This week, a man named Abe Osheroff died at 92. He was one of the few surviving members of the Abraham Lincoln Brigade, a group of Americans who went to Spain around 1937 to fight for the Republicans, to preserve the monarchy in a lost cause against Franco's Fascist Falange party, the Nationalists. Nine hundred of their number were killed and today, only a hand full survive.

The Spanish Civil war was one of the bloodiest in history and has been the subject or the backdrop for a few movies. The best is "To Die in Madrid," a documentary narrated by the great Sir John Gielgud. Mr. Osheroff directed and co-wrote "Dreams and Nightmares," in 1974, and it was the setting for Hemingway's classic "For Whom The Bell Tolls." Others on the subject include "Behold a Pale Horse" with Anthony Quinn and Gregory Peck and more recently "Pan's Labyrinth," although that one was set a few years after the war ended. There is an almost mystical aura about that war, with hundreds of stories of courage, savagery, drama and politics of the day inherent in that subject, that screenwriters have a rich field for future screenplays.