Mate Zalka (23 April 1896-11 June 1937) was a Hungarian revolutionary who was best known for his leadership in the International Brigades during the Spanish Civil War.
Biography[]
Mate Zalka was born Bela Frankl in Tunyogmatolcs, Austria-Hungary in 1896, coming from a Jewish family. He lied about his age to fight in World War I, fighting on the Italian front before fighting against the Russian Empire in the east. Zalka was captured in 1917 and interned in an Imperial Russian Army prisoner-of-war camp, where he was influenced by communism.
In February 1918, Zalka founded a unit of pro-Bolshevik former Hungarian POWs in Khabarovsk to take part in the Russian Civil War, fighting against the White Army in Siberia. When World War I ended in November 1918, he decided to stay in the new Russian SFSR rather than return to an independent Hungary, and he fought in the Polish-Soviet War and in the campaigns against Nestor Makhno's Black Army in the Crimea and Ukraine. Zalka also volunteered in the Turkish Army during the Turkish War of Independence, and he was the director of the Mayakovsky Theater in Moscow from 1925 to 1928.
In November 1936, Zalka decided to join the International Brigades in Spain during the Spanish Civil War. He used the alias "Pavol Lukacs" and became the commander of the Garibaldi Brigade, a unit of communist sympathizers from across Europe. On 11 June 1937, he was killed when his car was hit by artillery fire during the Huesca Offensive.