5 September, 1936 – 18 Elul, 5696
Famed Jewish photographer Robert Capa (born Endre Friedmann in Budapest) snapped “The Falling Soldier” near Córdoba early in the Spanish Civil War. A disproportionate number of Jewish communists and socialists throughout Europe volunteered to defend democracy against Franco’s fascism, amounting to as many as 10 percent of the foreign fighters on the loyalist side. They were soon defeated, however, when Hitler’s massive aid tipped the scales in Franco’s favor, and his Nationalists dominated Spain for the next thirty-six years. Capa photographed four more wars, most famously D-Day in World War II, and including Israel’s War of Independence.