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What a wonderful but horrible song. 
"Lewis Allan" was actually the pen name of Abel Meeropol(he took the name from the first names of his own sons, both of whom had died at birth.)
He was a friend of Ethel and Julius Rosenberg, and adopted their two sons, Robert and Michael, after they were murdered by the U.S. government during the "atom spies" hysteria of the early 1950s (contrary to the government's allegations, neither Rosenberg gave the USSR the "secret" to building the hydrogen bomb-the German scientist Klaus Fuchs did that, and admitted to the fact...years later after he'd made it to what was then "East Berlin"
.
He was also the writer of this song, a song made in honor of the anti-fascist dead in the Spanish Civil War(used here in scenes from the film "Land And Freedom":
Abel Meeropol was a hero of the cause of creating a better world...and a true mensch for taking in the Rosenbergs' orphaned sons to raise as his own at a time when even doing that exposed him to massive social and career stigma.
