SPANISH TERROR

Dominion, Volume 34, Issue 157, 29 March 1941, Page 15

SPANISH TERROR

A Woman’s Record Of The Civil War “Still Alive With Lucas,” by Helen Riehm (Rondon: Davies). Though the civil war in Spain is old news now and the world has passed on to new tales of frightfulness, there is a vivid quality about Helen Riehm s ■ story which will not grow old. It is a story of much tribulation met with great fortitude. . . Helen and her husband, Frederico Lucas, an architect, being Jews, left Germany soon after Hitler came into power. They ran a cafe in a beautiful little Spanish fishing village, Tossa, which had been “discovered,” and was in the way of becoming a tourist resort. Every evening the cafe was full of noisy people drinking, dancing and enjoying themselves. The Lucas menage was beginning to prosper in its new country. Then civil war broke out and after spending some time in prison, more in case he was a spy than on any real evidence, Lucas was given a military post in Albacete. After many days of agonizing doubt and hesitation, Helen organized a home in Tossa for children sent from the war zone. Here she devoted so much time and energy to her labour that she was able to endure the anxious days while her busband was away at the front. Then came the fall of Barcelona. Lucas f returned from the front and they made f ran tic efforts to obtain passports for Colombia. The tale finishes as they cross the French frontier to begin life z- • for a third time in still- another strange country. This book has not the breadth, nor could it be expected to have, of Constantia de la Mora’s “In Place of Splendour,” but it does remind one ■ strongly of the part of that book dealing with the war. Perhaps it is that most women in Spain at that time led similar doubt-wracked lives, with their menfolk at the front and famine stalking the land. However, ‘‘Still Alive With Lucas” is a purely personal record and is told with such verve as to make it a thoroughly moving story.