On the starboard side our men were slow in moving toward the bow. We on the port side had covered a greater distance and were now attracting the attention of the crew members who leaned over the starboard railing. They started moving toward the port side. Halfway up the deck, McCormick was stopped again, this time by a young officer and a crew member. They argued, but Blair, Gavin and I couldn't afford the luxury of standing back to protect one member. We had to keep pressing forward.
Now it was Gavin's turn to come face-to-face with two members of the crew. He wasted no time in throwing lefts and rights at them. Blair and I raced ahead. Only a few more feet to the bow. By now, other crew members had discovered the men moving forward on the starboard side and a battle ensued. Crew members appeared from all over the ship as the captain shouted orders over the loudspeaker for all crew members to get to the bow immediately.
A sailor grabbed Blair by the neck and tried to pull him to the deck. Blair had uncovered one end of his fountain pen and was vigorously jabbing the pointed end of the pen into the face of the sailor. I wanted to stop and yank the German off Blair; instead, I hurdled the last sea breaker and grabbed the first rung on the short ladder leading to the bowsprit. Pandemonium was all about me as I reached the top. The Nazi symbol was just a few inches from me. I drew a deep breath. Behind me I could hear the screams of the passengers, the barking of orders in German of the captain and the blowing of police whistles as dozens of police boarded the Bremen.
I grabbed the swastika and started to pull. The banner at first resisted, but then I heard it ripping along the seam. Still, it was hanging onto the halyard. I yanked some more. It wouldn't part. I panicked. Time was getting short. Goddamn that flag! It seemed to be stronger than canvas. Why wouldn't the rope part? I had to be careful; one misstep and I would be over the side and in the Hudson River. I grabbed the swastika more firmly, preparing to give it my all, when I noticed a pair of hands reaching up to grasp the top rung. My first instinct was to bring my foot down onto the hands; I thought it was a member of the crew coming to get me. But in the next second I recognized one of our guys, Adrian Duffy, a short, wiry seaman. "Hold the bastard tight!" he shouted. A snap of a switchblade, a quick slash at the rope, and the flag was free. Quickly, I tossed it overboard as the roar of the crowd reached a deafening crescendo. When I turned to get off the bowsprit, Duffy was gone. I noticed that Blair was still being walloped by several crew members. I jumped down to the deck, stumbled when I tried to get up and fell forward. Two crew members grabbed me and pulled me to my feet.
A quick glance showed Blair lying stretched out on deck. I did not waste time after I delivered a blow to one guy; it knocked him over one of the sea breakers. The other guy panicked and moved back a few feet. As I looked for a safe way down the deck I saw him again moving toward me. For a moment our eyes focused on each other. For a split second I had the feeling he was telling me, "Good work, comrade, but I have to put up a front." I did not wait for confirmation of my thoughts. As soon as he came within striking distance I swung at him, catching him on the jaw. He fell back. But I felt a wallop in the back of the head, another on the back, and I was down. As I tried to get up I noticed three crew members standing over me. A kick in the solar plexus knocked the wind out of me. A kick in the forehead and I started to see colored lights. Another kick caught me in the jaw. Stupefied, immobilized, I lay sprawled against the deck railing. It could not have been more than five or ten minutes when I was lifted to my feet and half dragged toward the gangway. Through swollen eyelids I could make out a mass of angry and stunned people blocking my way as cops shouted, "Open up. Let us through."
I heard a voice: "Why, they're all young punks, probably college kids." Then the crowd parted and I was once more on the dock. I was taken toward a small booth used by the ship's officers to validate passenger tickets. Horrified, I saw one man lying on his back, blood all over his face. The cops dragging me shouted to the bloody figure, "Is this the guy?"
The figure looked at me. "No," he mumbled.
Quickly I was taken out, walked a few feet from the booth, then taken back in again. "This is the guy, right?" asked the cop.
The bloodied figure looked at me again. "No," he said.
