Kingdom of Night: The Saga of a Woman's Struggle for Survival
(Through his writing and his appearances nationwide, Josep...)
Through his writing and his appearances nationwide, Joseph Freeman has shared his story of survival during the Holocaust. Here in Kingdom of Night, Joseph Freeman tells the story of his wife Helen's survival in labor and concentration camps in Nazi-occupied Poland during W.W.II. As Michael Berenbaum writes in the book's Foreword, "Surely we who read her story must be grateful for all that she shared and grateful again to her husband Joseph? who brings Chaiale's Helen's story to the printed page where it will long endure. By telling the "before" and "during," she has enriched the "after" and deepened the meaning of survival." Kingdom of Night is a touching memoir of innocence lost, the enduring power of faith, and a call to a new generation to bear witness to the atrocities of the past so that they may be empowered to respond to injustice.
(Many of the earliest books, particularly those dating bac...)
Many of the earliest books, particularly those dating back to the 1900s and before, are now extremely scarce and increasingly expensive. We are republishing these classic works in affordable, high quality, modern editions, using the original text and artwork.
Road to Hell: Recollections of the Nazi Death March
(A description of the final moments of destruction when th...)
A description of the final moments of destruction when the defeated Nazis marched concentration camp inmates until they starved, froze, were clubbed, shot, or simply walk to death.
An American Testament - A Narrative Of Rebels And Romantics
(An examination of socialism in the USA, originally publis...)
An examination of socialism in the USA, originally published in the 1930s. Many of the earliest books, particularly those dating back to the 1900s and before, are now extremely scarce and increasingly expensive. Hesperides Press are republishing these classic works in affordable, high quality, modern editions, using the original text and artwork.Contents Include: A Vanished Village The Golden Realm Guides for the Perplexed Apocalypse Saviours in Cap and Gown The Triumph of Life Time and Eternity Dialogues Across the Sea Against the Stream The Happy Island The Party Idealists The Strange Twenties The New Masses Greta Expedition New Found Land Hedda Eisenstein's Holy Grail Turning Points
Joseph "Joe" Freeman was an American writer and magazine editor. He is best remembered as an editor of The New Masses, a literary and artistic magazine closely associated with the Communist Party USA, and as a founding editor of the magazine Partisan Review.
Background
He was born in the province of Poltava in the Ukraine, the son of Isaac Freeman, a merchant, and Stella Lvovitch. Both his grandfathers were rabbis. When he was seven, the Freeman family came to the United States and settled in the Williamsburg district of Brooklyn, New York.
In a few years, Isaac Freeman became a prosperous builder and real estate dealer. Joseph's troubled boyhood--memories of anti-Jewish violence in the Ukraine and the initial poverty of the family after the arrival in the United States--instilled in him an awareness of injustice and confirmed somber aspects of his Jewish heritage.
Education
In 1916 Freeman entered Columbia University, where his interests in literature and politics were stimulated by Charles A. Beard, John Erskine, Raymond Weave, and H. W. L. Dana, and by his college friends, Kenneth Burke and Matthew Josephson.
Freeman headed the varsity debating team and graduated in 1919.
Career
Freeman's first job was on the editorial staff of Harper and Brothers. He became a naturalized citizen in 1920 and in July of that year went to Europe. Deciding to become a journalist, he took a job as Paris correspondent of the Chicago Tribune. During this period he also wrote and published poetry. Attracted to the private realm of the poet, he was at the same time increasingly committed to the hopeful expectations of a world socialist revolution.
After working for a short time as London correspondent for the Chicago Tribune and New York Daily News, Freeman returned to the United States in 1921 and joined the editorial staff of the Liberator.
The Liberator had been founded by Max Eastman in 1918 after its predecessor, the Masses, was suspended under the threat of government suppression for "interference with military enlistment. "
Freeman, an avid reader of the Masses as a youth, greatly admired the writings of Eastman, Floyd Dell, and John Reed, as well as the cartoons of Art Young.
In his writings for the Liberator from 1920 to 1924 Freeman tried to reconcile his love of romantic poetry and art with his concern about unemployment, poverty, and injustice. Ultimately, though, he turned out to be "more of a poet than a revolutionary, " according to his friend Granville Hicks.
The Liberator, embracing Marxist doctrine, was turned over to the American Communist party in 1924 and merged with other Communist publications.
In 1926 Freeman and Michael Gold, the party's leading literary lights, revived the Masses as the New Masses. During the twenty years of its existence the New Masses adhered to the Communist party line, although Freeman in 1936 denied that Communists financed it.
In 1924 Freeman began working as publicity director for the American Civil Liberties Union, and the following year joined the staff of Tass, the Soviet news agency. He worked off and on for Tass until 1931, continuing to write poetry and Marxist literary criticism.
On his first book, Dollar Diplomacy: A Study in American Imperialism (1925), Freeman collaborated with Scott Nearing, an independent radical. The work, which was also published in Germany, Mexico, and Russia, was described by R. L. Duffus in the New York Times (Nov. 8, 1925) as "a handbook for propagandists against 'Imperialism' full of carefully selected ammunition. "
Late in 1926, Freeman worked his way to the Soviet Union on a freighter and took a job at the office of the Comintern as a translator. His transformation from a romantic rebel to a committed revolutionary progressed rapidly.
He was depressed, however, by the conflicts in the party after the expulsion of Leon Trotsky, and dispirited by the unprincipled career-hunting he saw.
But he did not lose faith in Communism. In the spring of 1927, Freeman spent several months in Gemany. Returning to the United States, he worked for Tass and taught journalism and literature to workers' classes in New York City. In 1929 he was Tass correspondent in Mexico.
