Text : José Manuel Serrano Esparza
After a research of some years, I have been able to identify Heinrich Pohorylle (Gerda Taro´s father), Hans Pohorylle (Gerda Taro´s younger brother), Oskar Pohorylle (Gerda Taro´s elder brother), Louis Aragon (Director of Ce Soir) in a photograph published in the French newspeper Ce Soir and made next to the coffin with Gerda Taro´s body, while it is lowered from a train at the gare d´Austerlitz Station on July 30, 1937 :
- Heinrich Pohorylle (also known as Hersch Pohorylle), Gerda Taro´s father, born on December 12, 1876 in Husyatyn, district of Husyatyns´kyi, Oblast of Tarnopol (Ukraine), is the 61 years old man with white hair and wearing glasses who appears in the middle of the photograph.
- On his left, such as is seen in the photograph, appears his son Karl Pohorylle, born on July 5, 1914 in Husyatyn, district of Chemerovets´kyi, Oblast of Khme´nyts´ka, and who is Gerda Taro´s younger brother, being 23 years old.
- On the right of Heinrich Pohorylle, such as is seen in the photograph, appears Robert Capa, born on October 22, 1913 in Budapest (Hungary) and being 23 years old.
- On the right of Robert Capa, such as is seen in the photograph, appears Oskar Pohorylle, born on September 3, 1912 in Lviv, Oblast of Lviv (Ukraine), who is Gerda Taro´s elder brother and only a month to be 25 years old.
- And behind Heinrich Pohorylle is Louis Aragon (Director of Ce Soir newspaper, who financed the trip by train of the coffin with Gerda Taro´s body from Perpignan to Paris, the funeral chapel, the funeral procession and the burial), born on October 3, 1897 in Paris and only a little more than two months to be 41 years old.
The caption of the picture says in French :
" The body of our comrade Gerda Taro, killed in Spain, arrived in Paris this morning. Many of her friends went to the Austerlitz Station to pay her homage ".
But it is a caption whose information is incomplete, because as a consequence of the convulsion, restlessness and haste in everything that surrounded the train travel and arrival in Paris of the coffin with Gerda Taro´s body, and the ignorance of the person who wrote the caption regarding the names of the father and brothers of the German photojournalist (who had concealed the topic for some years, to preserve their security), there isn´t any mention in that caption about Heinrich Pohorylle, Oskar Pohorylle and Karl Pohorylle, who travelled quickly from Yugoslavia (where they had taken shelter since mid thirties, fleeing from the Nazi antisemitism in Germany, where they had previously lived in Stuttgart and Leipzig) to Paris after seeing the news on Gerda Taro´s death in the newspapers.
Gerda Taro had died on July 26, 1937 in a Republican hospital in El Escorial (Province of Madrid), a day after being accidentally crushed in the km 29 of the M-600 road in its stretch on the north of Villanueva de la Cañada, towards Valdemorillo and El Escorial by a Republican T-26B tank that invaded the road and crashed against the car in which Gerda Taro and Ted Allan were escaping at full speed from Brunete Battle.
That same day, Rafael Alberti and María Teresa León moved to that hospital, had a coffin made by a carpenter and took their body to the Alliance of Antifascist Intellectuals of Madrid, where she was watched over during two days.
Then, on July 28, 1937, she was taken to Valencia, headquarters of the Republican government, where she was given a posthumous homage.
On july 29, 1937, the coffin with the body of Gerda Taro was introduced in a car which went to Perpignan (in the southeast of France) and there it was put in a train bound for Paris.
After a long trip of 1416 km, the coffin with the body of the German photojournalist from Jewish descent arrived at the Gare d´Austerlitz Train Station of the French capital during the morning of July 30, 1937, being lowered from the train by six employees of the French Railways, while hois father Heinrich Pohorylle, his brothers Karl Pohorylle and Oskar Pohorylle, as well as Robert Capa, Louis Aragon and abundant friends of Gerda Taro in Paris received her body on the platform.
During the July 30 and 31, 1937, it was installed in Paris a big funeral chapel financed by Ce Soir newspaper, which was visited by many thousands of people who paid homage to her towering figure.
And on August 1, 1937, day in which she would have been 27 years old, her coffin was accompanied by a huge crowd up to the Père Lachaise cemetery, where she was buried.
Regarding Heinrich Pohorylle, Karl Pohorylle and Oskar Pohorylle, they had run away from the Nazi Germany in mid thirties, fleeing from antisemitism, travelling to Yugoslavia, where all of them were murdered by the Nazis in the occupied Serbia, between July and November of 1941.
Identification inscribed in the Territorial Registry of the Intellectual Property of Madrid.