Maurice "Morry" Levitas, one of the last surviving Irish veterans who served with the International Brigade in the fight against Fascism in Spain, died on February 14th aged 84.
He was born on February 1st, 1917, in Dublin's Warren Street, a predominantly Jewish neighbourhood of artisan housing in the Portobello area. His parents, Harry Levitas from the Lithuanian shtetl of Akmeyan and Leah Rick from the Latvian capital of Riga, had fled the anti-Semitism of Tsarist Russia to join relatives already residing in Dublin. It was to prove to be a life-saving choice for both of them.
Leah Rick's sister and family, with the exception of a daughter who had emigrated to Palestine and a son in the Red Army, all perished in Nazi gas chambers. Harry Levitas's sister and all her family were among those herded into the local synagogue and burned to death, while a brother who had emigrated to Paris was shot by the Gestapo in the closing stages of the war. Such family experiences reconfirmed Maurice Levitas in his lifelong fight against Fascism.
He attended St Peter's Church of Ireland National School as his father struggled to earn a living, sometimes dealing in scrap metal, but more often as a tailor's presser. His father and two uncles were active in the International Tailors', Pressers' and Machinists' Trade Union, known to Dubliners as "the Jewish Union".
These childhood years were marked by poverty as well as personal tragedy when Maurice Levitas's year-old brother, Isaac, died in March 1923.
Economic circumstances forced the Levitas family to emigrate to Glasgow in 1927 and to the East End of London in 1931. Maurice Levitas began employment in a series of upholstery shops, but soon began working on building sites, first as a labourer and subsequently as a plumber.
His political consciousness had already been awakened during his childhood in Dublin by his father, who was a communist supporter. Maurice Levitas joined the Communist Party of Great Britain in 1933. As secretary of the Young Communist League's Bethnal Green Branch he was to the forefront in the struggle against the British Union of Fascists, most notably in October 1936 at the legendary "Battle of Cable Street".
In December 1937, Maurice Levitas enlisted in the International Brigade to fight against Fascism in Spain. During January and February 1938 he was in action at Belchite and Teruel on the Aragon front.
On March 31st he was captured by Italian Fascist troops near the town of Gandesa, along with Irish Republican Congress leader Frank Ryan. He spent the next nine months imprisoned in the Spanish concentration camp at San Pedro de Cardena, subject to arbitrary beatings from camp guards and interrogation and "scientific" measurements carried out by visiting German Gestapo agents.
On January 6th, 1939, he was transferred to San Sebastian prison, with its own horrific environment of systematic executions of Basque prisoners. He was released on February 6th as part of a prisoner exchange sought by Mussolini.
One of his first acts after his release was to visit Dublin on February 27th to speak at a public meeting calling for the release of Frank Ryan.
In 1942, Maurice Levitas enlisted in the Royal Army Medical Corps and served in India and Burma. In 1948, having resumed employment as a plumber, he was offered a place in an emergency Teachers' Training College. After qualifying, he spent from 1949 to 1966 teaching in secondary modern schools in the London area. During this period he also became secretary of the Communist Party's Hammersmith branch. He obtained an honours B. Sc. in sociology as an external student of London University and was appointed senior lecturer in the sociology of education at Durham College in 1966. His book, Marxist Perspectives in the Sociology of Education, was published in 1974.
Following his retirement, Maurice Levitas emigrated to
East Germany in 1985 where he taught English at the Karl Liebknecht Hochschule in Potsdam. He also renewed friendships with the few surviving German anti-Fascist fighters with whom he had shared imprisonment in San Pedro.
He returned to London in 1990 and joined the new Communist Party. Ever loyal to those who had also committed themselves to the anti-Fascist struggle in the decade prior to the second World War, he denounced the prosecution and imprisonment in Berlin of the former East German president, Erich Honecker. He highlighted Honecker's 10 years of imprisonment by the Nazis and tirelessly worked at editing and translating Erich Honecker Cross Examined (1992).
On May 4th, 1991, he was chosen by his fellow veterans to read out the roll of honour of those Irishmen who had sacrificed their lives in defence of the Spanish Republic, on the occasion of the unveiling of the Liberty Hall plaque in their memory by the Lord Mayor of Dublin. He again returned to Liberty Hall on May 12th, 1996, for the unveiling of the James Connolly statue by the then President, Mrs Mary Robinson.
Maurice Levitas paid his last visit to Spain in November 1996 to receive the right to citizenship conferred on all International Brigade veterans by unanimous decision of the Spanish parliament. This he regarded as the ultimate vindication by the Spanish people of his fight against Fascism 60 years previously.
The vindication of his native city followed in the wake of his 80th birthday, when he visited the Mansion House on February 14th, 1997, and was accorded a civic reception by the Lord Mayor and Dublin City Council in honour of the five surviving Irish veterans.
Maurice Levitas is survived by four children from his first marriage to the late Liz Scott - Bill, Diana, Ruth and Danny; and by two children, Rachel and Ben, from his second marriage to Jackie Litherland.
Maurice Moishe ben Hillel Levitas: born 1917; died, February 2001