THE PROFESSOR
This human ruin, sitting in the sand, half naked, with blackened skin
and stubbly beard, protruding eyes and shaking limbs, was once a professor
of mathematics in the University of Barcelona. One who had never taken
part in politics. One who had no other interests or activities other than
his classes, his books and his family. But one who had been branded as “red”
because he did not advocate the submission of his country to a foreign power,
because he defended the Republic, because he did not submit to the movement
of those who inscribe on their banner the motto “Down with Intelligence!”
As a "red" he had had to fly from Barcelona and eventually cross the
frontier into France. He was afraid — and events proved that his fears were
not exaggerated — that the invading hordes would drench the Catalan soil with
blood. He fled. Fled with half a million fugitives, like many other
professors, poets, men of science, fled on foot, walking to exile beneath
a hail storm of bombs and bullets.
Between two files of gendarmes, tired and foot-sore, his only baggage
the clothes he wore, the Professor arrived at the concentration camp. Just
like a criminal.
Wind, biting cold, pelting rain ... nights in the open, without a
blanket to cover his body, without a roof to his head, without anything to
eat for two days but some scraps of bread acquired by the strength — hitherto
unsuspected in him — of his fists.
There the Professor lived, or to be more exact, slowly died. Nobody
would have recognized the wretched creature sitting on the sand as the once
well-dressed University Professor who had been so loved by his friends and
respected by his pupils. In two months he had aged several years. Insufficient
food, polluted water from the pumps of the camp, lack of sanitation and ex-
posure to the weather had undermined his body.
The Professor’s name was entered on the lists of intellectuals to be
taken out of the camp by the British Committee for Spanish Relief. One
afternoon, the loud speaker of the camp called out, among others, the name
of the Professor. At last, he was to be set at liberty! He would walk on
firm ground, wear clean clothing, sleep in a bed, sit on a chair, eat at a
table. Even, possibly, he would be able to read, to study.
His companions look at each other silently. The loud speaker is an
impersonal voice which repeats the name and does not know that the Professor
is dead. In the driving wind of the icy dawn he gave up the endless
struggle against hunger and cold and died without a word or a cry in a corner
of his miserable hut.
There is no life in the camps -- only death. Every refugee taken out
of the camps in time is a man brought back to life, a hero of the Spanish
Republic rescued from privation and suffering that cannot be described.