Biography
Dr. Edward K. Barsky, a New York surgeon who had organized and led the American Medical Bureau’s volunteer hospitals for the Spanish Republic during the Civil War and served as chairman of the JAFRC was one of the officers and executive-board members of the Joint Anti-Fascist Refugee Committee (JAFRC) — the New York relief organization that aided refugees of the Spanish Civil War and survivors of Nazi concentration camps — who were jailed for defying the House Un-American Activities Committee. Subpoenaed in 1946, the board refused to hand over the committee’s records and lists of donors, and in June 1947 a federal jury convicted all of them of contempt of Congress. Their appeal, Barsky v. United States, was rejected, and after the Supreme Court declined to intervene they surrendered in 1950 to serve their sentences. As chairman he received the heaviest sentence. His persecution did not end with prison: New York regents suspended his medical license for six months, a punishment the Supreme Court upheld in Barsky v. Board of Regents (1954).
