It was 1937, and the Fascists had already revolted in Spain. I was walking down a street in Hollywood when I saw a sign — “Friends of the Abraham Lincoln Brigade” — written on the side of a building. I turned the corner, opened the door and went in. The people inside said, “What can we do for you?” I said, “I want to go to Spain.” They couldn’t legally send people to Spain, they told me, but did I want to help? I did. My life started with poverty and then came the Depression. I felt a certain responsibility to help the Spanish workers and farmers.

They told me to go to an organization called the Medical Bureau to Aid Spanish Democracy. I was put to work there helping organize meetings and collecting clothes for the Republic. There was a younger guy working with me. One day he turned to me and said, “Do you want to go to Spain?” I said yes, I sure do. He said, “I’ll tell you whom to go see.”

The next day, I opened one of the office doors at the bureau, and there was a guy sitting in a chair, expecting me. He had been in the First World War and lost part of his arm. He just kept looking at me and not saying much. Nobody could tell if I was there for a solid reason or if I was a stooge. Finally, I flatly told him I wanted to go to Spain. He said, O.K.: Go get your birth certificate. He sent me to a doctor for a physical examination, and then I got on a bus to New York.

From there, four of us boarded the French ocean liner Champlain. That’s the first time in my life that I ever had fancy food. We had a chance to go around Paris a little bit, and I went up the Eiffel Tower. Then they put us on a bus across France and took us to a fortress with three- or four-feet-thick walls.