Sam Lesser (born Manassah Lesser or Manasseh Lesser and also known as Sam Russell; 19 March 1915 – 2 October 2010) was a British journalist and veteran of the Spanish Civil War's International Brigades. Lesser was one of the last surviving British veterans of the Spanish Civil War, and went on to serve as chair of the International Brigade Memorial Trust (IBMT), and write for the Daily Worker and its successor, the Morning Star. Early life Lesser was born Manassah or Manasseh Lesser, the son of Polish immigrants and the eldest of eight children, in Hackney, London on 19 March 1915. He was raised as a practising Orthodox Jew and attended South Hackney Central School and George Green's School, then won a scholarship to attend University College London (UCL) in 1934, where he initially studied history before switching to Egyptology. He acknowledged in a 2007 interview that he was already "a bit Bolshevised" by the time he arrived at UCL. In 1935 Lesser joined the Communist Party of Great Britain (CPGB), a decision he credited to the party's anti-fascist stance; and participated in demonstrations against the British Union of Fascists in London. While at UCL, Lesser also joined the Officers' Training Corps (OTC), something he later described as "something that I always have great difficulty explaining," and trained with the Royal Scots at Dover Castle. He justified joining the OTC by quoting Vladimir Lenin's maxim "An oppressed class which does not strive to learn to use arms, to acquire arms, only deserves to be treated like slaves", and later attributed the decision to a desire "to see how it worked and to learn how to fire a gun". He also later said that his training in the OTC, which was conducted in rural environments based on the experiences of the British Army in the First World War, was of little use in Spain where the fighting took place in cities. Spanish Civil War Departure and Madrid Lesser planned, in July 1936, to embark on an excavation under the supervision of Flinders Petrie. However, at the request of the CPGB, and the specific request of the party's general secretary Harry Pollitt, Lesser was among the first group of 30 British volunteers to depart for Spain in 1936, telling his mother he had gone to Egypt for his studies. He later recalled his having done so as "a gesture of solidarity" having