Abe Osheroff has died

[Johnny_L.A]

‘Abe who?’

Abe Osheroff had a life right out of a movie

Abe Osheroff had the kind of life that movies are made of.

Here’s the opening scene: It’s 1937, and 21-year-old Osheroff is sailing to Spain to fight with the Abraham Lincoln Brigade in the Spanish Civil War. Near the Spanish coast, Osheroff’s ship is torpedoed by an Italian submarine, but he leaps from the wreckage and swims two miles to shore, where he is shot in the leg by Spanish fascists a few months later.

And all that’s just the first five minutes of what surely would be an award-winning action film.

After that he fought in WWII, fought for civil rights in Mississippi where his car was burned, supported the Sandinistas in Nicaragua, opposed Bush’s War to the end, made a documentary about his experiences in the Spanish Civil War with the Abraham Lincoln Brigade, appeared in another film about the Spanish Civil War, made a film in 2000 about the poetry and poster art of the conflict, and since the early-1990s helped foster kids.

A heck of a life.