After that I stayed in the booth and was told to sit down. Low-Life McCormick was already there. His ear was badly bloodied and blood ran down the side of his face. Bill Howe sat next to him, and next to Bill sat George Blackwell. Blair was dragged in, holding his stomach, bruised in the face. They dragged in Drolette and laid him almost at our feet. He had been shot and his mid-section was soaked with blood. He lay there moaning, still conscious.
I could hear the steel door closing on the pier as the gangway was pulled from the Bremen and she pulled away from the dock. Where only minutes earlier hundreds of passengers and visitors had lolled on the dock, an equal number of policemen were now clearing the dock of all civilians.
Ambulances and doctors arrived and quickly we were all checked over. Blair was taken to the hospital. Drolette was placed on a stretcher and removed. The doctors threw a bandage on McCormick's ear. The medics wiped some blood off my face and commented that it wasn't necessary to take me to a hospital. The bloodied figure that lay on deck got the most attention. Later we learned that he was a Jewish detective named Solomon. The cops carried him out with loving care, cursing us as they passed him to a special ambulance. With the wounded out of the way, the four of us remaining sat in the booth contemplating our fate.
With over 200 cops now occupying the pier, all sorts of possible dilemmas had to be considered. Knowing the brutality of the New York cops toward radicals was one thing. Knowing how they felt when one of their own was killed or injured was another. Here we were in a pier occupied only by cops. Every few minutes cops sauntered over to the booth to look in on us with scowls of hatred on their faces. One thing was certain, the way I saw the picture: we were going to get worked over. Who was there to say that we didn't receive our injuries while trying to escape? Almost three-quarters of an hour had passed since the ship departed. What the hell were they waiting for?
Two cops from the harbor patrol walked into the booth, dressed in blue overalls. The riot call must have brought the patrol boats to the scene. I had a cigarette in my mouth as one of the cops moved closer. He took a slow look at each of us. I could sense that he wanted further provocation before striking out. He found it. "Who told you to smoke?" he shouted. He then slapped the cigarette out of my mouth.
From my vantage point I could see through the window to the inside of the pier. The cops had formed a circle. A high-ranking officer in gold braid was speaking to them. We could not hear what was being said. Then the circle broke up and the cops formed two lines facing each other, two feet apart. "On yer feet, bastards," said a sergeant. We were escorted out of the booth and slowly made our way down the steps through the line of cops to the outside of the pier. The streets were empty of demonstrators; only dozens of police cars and motorcycles were evident. We were pushed into a large paddy wagon. The door slammed shut and we moved out, with motorcycles in front and more police cars in back of us. As our motorcade of "New York's finest" moved closer to the precinct station, police had to battle their way up the street. Demonstrators had shifted from the pier to the police station, blocking the street. Hundreds of cops had to converge on the demonstrators to clear a path to the door amid cries of, "Here they come!"
We sat upstairs in the detectives' room, waiting for what was to come next. We could hear the demonstrators yelling and banging lids of garbage cans. A detective at a typewriter got up to shut the window. "I'd love to turn a machine gun on them bastards. I wish it was legal," he said as he eyed us. I knew there had to be more to this than just sitting around; a detective had been "worked over" and here we were sitting with our limbs intact. I passed word to the others: this would be a test of our convictions; usually the first one or two blows were toughest, but remember: we are just anti-fascists pissed off at Hitler for what he did to Si
mpson and to religious people in general.
A detective walked out of one of the side rooms, took a good look at each one of us, then told McCormick to follow him. They both entered the room; the door banged shut behind them. A few minutes later, there came the sound of something banging against the wall. The door opened and McCormick came barging out with the detective following and kicking him as he hustled back into his seat near us. "What happened in there?" I asked McCormick.
"One bull wanted me to admit that we were all Communists following orders to sabotage the Bremen. When I told him he was wrong he gave me a few clouts and threw me out."
