“When you think of all the people we have known who have died in this civil war, you have the feeling that being alive is somehow disloyal” (Gerda Taro, shortly before her death).
Saturday, 11 October 2008, Père Lachaise cemetery, division 97, Paris — Ceremony to unveil a plaque in memory of Gerda Taro; to the courage and determination of a woman who has displayed a profound sense of duty as a war photographer.
So that none should forget your unconditional struggle for a better world
Gerda Taro died in the Battle of Brunete in July 1937, as a result of wounds caused by a tank that crushed half of her body. The day after the accident, Gerda died at El Escorial hospital. She was 27 years old.
A attractive and seductive young German woman from Stuttgart, Jewish and with left-wing ideas, was the sentimental partner of Robert Capa. Without her, Endre Friedmann (Robert Capa’s real name) would probably never have become Robert Capa: she was the one who invented the name and the character, and made him change his image.
However, Gerda not only transformed Robert Capa, she also transformed herself: she changed her surname (her real name was Gerda Pohorylle) and studied photography. Working as a photographer, she managed to avoid extradition to Nazi Germany.
Gerda became the inseparable partner of Capa (it is uncertain which of them really took many of their photographs) and they formed an ambitious, anti-fascist, idealistic and audacious couple.
With Capa, Gerda covered the Spanish Civil War, which she lived intensely on the Republican side.
For both of them, anti-fascist fighters, the camera was the best weapon and propaganda tool for the Republican cause. In July 1937, Gerda (the “little blonde”, as they affectionately called her on the front), was covering the battle of Brunete near Madrid, during the withdrawal of the Republican troops, when she suffered a terrible accident: a tank destroyed her body from the waist down and she died shortly afterwards at El Escorial hospital, five days before her twenty-seventh birthday. The French Communist Party organised her funeral and burial in Paris.
She is considered to be the first female photojournalist killed in action while covering a war. Robert Capa later published a book dedicated to her, entitled Death in the making.
Her body rests in the Père Lachaise cemetery. The sculptor Giacometti made a monument for her grave, which was half destroyed when the Nazi troops entered Paris.
All her family were exterminated by the Nazis in Auschwitz.