Carolina Bunjes (1918–2016) was a Dutch Jewish photographer who fought as a militiawoman in the Spanish Civil War and worked with the Resistance in the Netherlands.

[1] A committed anti-fascist from an early age, she travelled to Spain where she took up arms against the Spanish nationalists as a member of the International Brigades.

She fought on multiple fronts of the war, but became disillusioned with her allies in the Communist Party of Spain after she was imprisoned on accusations of being a German spy.

She was the daughter of Rebecca Jacobs, who was from an orthodox Dutch Jewish family, and Wilhelm Rudolf Bunjes, a German who had fled Germany after deserting from World War I.

She moved to Amsterdam where she lived with her older sister, Cato, a woman with deep-rooted left-wing political views who was to be a great influence on Bunjes.

At that time, with the massive influx of German Jews into France, only temporary residence permits were granted, so when Bunjes was eighteen years old, they travelled to Spain where they both wanted to fight as volunteers against fascism.

They were also assisted by Max Friedmann and Werner Hemlin, who belonged to the Foreign Service of the Unified Socialist Party of Catalonia (PSUC).

[2] Bunjes was registered as a photographer at the Communist Party of Spain (PCE) headquarters and worked for the newspapers Juventud and Ahora: Diario Gráfico.

[2][3][1] In an interview, Bunjes recalled that the worst episode she experienced in Madrid was the intense bombardment suffered by the city by the Nazi Condor Legion and the Italian Air Force.

[2] In the December 1936 issue of the newspaper Mundo Gráfico [es], with an image taken by Aibero y Segovia, she is described as follows:[7] "This girl, the German anti-fascist Lini Bunjes is an ensign in the Young Guard battalion, and despite being wounded in one hand, she continues to fight at her post on one of the fronts in the centre".Bunjes took part in the battle of Jarama and was part of the 5th Spanish Republican Brigade as an army photographer.

Although the SIM found no evidence of her alleged espionage, they still considered her to be dangerous because she was a woman, arguing: "She can seduce our comrades, she is young and pretty, she has great intelligence and knows our language".

She lost her baby and was hospitalised in Valencia for two months before returning to Madrid, where she was imprisoned with a group of people suspected of being right-wingers.

[2] It was Franz Lövenstein who finally interceded for her at the PCE office in Madrid, stating that as a member of the Dutch Communist Youth she was already an anti-fascist.

Shortly afterwards she returned near the Extremadura front, to Herrera del Duque, a place that was still in the hands of the Republic and where she had previously lived with her partner.

Bunjes first left for Madrid, where she spent a few months with her mother-in-law, and then went to Barcelona, from where she started her journey back to the Netherlands with her son.

In 1944 she was arrested by the Gestapo and taken to Amsterdam's Euterpestraat, the headquarters of the Nazi police, where she was interrogated about her actions in the Spanish Civil War.

This farm was also used to hide weapons for the Binnenlandse Strijdkrachten, an organisation founded in September 1944 that brought together groups resisting the Nazi regime.

In February 1947, she married Edouard Rosenthal, a manager of the department store Bijenkorf, who had spent two years in the Bergen-Belsen camp and survived Auschwitz.

[1] She met an Italian anarchist who had also fought in Spain, Carlo Alvisi, with whom she travelled to northern Italy after selling her business in Luxembourg.