The streets had been cleared of demonstrators. Quiet prevailed. Our "life histories" had been taken down on paper by the clerk. Once again we were hustled into a police van and moved downtown to the central police headquarters, where we lined up for fingerprinting and pictures. A white-haired police captain with a strong Irish brogue walked over to where we were sitting. To each man he said, "And what would your name be?" As he jotted down the names, he looked puzzled. In a whisper he told another policeman, "Why, they're all Irish! Not a Jew among them!"
At about four in the morning we were put back in the paddy wagon and driven back uptown to the precinct station, where we were placed in cells. Now we had a chance to put the pieces together, to appraise the events of the last eight hours. So far, from any angle, the demonstration was a success. It had brought thousands of people to the pier to protest against fascism. Newspapers were running headlines about the "riot" at the pier. Pictures were in every newspaper. The radio constantly blared news reports of the event. A man was shot and lay "near death," said some news reports. A detective was "savagely beaten and his fate is unknown," reported another story. The true story had to be pieced together. Solomon, the Jewish detective, had been assigned to the Bremen along with a group of other detectives attached to the anti-Red squad. Solomon had heard rumors that a demonstration was going to take place, and his assignment was to be aboard the Bremen. When the "riot" began and he watched the first group try to break through on the starboard side, he trailed after them to try and hold them off. But before he had a chance to nab one of our people he was stopped by some of the crew members. The crew thought he was one of the demonstrators. He broke away from several crew members and proceeded to catch up with Drolette. Drolette took a swing at him and knocked him to the deck. Solomon took out his pistol and fired off a shot, catching Drolette with a bullet to the groin. The crew did not understand. They quickly grabbed the gun from Solomon and threw it over the side. Solomon shouted, "I'm a cop! I'm a cop!" and tried to pin his badge to his coat. Again the crew members tightened their grips on him. They took his badge and threw it over the side, then they ganged up on him, kicking and punching him until he was unconscious and his face was a bloody mess.
Now the police had to find at least one individual on whom they could pin this rap. That was the reason we had been dragged before him for recognition. When it failed the first time, the cops tried dragging us before him again, hoping that the dumb cluck would say one of us was the guilty one. But Solomon was too stupefied to realize that a recognition was expected of him. One crew member later admitted that to him "Solomon looked like just another Jewish demonstrator."
The police department was in a quandary. On the one hand, according to them, they had notified the owners of the Bremen that a demonstration was in the making and wanted to offer "additional police protection." But the steamship agency had notified the police that extra protection was not necessary. To further complicate matters, the police were not sure that all the demonstrators were off the ship when it sailed from its pier. they insisted that a company of police stay aboard the Bremen until they reached the Statue of Liberty and conducted a cabin-by-cabin search for any demonstrator who might have sailed with the ship. Of course the passengers were unnerved by the searches. It was said that the captain ordered a lifeboat lowered and the area searched for the swastika. The company said that the banner was located and restored to the pole; others maintained that it was never found. Instead, a new one replaced the one that probably settled on the bottom of the muddy Hudson River.
Were the police convinced that they had arrested six seamen, all of the Catholic faith? At first, perhaps. When we were put into our cells, the contents of our pockets were placed into envelopes. The contents included our prayer beads, sacraments and crosses. In the middle of the night, we were awakened by a rattle on the bars of the cell. A cop stood on the other side. "Here," he said, "come get your beads. No man has a right to deny a religious man his prayer beads."
At nine that morning we were taken downstairs where we appeared before a judge. Bail was set despite the protest of the International Labor Defense lawyers who appeared on our behalf. Back to the cells we went. At noon, some drunken jailer appeared at my cell door. His breath reeked of bad gin. "Give me the key, Riley," he shouted to the other jailer. "I want to get in there and beat these bastards to a pulp." He rattled the doors until the other jailer coaxed him away.
