• Choose a category
• All
• Classic-Fiction

By Root 901 0

low. Still, she was homesick: “We think of Ron very often.” Sol called for a physician (Socialist, of course), who left a prescription that eased her congestion—so much so that the next day she could go to her beloved Prado. Sol dashed from room to room in the museum, but Genora, who now knew the locations of all the famous paintings, studied them line by line, brush stroke by brush stroke, often to the protestations of her impatient husband. The next day, however, Monday the 18th, she took to her bed again. “Just as well,” she thought, “because everything was closed. It was the anniversary of Franco’s victory back in 1937.” After a bit of thought, she realized that she had had a significant victory in 1937 as well. She stayed in bed for nearly a week, mostly reading detective stories until she “became sick of them.” She had numerous conversations with a young medical assistant who came to see her throughout the week. He worked fourteen-hour shifts “but came to life when he told us he was an active socialist.” The chambermaid who cleaned their room was “young, alert, and very expressive.” Sol asked her about her political affiliation. “Socialist,” of course, she responded. The Dollingers met all manners of people on their travels, but they did seem to have a talent for recognizing Socialists and other individuals whose political and social ideologies matched theirs.

On the day before they left, one of their cab drivers “had a dozen stickers . . . posted on parts of his dash. One looked like Che Guevara.” Genora, in broken Spanish, asked him about it, and he went into a “real soap box oration” about Cuba and showed pictures of Lenin addressing the masses. “This is a different world,” an astonished Genora reported. “A taxi driver doesn’t have that freedom in the USA without going hungry and getting his cab turned over along with it.” The next day after their conversation with the Spanish cabby, they left Spain, a country they had learned to love almost as much as Mexico. They winged their way back to Los Angeles, and Genora immediately suffered “reverse culture shock” (as Americans frequently do after an extended time abroad). “The apathy and cynicism of so many Americans is in direct contrast and the more keenly felt upon return from such an experience.”43

Her travels in 1971, 1973, and 1977 added an international dimension to Genora’s outlook on life. In many ways she learned the differences between American and European labor activities. One’s labor involvement in a relatively free society can be accelerated over labor activities in despotic countries. In the United States one might receive a chastisement or perhaps a jail term; elsewhere, more likely a bullet. Genora was now both nationally and internationally “street smart,” and she enjoyed the attention it brought her. In addition to being sought out by reporters and researchers, a documentary film company now expressed an interest in a movie in which she would play a major role.

A British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) producer, Stephen Peet, wanted to make a documentary in honor of the United States’ bicentennial year of 1976 and sent out researcher Jenni Pozzi to look for material. She visited a Stanford professor (Staughton Lynd?) who mentioned Genora and described her speech to the radical historians a half-dozen years before. Pozzi contacted Genora, who wanted to know her political affiliations. “Labor!” Pozzi replied. “Then I’ll be happy to see you,” Genora responded.44 Ms. Pozzi stayed in the Dollinger home while she conducted her research. Filming was completed in 1976, and “The Great Sit-Down” became a part of BBC’s Yesterday’s Witness in America. Peet wrote to Genora that “the filming we did with you . . . is very good indeed. You look & sound completely relaxed. And everything you say makes very good sense.”45 The documentary shows historic newsreels of the confrontations between GM and UAW supporters, who carried signs printed with such things as “We Stand By Our Heroes in the Plants.” As Genora is interviewed, scenes from the WEB breaking out the glass