years later, when this expert in Asia came across the headline of a Chinese newspaper that caught his attention: “Spanish doctors”
to which he allows us to enter through a videoconference, Broggi confirms that everything started with that article. It was a sort of figurehead that put him on the trail of a group of seventeen doctors and two nurses who had participated in both the Spanish Civil War –this one, under the umbrella of the International Brigades– as in the conflict between China and Japan starting in 1936. Years of investigation later it has just shed light ‘The wandering doctors‘ (Crítica, 2022), an essay that longs to act as a collective biography of this picturesque group that has disappeared until now from the history books.
Like any good literary father, Broggi suffers when asked about his favorite story. He immediately answers that he cannot love one more than the other, since each one harbors their own secrets. “Perhaps the one of František Kriegel“, Explain. Although not because of her favorite, but because of how striking she was. And he is right, because this Czechoslovakian doctor walked through all the great wars of the 20th century until he died in the eighties. “The most surprising thing is that he was vindicated at the same time by Carrillo and Adolfo Suárez for having fought in the International Brigades and having later confronted the USSR,” he says.
He claims he’s researched Eastern European archives…
He had been years behind visiting the archives of Eastern Europe. With translators, yes, because I don’t speak Czech or Polish. But the pandemic changed everything. In the end, I looked for contacts in Prague and Warsaw of academics working on the same topic. They responded very well and promised to help me; go themselves to investigate the documents and pass the information to me. It has been very exciting that people who did not know me offered to lend me a hand. Without them the book would have been very different.
How did you meet these characters?
I am a specialist in Chinese history, and I discovered these characters thanks to her. When inquiring into their lives I saw their relationship points and I decided to investigate them. What I got was fascinating: in addition to being on the peninsula and in Beijing, they also had exciting stories on their return from the Cold War.
You talk about 17 doctors and 2 nurses… What is your point of relationship?
They are what in China they called ‘The Spanish doctors’. Not because they were born there, but because they had fought in the Civil War. They actually came from Poland, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Romania… I could have added more to the group – other doctors or nurses who died on campaign, for example – but these 19 characters shared having been in both conflicts.
One of the central stories is that of František Kriegel, why?
Because it is the most relevant and interesting figure. He was born in present-day Ukraine – then Galicia of the Astro-Hungarian Empire – and from there he emigrated to Czechoslovakia, where he studied medicine at the University of Prague and joined the Communist Party. Later he traveled to Spain with the International Brigades and to China. But his story did not stop at this point. He was then hired by the American Army in the Burma campaign and returned to Czechoslovakia, where he took up a post with the government of Antonín Novotný.
How is it possible that his figure was claimed by both sides?
For his criticism of the USSR. In 1952 he was a victim of Stalin’s purges and lost his job. Although he was lucky and was hired as an adviser in Cuba. He was there until 1963, the year he returned to Prague and collaborated on ‘Primavera’. He had a very important role in the country’s reforms and made efforts to eliminate censorship. His figure was decisive in Spain. Here he was claimed by the Communist Party in the late 1970s for having opposed the Soviet Union. It can be said that he was one of the few that was accepted by both Carrillo and Suárez.
Did many international communist parties oppose the USSR?
The communist parties in Spain, China, and Italy opposed the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia. And these doctors maintained close contact with these groups. In the book I was interested in analyzing how, within this world, which is sometimes seen as a monolithic faction, there were actually many currents. Some took a disastrous path, as was the case with Romania; others reformed and integrated into the country and a few radically changed the regions in which they governed.
How did these doctors get to Spain?
They were doctors in Poland, Czechoslovakia, Romania… Countries where anti-Semitic policies were on the rise. As Jews, they saw the doors of their profession being closed to them in universities and hospitals. In the end, that somehow pushed them to travel to Spain with the International Brigades and enter the Medical corps. This was key because specialists from thirty countries worked on it, bringing innovations in military medicine from all over the world. All this was used in China, where both communists and nationalists were able to use it.
What medical innovations were brought to Spain?
Several, and thanks to the interrelationship between the Spanish doctors –of whom there were many in the brigades– with those who came from other countries. They were born as a result of this pooling of techniques that, until then, each nation kept secret. One of the most striking was the massive use of ambulances on the front line, something that the French army had already done in the First World War. Abdominal operations were no longer fatal and mortality was reduced. On the other hand, blood transfusions were born, an advance typical of the Civil War. It is something that already existed, but it had to be done at the time; the novelty was to find out how it could be stored for use in battle.
To what extent did the lack of training of the brigades influence the evolution of medicine?
Much. In battles like the one in Madrid, mortality was very high, almost 20%. The first reason is that the brigades were placed in very advanced positions, but also because of a certain disorganization. In addition, the medical corps was not created until late in the war, which caused severe difficulties. As if that were not enough, communication between soldiers and doctors was very difficult due to the difference in languages. This is all the bad part. In return, the chaos allowed experimentation and the evolution of techniques. A clear example was the abdominal wounds. They were very dangerous and the surgeon needed many hours to treat them. In the Civil War great advances were made in the surgical field.
What was the battle in which more doctors were involved?
In Brunete, one of the hardest of the Civil War. In this battle the brigades were in the front line and there were many casualties. It was such a tough confrontation that, when it was over, many doctors considered going to China. On the one hand, they saw that everything was lost here and, on the other, they knew that they could not return to their countries of origin because they were Jewish and the rise of Nazism made it impossible.
How was that move to China?
Complex. As members who were from different communist parties, they began to see the possibilities offered by leaving. But there were several problems. One of them was that André Martí, the person with the highest rank within the International, refused to recognize that the wars in Spain and China were comparable. The leadership of the brigades gave the doctors all the delay they could and, in the end, they were forced to go to France in February 1939. They lived through an ordeal because they were interned in concentration camps; in the end, part of the aid that had not been used in the war was used to free them and pay for their trip to Asia. There the beginning of the WWII.
He explains that field medicine in China was conspicuous by its absence…
They came across non-existent military medicine and precarious troop conditions in terms of hygiene and food. They hoped to have mobile surgical teams, but found themselves cleaning latrines on the front lines of the battle to prevent a cholera epidemic from spreading. In that sense they were somewhat disappointed. The front was also very different from the Spanish. If roads were very important in the Civil War, in China they were not. Since Japan had much more means, the Chinese chose to destroy the tracks and use ‘guerrilla warfare’. Instead of working in hospitals and aid stations, they had to go to the front lines with the first aid team to save everyone they could.