“An old literary accusation against liberals is that they cannot comprehend tragedy, in which a hero is divided against himself, or two rights contend against each other, but prefer melodrama, the simplistic struggle of good guys versus bad guys.” — Edward Alexander, Midstream, September/October 2007

When my wife began research 35 years ago for her book on the history of Yiddish theater, she spent long days at YIVO, the Institute for Jewish Research, at that time still located in the old Vanderbilt mansion at Fifth Avenue and 86th Street. Zosa Szajkowski was an entrenched presence there, a gnome-like man with a talent for instantly alienating almost everyone he came in contact with. But this diminutive bundle of spite had led an adventurous life. He left his native Poland in the 1920s to escape the escalating anti-Semitism; in Paris he joined the Communist Party and recruited other Eastern European Jews to fight for the Loyalists in the Spanish Civil War; when World War II began he joined the French Foreign Legion; discharged from the Legion after being injured he made his way to England and joined the American Army as an intelligence officer. On D-Day he was parachuted into Normandy behind the German lines; he was with the first wave of American troops to enter Berlin.

Mr. Szajkowski figures in this review of “This Is War! Robert Capa at Work” at the International Center of Photography because, allowing for different spellings, they had the same last name: Capa (1913–1954) was born Andrei Friedmann in Hungary, and Szajkowski (1911–1978) was born Yehoshua Frydman in Poland. Capa changed his name because he was having trouble selling his pictures in France, and thought he would do better with an American-sounding name than one that was obviously Jewish. Szajkowski changed his name when he realized that many of the countrymen he was recruiting to fight fascism in Spain were actually being killed not by the forces of General Franco, but by the communists who had taken over the direction of the Loyalist forces; to the Red political commissars, soldiers with different opinions were more of a threat than was Franco. Szajkowski quit the party, but was convinced the communists wanted to kill him, so he changed his name. The fear never left him, never.

Capa was a great combat photographer, maybe the greatest of all time. His skill in framing dramatic narrative images was coupled with steely courage. Three of his photographs are among the most famous war pictures of the 20th century: “Death of a Loyalist militiaman, Cerro Muriano, Córdoba, Spain” (September 5, 1936); “American soldiers landing on Omaha Beach, D-Day, Normandy, France” (June 6, 1944), and “American soldier killed by a German sniper, Leipzig, Germany” (April 18, 1945). His aphorism, “If your pictures aren’t good enough, you’re not close enough,” is the motto of every combat photographer to this day. He was handsome, intelligent, and charismatic. (Ingrid Bergman is only one of many great beauties with whom he was involved.) The exhaustive exhibition at the International Center of Photography lets us see well over 100 of his pictures, most as prints, but many on contact sheets or as they first appeared in magazines. Capa died when he stepped on a landmine while on temporary assignment covering the French Indo-China War.

There are three related shows up at ICP: “Gerda Taro,” “Other Weapons: Photography and Print Culture During the Spanish Civil War,” and “Dark Is the Room Where We Sleep: A Project by Francesc Torres.” In all four exhibitions, nothing disparaging is said about the Republican Loyalists, while the insurgent Nationalists are consistently called fascists, an inappropriate and pejorative term for Franco’s Falangist party. This simplistic scheme deprives the pictures of the context they need.

Taro (1910–1937) was born Gerta Pohorylle in Stuttgart, Germany. She left for Paris in 1933 after being arrested for participating in an anti-Nazi protest. In Paris she met Andrei Friedmann and became his lover, his business agent, and — once she learned how to use a camera — his colleague. Like him, she changed her name for professional reasons. She went with Capa to Spain to document the Civil War for leftist publications, and became an accomplished combat photographer, the first woman to do so. Her funeral in Paris, after her accidental death not far from the front, was attended by thousands who knew her through her work.

“Other Weapons: Photography and Print Culture During the Spanish Civil War” displays Loyalist propaganda, and “Dark is the Room Where We Sleep” is an artsy record of the recent excavation of a site where 46 Republican Loyalist civilians were executed by Nationalists 70 years ago. In civil wars, all sides are savage.

Szajkowski was an interesting and sympathetic man, in spite of his paranoia and the harrowing remorse he felt at having sent so many idealistic young men to meaningless deaths in Spain. The International Center of Photography, on the other hand, is still committed to the Loyalist cause. But the Republic, which had been created by relatively centrist parties, moved steadily left as more radical elements took control and sought to delegitimize the opposition. The precipitating event of the Civil War was the assassination of Calvo Sotel, a monarchist parliamentarian, by the Assault Guards, the Loyalist secret police. This prompted a revolt of the Spanish military that Franco came to lead.

The Loyalists, consistently presented at the photography center as brave and heroic, as indeed the majority of the soldiers were, lost none the less. But the overriding concern of the Spanish masses was that the socialists and anarchists in power had wrecked the Spanish economy and traditional elements of society. It was not ideology, but rather the want of bread and stability, that drove them to support Franco. And although Franco was no military genius, he was a far better commander than the Russians communists who ended up directing the Loyalists. They were profligate with the lives of their men, wasting thousands on battles of no strategic value.

Capa and Taro both died covering wars. They were idealists who ventured their lives in Spain for a cause they believed in. That they were deluded does not detract from their accomplishments, but it changes the meaning of their images: the gallant men and women they caught on film were fighting for a cause not worth their lives. Maybe in Spain in the 1930s there was no side worth their lives, but that is the stuff of grand tragedy, a tragedy beyond the International Center of Photography’s ability to explain.

“This Is War! Robert Capa at Work,” “Gerda Taro,” “Other Weapons: Photography and Print Culture During the Spanish Civil War,” and “Dark Is the Room Where We Sleep: A Project by Francesc Torres” at the International Center of Photography through January 6 (1133 Avenue of the Americas at 43rd Street, 212-857-0000).