A death certificate dated April 1938 in Tàrrega declared the Polish international brigadier Inz Marek Ritcher dead. Documentation located later, however, places him in the French resistance, later in Poland, and finally living near Paris in 1945.
The contradiction has been the focus of a new investigation by local historian Jaume Ramon Solé, who reconstructs Ritcher's trajectory based on the document found in the Urgell capital's registry office. The main hypothesis points to an exchange of documentation with deceased combatants to conceal his identity in a context of political persecution.
Jaume Ramon Solé Places Ritcher Alive After His Supposed Death
Solé publishes this reconstruction in the work the investigation rules out that he died in Tàrrega in April 1938, as part of a special issue on the passage of the International Brigades through the city in May 1938 within the (RE)VOLTES project by Òmnium Cultural.
The historian maintains that Ritcher reappears in various records after the death certificate. This documentary sequence, combined with the political moment Europe was going through, reinforces the hypothesis of a hidden identity through the papers of deceased combatants.
The special issue also includes other works focused on the presence of brigadiers in Tàrrega and in spaces linked to the front. Among them is a photographic analysis of the 15th International Brigade Photographic Unit and another study on the activity of the Mas de Colom military hospital.
Photographs Allowed the Burial of William Digges to Be Located in Niche 1.040
Another of the articles, dedicated to the archive preserved in the library of New York University, has made it possible to identify images of brigadiers in the city and reconstruct the burial of the American general William Digges on May 29, 1938, in the Tàrrega cemetery.
The reconstruction fixes a specific detail of the burial, as the images place Digges in niche 1.040 unidentified. This work connects with another line of research on the American military man, focused on locating possible descendants.
The case of Digges remains unresolved because no relatives have appeared to compare the DNA obtained after the exhumation. The investigation has also gathered travel records, data about an origin located between Cody and La Plata, and theories about a possible unrecognized parentage on a plantation in the southern United States.
Along with these studies, the text about Mas de Colom documents the work of doctor Josep Jordana at the head of the military hospital and collects the graffiti and drawings left by patients on the walls of the old convent.
The publication of this monograph consolidates the line of work that Jaume Ramon Solé had already initiated and which led to the book Mas de Colom was studied as a military hospital of the Segre Front between 1938 and 1939.