There were two things I had to do--stay clean and calm. Off came my socks and bloody shirt, into the wash basin, then onto my bunk to hang dry. From my small window I could see light but couldn't see out. I could hear a group of people marching up and down the street shouting, "Free the Bremen demonstrators!" It was nice to hear that we were not forgotten.
At five in the evening I was bailed out by a young man and woman, placed in a cab and taken downtown to the ILD office. I thanked my benefactors, then found my way inside the office. "There's a lot of money we have to raise to get your buddies out of jail," I was told. "Your work had just begun." Within two days we had the rest of the men out on bail. It took working 15 hours a day, speaking at rallies and meetings, to raise the bail money. Everyone I came in contact with wanted to give me something to help us pursue the case in the courts.
Blair had gotten out of the hospital but ached all over. Drolette was recovering fairly well. The anti-Nazi sentiment around New York and throughout the country was on the increase. More stories were appearing in the papers about anti-Semitism is Germany. Goebbels pushed himself into the picture. He made an announcement that "a thing like this could only happen in an American city where they had a Jew for a mayor." This, of course, infuriated Italian Mayor Fiorello LaGuardia who, in turn, lashed out at the Nazis. To further strain matters, the Nazis claimed that their consulate office was not properly protected. LaGuardia, incensed, assigned ten of New York's Jewish cops and detectives to "safeguard" the consulate office on lower Broadway. This did not sit well with its occupants. All of this shaped up as a result of the Bremen demonstration.
A more aggressive drive against war and fascism was permeating the city. I spoke at an open-air meeting in Yorkville, the heart of the Nazi Bund area. We had expected a strong Nazi disruption, but the meeting was so well-attended that the Nazi's retaliation was minimal. A meeting at Madison Square Garden filled the auditorium with some 20,000 people. Fifty members of the police "Red squad" were in the audience. Five of the "Bremen Six," as we were later called, were on the platform. It was a fantastic experience speaking before such a large gathering. The ovation lasted 13 minutes. For the next several weeks I spoke at two meetings a day, gathering funds and support for the coming trial. Meanwhile, the Bremen had docked in Hamburg. Most of the crew and officers were removed from the ship, and some of them were sent to jail for failing to "protect the honor of the new Germany."
At least one day every two weeks we were lined up in court alongside our lawyers, who argued before the judge for more time to prepare our case, or for a reduction in bail, or for a motion to throw the whole case out. In one of our court appearances I saw a short guy take over the whole defense. Nicely-dressed in a white suit, he stood before the judge and words flowed smoothly out. His demure tone of voice shocked me. "Who the hell is this guy?" I asked one of the lawyers.
"Oh, that's Vito Marcantonio, the congressman from Harlem's San Juan Hill. He's one of
the best." Marcantonio had volunteered to join the staff of the defense team. He was to appear only when he was in the city, away from his duties in Washington. He made several appearances for us, each time insisting that all charges be dropped. "If anyone should be tried before the court it should be the Nazis for destroying the human rights of the German people, for destroying the trade unions, destroying political parties and subjecting the Jewish people to lives of terror and concentration camps," he argued.
In Brazil, an anti-Nazi rally tore down the swastika from the German consulate building and burned it in the streets. In other places demonstrations against fascism showed open hostility against the German embassies. In Germany, the swastika, symbol of Hitler's party, was changed by decree to henceforth be recognized as the official flag of Germany. No longer was the desecration of the swastika to be directed against a political party. From now on, it would be a direct insult to Germany and the German people. The old flag of the Weimar Republic was a thing of the past.
Chapter XV: The SS California Strike
In the midst of all this activity I was surprised one day when Pele showed up at the door. A big meeting of Communist Youth leaders of the world was to be held in Moscow. She was to represent the American Communist youth movement, a high honor. But such a meeting had to remain secret at least until the meeting was in progress or concluded; no news of her being a candidate for this meeting was to be revealed. Even being seen with known Communists was to be taboo for her.
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