Mollie
Steimer was born in Dunaevtsky, Russia,
on 21st November, 1897. When she was fifteen her family emigrated
to the United States and settled in New
York.
Steimer found work in a garment factory and soon became involved in
trade union activities. This led to her
reading books on politics including those by August
Bebel (Women and Socialism),
Mikhail Bakunin (Statehood
and Anarchy), Peter Kropotkin
(Memoirs of a Revolutionist) and
Emma Goldman (Anarchism
and Other Essays).
In 1917 Steimer joined the Frayhayt, a group of Jewish
anarchists based in New
York. Steimer shared a six-room apartment at 5 East 104th Street
in Harlem with members of the group. This also became the place where
the Frayhayt held its meetings and published its newspaper, Der
Shturm (The Storm).
The Frayhayt group were opposed to the United States
becoming involved in the First World War. On
23rd August, 1918, six members of the group were arrested for publishing
articles that undermined the American war effort. This included criticizing
the United States government for invading Russia
after the Bolshevik government signed the Brest-Litovsk
Treaty.
One of the group, Jacob Schwartz, was so badly beaten by the police
when he was arrested that he died soon afterwards. The others, charged
under the terms of the Espionage Act,
appeared in court and on 25th October, Steimer was found guilty and
sentenced to fifteen years imprisonment. Three of the men, Samuel
Lipman, Hyman Lachowsky and Jacob Abrahams received twenty years.
Many people in the United States were appalled by these sentences.
This included people such as Roger Baldwin,
Norman Thomas, Felix
Frankfurter, Margaret Sanger and Lincoln
Steffens. A group, the League of Amnesty of Political Prisoners
was formed and it published a leaflet on the case, Is
Opinion a Crime? Steimer and the the other three anarchists
were released on bail to await the results of their appeal.
Over the next few months Steimer was arrested seven times but after
being held in various prisons was always released without charge.
On the 30th October, 1919, she was arrested she was taken to Blackwell
Island. While in prison the Supreme Court
upheld her conviction under the Espionage
Act. Steimer was now transferred to the Jefferson City Prison
in Missouri.
During this period A. Mitchell Palmer,
the attorney general and his special assistant, John
Edgar Hoover, used the Sedition Act
to launch a campaign against radicals and their organizations. Using
this legislation it was decided to deport immigrants from Europe who
had been involved in left-wing politics. This included Steimer, Emma
Goldman, Alexander Berkman and 245
other people who were deported to Russia.
Deported to Russia on the Estonia, Steimer arrived in Moscow
on 15th December, 1921. The Bolshevik government hated anarchists
and soon became a target for the Russian Secret Police. On 1st November,
1922 she was arrested with her partner, Senya
Fleshin and charged with aiding criminal elements in Russia.
Sentenced to two years in Siberia, Steimer managed to escape and return
to Moscow where she worked for the Society to Help Anarchist Prisoners.
She was soon arrested and on 27th September she was deported to Germany
where she joined Emma Goldman and Alexander
Berkman in Berlin.
With Senya Fleshin Steimer opened a photographic
studio in Berlin. Steimer was also active in the Joint Committee for
the Defense of Revolutionaries (1923-1926) and the Relief Fund of
the International Working Men's Association for Anarchists (1926-32).
When Hitler came to power Steimer and Senya
Fleshin were forced to flee to Paris. When France was invaded
by the German Army the couple moved to Mexico where they ran a photographic
studio. Mollie Steimer died in Cuernava, Mexico, on 23rd July, 1980.
(1)
Molly Steimer, speech made in court during her trial under the Espionage
Act (October, 1918)
Anarchism is a new social order where no group shall be governed
by another group of people. Individual freedom shall prevail in the
full sense of the word. Private ownership shall be abolished. Every
person shall have an equal opportunity to develop himself well, both
mentally and physically. We shall not have to struggle for our daily
existence as we do now. No one shall live on the product of others.
Every person shall produce as much as he can, and enjoy as much as
he needs - receive according to his need. Instead of striving to get
money, we shall strive towards education, towards knowledge.
While at present the people of the world are divided into various
groups, calling themselves nations, while one nation defies another
- in most cases considers the others as competitive - we, the workers
of the world, shall stretch out our hands towards each other with
brotherly love. To the fulfillment of this idea I shall devote all
my energy, and, if necessary, render my life for it.
(2)
Agnes
Smedley
was imprisoned for distributing birth control leaftlets in 1918. While
in prison she met Molly Steimer and wrote about her in her book Cell
Mates (1920)
Mollie Steimer championed the cause of the prisoners - the one
with venereal disease, the mother with diseased babies, the prostitute,
the feeble-minded, the burglar, the murderer. To her they were but
products of a diseased social system. She did not complain that even
the most vicious of them were sentenced to no more than 5 or 7 years,
while she herself was facing 15 years in prison. She asked that the
girl with venereal disease be taken to a hospital; the prison physician
accused her of believing in free love and in Bolshevism. She asked
that the vermin be cleaned from the cells of one of the girls; the
matron ordered her to attend to her own affairs - that it was not
her cell. "Lock me in," she replied to the matron; "I
have nothing to lose but my chains."
(3)
Emma Goldman, Living My Life (1931)
The Espionage Act resulted in filling the civil and military prisons
of the country with men sentenced to incredibly long terms; Bill Haywood
received twenty years, his hundred and ten International Workers of
the World co-defendants from one to ten, Eugene V. Debs ten years,
Kate Richards O'Hare five. These were but a few among the hundreds
railroaded to living death. Then came the arrest of a group of our
young comrades in New York, comprising Mollie Steimer, Jacob Abrams,
Samuel Lipman, Hyman Lachowsky and Jacob Schwartz. Their offence consisted
in circulating a printed protest against American intervention in
Russia.
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