I Was Sentenced to Be Shot:
Autobiography of a Political Objector

This previously lost autobiography of World War I conscientious objector Max Sandin has been published for the first time. Includes a foreword by Vietnam War resister Randy Kehler, who recounts his pivotal meeting with Sandin in 1963.
Max Sandin book cover

Author: Max Sandin (1889-1971)
Editors: Ruth Benn and Ed Hedemann
Designer: Rick Bickhart
Publisher: Max Sandin Radical Pacifist Cell
Publication date: May 1, 2024, Brooklyn, NY
262 pages including index
5.25 x 8 inches perfect bound
ISBN: 979-8-218-42136-6
$15

 

portrait of Max Sandin circa 1930s

ABOUT MAX SANDIN

Born in Russia in 1889, Max Sandin escaped to the United States because he refused to serve in the Czar's army. A conscientious objector to World War I, he was imprisoned and sentenced to be shot. After the war his sentence was commuted, though not before he had been brutally beaten and tortured at Camp Funston, Kansas. During World War II he was one of 16 men who publicly refused to register under the "older men's draft." Before that war ended, he stopped paying federal income taxes because most of it was being used for military purposes.

A resident of Cleveland for his adult life, Max was first active with the Young People's Socialist League and the Socialist Party. He was a lifelong laborer, working as a painter, paperhanger, and organizer for the Painters' Union.

The book includes an end chapter story of how the unfinished manuscript came into the hands of editors Ruth Benn and Ed Hedemann.

Those interested in this inspiring — at times harrowing — story of a principled radical pacifist who resisted three wars and refused to pay for any, can order a copy from online booksellers:

Bookshop.org

Barnes & Noble

Powell's City of Books

Books-A-Million

Indigo (Canada)

Ingram/Spark

Amazon

For other countries, ask local authors or publishers
Ruth Benn and Ed Hedemann are longtime members of the War Resisters League, who have previously written and edited War Tax Resistance: A Guide to Withholding Your Support from the Military (New York, NY: War Resisters League, 144 pp, 2003); and War Resisters League: 100 Years of Resistance to War and the Causes of War (New York, NY: War Resisters League, 84 pp, 2023), as well as produce WRL's annual pie chart "Where Your Income Tax Money Really Goes". A revised edition of War Tax Resistance is expected to be released in 2024.
Contact the editors and publisher at MSRPC [at] eclipsewar.org.