Harry Eisman was born in 1913 in Moldova, but grew up in the Bronx where he became an active Communist at a young age. Expelled from Public School 61 at 14 for leading a group called ‘The Lenin Unit,; Eisman soon became a leading Pioneer, distributing ‘The Young Comrade’ in New York schools. Here, just released from the reformatory after 6 months for an anti-Boy Scouts rally that turned in a scuffle with police, Eisman is arrested for his fifth time in a year as part of an unemployed protest and sentenced to six years in the reformatory. Since his Moldovan birth also allowed him to be deported, he choose to go to Moscow where he went to trade school and became a Comintern journalist. Joining the Red Army on the Nazi invasion, Harry Eisman was awarded the Order of the Red Star and a Battle Merit for actions in defense of Stalingrad during World War Two. He is buried in Moscow.

‘They Attack Our Children’ by Samuel Herman from Labor Defender. Vol. 5 No. 5. May, 1930.

HARRY EISMAN, militant working-class child, has been imprisoned for five years in the Hawthorne Reformatory in New York state. In the mind’s eye one can picture briefly just about what took place in the Children’s Court during young Eisman’s trial. The Wall Street lackey and Tammany politician, Judge Young, is presiding. Harry Eisman is standing facing “His Honor.”

Judge- “Did you stay away from school on March 6th?”

Eisman- “Yes, I did!”

Judge- “Why?”

Eisman- “In order to participate in the unemployment demonstration of 110,000 workers and workers’ children, at Union Square, for ‘Work or Wages.’ I as a worker’s child hold it my duty to participate in all struggles of the workers.”

Judge (Choking with rage)-” Terrible, terrible, outrageous! Eisman, you are hereby sentenced to five years in the Reformatory!”

For the crime of Harry Eisman, is that he is a worker’s child, sides with the working class in its struggles against capitalism. Readers of the LABOR DEFENDER will recall that Eisman was sentenced in July of last year to six months’ imprisonment for participating in a demonstration of workers’ children against a group of Boy Scouts, well fed, pampered snobs of the rich. The occasion was as the Boy Scouts were preparing to board their ship to travel to the International Jamboree of Boy Scouts in England. Eisman has but recently finished serving his sentence, only to be again imprisoned, this time, for five long years.

The March Sixth demonstrations were a surprise to the masters of wealth. Over a million workers demonstrated throughout the country for Work or Wages. Blinded with fury, the capitalist government not only clubbed and arrested hundreds of workers, but launched a campaign of terrorism against the children of the workers. In New York City over fifty workers’ children were suspended from the public schools for taking part in the demonstrations. Their parents were sentenced to pay fines or go to jail. In Trenton, N.J. widespread discriminations against workers’ children who failed to attend school on March Sixth have taken place. They were threatened with demotion, with suspension and expulsion from school. Their parents were warned that their names would be handed to the Chamber of Commerce and other employers’ associations, in order to have them fired from their jobs and blacklisted, unless they kept their children away from participation in workers’ struggles. In Chicago three children were arrested; in Hartford, Conn., all kinds of threats were made against several workers’ children. In southern Illinois several school children were expelled, but were later taken back due to the mass pressure of the workers.

This violent campaign against workers’ children is especially aimed at members of the Young Pioneers of America. It is the Young Pioneers of America that issued special leaflets and school bulletins calling upon the workers children to participate in all workers’ struggles. It is the Young Pioneers of America that is exposing the Boy Scouts as a jingoist, anti-working class organization of the bosses to prepare the children for the coming war as well as for strike breakers. Harry Eisman was sentenced by the capitalist court to a long term of imprisonment, particularly for being a member of the Young Pioneers of America. The plutocrats of America and their government aim to drive the Young Pioneers of America into illegality. Measures are being advocated by professional pay-triots banded together in such notorious hooligan organizations as “Veterans of Foreign Wars,” “American Legion,” etc., calling for a government investigation of the Young Pioneers of America.

Instead of being intimidated by arrests of many of their members, and the imprisonment of Harry Eisman, the Young Pioneers are fighting back more militantly than ever.

Some time ago a splendid demonstration of workers’ children took place in New York City; now comes the news of a similar demonstration outside the Board of Education Building in Chicago. “To the youth belongs the future.” The time is fast approaching when the bankers and manufacturers of America and their government will be objects of the past, and the workers’ children whom they now imprison and attempt to terrorize, will be, as full grown adult workers, hammering out in the mills, mines, and factories a Socialist society under a workers’ and farmers’ government.

Labor Defender was published monthly from 1926 until 1937 by the International Labor Defense (ILD), a Workers Party of America, and later Communist Party-led, non-partisan defense organization founded by James Cannon and William Haywood while in Moscow, 1925 to support prisoners of the class war, victims of racism and imperialism, and the struggle against fascism. It included, poetry, letters from prisoners, and was heavily illustrated with photos, images, and cartoons. Labor Defender was the central organ of the Scottsboro and Sacco and Vanzetti defense campaigns. Editors included T. J. O’ Flaherty, Max Shactman, Karl Reeve, J. Louis Engdahl, William L. Patterson, Sasha Small, and Sender Garlin.

PDF of full issue: https://www.marxists.org/history/usa/pubs/labordefender/1930/v05n05-may-1930-LD.pdf