David Hyman ‘Hy’ Wallach (1914-1999) was a Lincoln Brigader who also served in the US Fifth Army in the Second World War. He wrote this letter to his two-year-old daughter, Victoria, in anticipation of the victory over fascism. It was read by her sister, Nancy Wallach, at Belfast City Hall in October 2025 as part of the IBMT’s Annual General Meeting programme.

Dearest Vicky,

Congratulations on your second birthday. They tell me you are quite an amazing young lady. Although you cannot be expected to recall, I have seen you quite often from the time you were born until you were six weeks old.

Even then, you were a beautiful child, and your progress was ‘amazing’, and that is as it should be for you’re part of the first generation of a new world. A world as bright and beautiful as you are.

As a matter of fact, it could be neither more nor less than that. The world and everything in it is a reflection of the people who inhabit it. A simple truth – and to your generation it will seem so obvious.

Lincoln Brigader Hy Wallach.

But that is because this people’s war that your father, mother and their generation are engaged in will have been won. That is what we are fighting for – the historic task of our generation – to make this a people’s world.

You see, darling, we are taking the world away from the greedy few and giving it to you. It is wonderful and something worth dying for but carries great responsibilities.

You will have the greater task of running the world – and you must be equal to it. You are the future, and that is why you, all your playmates, your cousins, must be beautiful and intelligent in every way and in every sense.

But above all, you must learn to appreciate one another and work together, for that is the way the world is going to be run and on the extent of it does our future progress depend.

Nancy Wallach (second from left), daughter of Hy Wallach and Executive Committee member of ALBA (Abraham Lincoln Brigade Archives), with the Deputy Lord Mayor of Belfast Paul Doherty (second from right), IBMT member Ciaran Crossey (light) and joint IBMT Ireland Secretary Lynda Walker (right), pictured on 3 October 2025 in Belfast City Hall.

And now for your birthday, I want to make you the promise, my darling, that this year shall see the first concrete signs of your world with the defeat of fascism in Europe and go on from there to the utter destruction of fascism everywhere!

This is the least we can do before we give way to your generation, a generation of architects who will not reconstruct but construct a bright new world on new foundations in which man’s inhumanity to man will no longer exist.

And so, Vicky, on your birthday, your father salutes you and the future. In our fight for the freedom of Spain, we learned to express these things with the words, ¡Salud y victoria!