Born February 25th 1915, Goodman spent his early years in Middlesborough, where his Jewish Russian parents had settled. He joined the YCL in 1930 and later volunteered for the International Brigade in Spain.
After being wounded, he returned to Spain as political commissar to the fourth company of the British Battalion of the IB. He was taken prisoner in 1938 and spent ten months in a concentration camp, until release.
Goodman was prevented from doing any kind of war work during the Second World War and became the Communist Part’s full time organiser in Devon and Cornwall in 1940s and 1950s.
At the age of 50, he became a mature student, graduating from Hull in 1969 and moving to Stoke on Trent to become involved in adult education.
He was active in the pensioners’ movement in his later years and died January 3rd 2001, aged 85.
Source: Guardian 29th January 2001
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