Freeman's book The Soviet Worker (1932) dealt with the social, cultural, and economic status of labor in the Soviet Union. The work collated important printed material, much of which was in Russian.
Earlier, Freeman worked in Hollywood for MGM with Russian novelist Boris Pilnyak on a script called Soviet, but the film was never produced. During the early 1930's he was active as a writer in explicating Marxist ideas and formulating the principles governing the creation of proletarian literature.
At the first American Writers Congress (April 1935), he urged writers to voice their sympathy with the proletarian revolution. He had been a co-founder of the Partisan Review in 1934 and in the first issue of the magazine was listed as a member of the editorial board and as the contributor of four poems.
Freeman's ardent adherence to the Soviet Union as "the living test of our faith in the socialist revolution" caused him to defend Stalin and the Moscow Trials (1936 - 1938) after many American intellectuals--his early idol Max Eastman among them--had retreated from Communism.
While working on the preface to a projected volume of his poems, Freeman decided to write his autobiography. An American Testament: A Narrative of Rebels and Romantics (1936) was Freeman's outstanding literary achievement, an extremely interesting and informative book.
Theodore Draper called the book "one of the few Communist human documents worth preserving. " In a perceptive review Malcolm Cowley found that Freeman accurately and movingly revealed his essential position in the radical movement--"that of a translator and intermediary--one who explained to artists the ways of radical politicians, and explained to radical politicians the feeding and fighting and mating habits of the queer unfeathered birds that nested in the arts. "
However, Freeman's measured words of praise for Trotsky in the book greatly displeased Russian Communists as well as Stalinists in the United States. As a result he was, on orders from Moscow, expelled from the party.
In 1937 Freeman left New York City and settled in the foothills of the Catskills, at Accord, New York. For fifteen years he had dedicated himself to the cause of Communism but now that part of his life was over. He had not been able to resolve the problems of being at the same time a zealot and a critic, a poet and a politician.
By late 1939 all of his connections with left-wing publications and organizations were severed. At the end of the period of Freeman's life recounted in An American Testament (the spring of 1926, when he was 29), he judged his own career thus far to have been "a mass of disconnected, contradictory actions and beliefs. " The fragmentations and contradictions continued during the remainder of his life.
Freeman did free-lance writing after 1937 and went back for a time to his old post as publicity director of the American Civil Liberties Union (1940 - 1942).
He wrote more poetry and tried his hand as a novelist. Never Call Retreat (1943) was described by New York Times reviewer Stanley Young as "powerful and filled with dramatic action and color the characters fully realized and memorable. "
The Long Pursuit (1947), a comic, hard-boiled story based on Freeman's experiences with a USO unit touring Germany after V-E Day, won little critical acclaim. From 1943 to 1945 he worked on the basic plan for the Information Please Almanac, an annual compendium of facts and statistics.
Henry Luce commissioned him to write a 30, 000-word article on twenty-five years of the Russian Revolution and then liked the completed work so much he had it printed as a pamphlet and mailed to all the members of Congress.
Freeman was subsequently invited to work for Time. He was willing to do so, but he was "screened" by Whittaker Chambers, whom he had met in 1928 and worked with on the staff of the New Masses. Chambers made it clear to Luce that he did not want his former colleague on the staff of Time, and Freeman was not hired.
In 1948 Freeman joined the staff of Edward L. Bernays' public relations firm.
Freeman died in New York City.
Achievements
Joseph Freeman has been listed as a notable author by Marquis Who's Who.
World War I, he later said, strengthened his belief that "only Socialism could save mankind from barbarism. "
The Liberator, embracing Marxist doctrine, was turned over to the American Communist party in 1924 and merged with other Communist publications.
But he did not lose faith in Communism.
Views
Throughout his life Freeman sought to fuse and master two strong but conflicting impulses: the urge to try to create a just society, requiring direct political action; and the urge to liberate the individual from society, which he believed was the role of the poet and the artist.
Quotations:
World War I, he later said, strengthened his belief that "only Socialism could save mankind from barbarism. "
"For a long time, " Freeman said later, "Michael Gold and I were the only literary critics in the United States attempting to evaluate art and literature by revolutionary standards. "
Membership
He became a member of editorial staff of the left wing artistic magazine The Liberator in 1922 and became Associate Editor of that publication in 1923.
Freeman became a member of the Workers Party of America, forerunner of the Communist Party USA during this interval.
Personality
Freeman was a genial person.
Quotes from others about the person
Granville Hicks, who thought his friend's diverse interests kept him from achieving the lofty reputation to which he was entitled, described Freeman as "massive, dark, and careless of his appearance. " Floyd Dell said he was "one of the most interesting talkers in the world, and a friend of whom I was very fond from the first meeting. "
Freeman tried "to explain how a man living in modern times arrives at the viewpoint known as Communism. "
Interests
Politicians
As a teen-ager he considered himself a socialist; he was familiar with the writings of Lincoln Steffens and Upton Sinclair, and was ready to repudiate the life-style and politics of his father.
Connections
In 1932 Freeman married Charmion von Wiegand, a painter and art critic. They had no children.
Father:
Isaac Freeman
mother
Stella Lvovitch
Wife:
Charmion von Wiegand
colleagues:
Joshua Kunitz and Louis Lozowick
He collaborated with Joshua Kunitz and Louis Lozowick in Voices of October (1930), a study of Soviet art, literature, and films.
Friend:
Granville Hicks
Ultimately, though, he turned out to be "more of a poet than a revolutionary," according to his friend Granville Hicks.
