Drawing close to 1,000 viewers, ALBA’s Bay Area gala on October 15 offered an inspiring mix of history, music, and activism. Richard Bermack moderated the online event.
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Founded by the Veterans of the Abraham Lincoln Brigade
Drawing close to 1,000 viewers, ALBA’s Bay Area gala on October 15 offered an inspiring mix of history, music, and activism. Richard Bermack moderated the online event.
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Here is the keynote address that Jeff Chang gave at ALBA's 2022 Bay Area Gala. Click here to see the videorecording.
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Join us on Sunday, December 4, at 3PM EST/12PM PST, for a live Zoom presentation with Nora Guthrie, daughter of singer and activist Woody Guthrie (1912-67), whose recording of Jarama Valley is legendary, and who in 1952 wrote a series of songs against Franco....
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Continuing its successful model, ALBA is once again joining with the Massachusetts-based Collaborative for Educational Services to offer a five-week online teaching workshop on “The United States and World...
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As this issue goes to press, the ALBA office is busy finalizing the event calendar for January, February and March, which will include online workshops and film screenings as...
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Dear Friends, “There are now states in this country where this document cannot be taught,” a teacher remarked pointedly at one of the two workshops we taught in November....
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Nine years ago, Robert Llopis accidentally came across a Cuban volunteer who went by Teresa but whose gender identity was unclear in the archives. A report on his research so far.
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More than 120 objects displayed in five galleries, with each object accompanied by a 350- to 500-word mini-essay available in both English and Spanish: The new Virtual Museum of the Spanish Civil War is in its first phase but already has a lot to...
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Spanish conservatives who have rejected any accounting for Francoist crimes are nevertheless willing to make amends with the descendants of the Sephardic Jews who were expelled five centuries ago. The contradiction is only apparent.
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Twenty-seven years after the Dayton Peace Accords ended the bloody war in Bosnia and Herzegovina, ethnic tensions in the region have been etched into law. The Center of Peacebuilding...
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The Catalan historian Gonzalo Berger, who’s spent years researching the participation of women in the antifascist militias and the Republican army during the Spanish Civil War, has just published...
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Wilfred Mendelson (1915-1938), better known as “Mendy,” was one of thirteen CCNY students, faculty and staff volunteers, out of a total of 60, who died fighting in support of...
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What was it like to grow up as the daughter of a Lincoln vet in Cold-War America?
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Enrico Acciai, Garibaldi’s Radical Legacy: Traditions of War Volunteering in Southern Europe (1861–1945). Translated by Victoria Weavil. Abingdon, Oxon./New York, Routledge, 2021.
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Isabella Lorusso, Fighting Women: Interviews with Veterans of the Spanish Civil War. London: Freedom Press, 2020.
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Earlier this year, ALBA received a note from Alfonso Repullés Buj, a Spaniard in his late sixties from Aragón, about the iconic photograph from the Spanish Civil War in...
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In response to the information session held by ALBA and representatives of the Catalan government, below we offer a list of Frequently Asked Questions about the Alvah Bessie Program.
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Ray Hoff found a document in the Comintern Archives from the Military Hospital authorities in Girona stating that Lopoff died in the town of Santa Coloma de Farners.
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She lived in California most of her life but never lost the distinctive accent she learned as a daughter of the heartland. Legend has it that she was related...
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James Douglas Skillman, beloved husband, father, grandfather, lifelong soldier in the fight for social justice, and longtime member of the ALBA board and honorary board, passed away October 20,...
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Civil rights activist Dr. Gwendolyn Midlo Hall died August 29, 2022, in Guanajuato, Mexico. As a member of a politically liberal family, she engaged in activism from an early...
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Following a majority vote in the Senate, Spain’s new Law of Democratic Memory went into effect on October 21. Presented as an update to the 2007 memory law, the...
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For an English translation of this article, see here.
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As this issue goes to press, the ALBA office is busy finalizing the event calendar for January, February and March, which will include online workshops and film screenings as...
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The Abraham Lincoln Brigade Archives (ALBA) is an educational non-profit dedicated to promoting social activism and the defense of human rights. ALBA’s work is inspired by the American volunteers of the Abraham Lincoln Brigade who fought fascism in the Spanish Civil War (1936-39). Learn more at our website or
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My grandfather (Nana), Suresh, moved to the United States in 1959 as a young man on a student visa pursuing his master’s degree. His parents, my great grandparents, sought value in being ‘foreign educated’ and bringing his education home – to Mumbai, India to run their family business. 2 years after my Nana moved...
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Peter N. Carroll, a respected and prolific writer, poet, and US historian, died after a short illness on September 16, surrounded by his family. He was 80. Born in New York City in 1943 to a secular Jewish family, Peter grew up in the Bronx and Queens, where his father worked as a composer,...
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LA RÉPUBLIQUE -QUOTIDINEN DE COMBAT RADICAL ET SOCIALISTE, February 5, 1938 Foreign Volunteer Arrested On March 27 last, 29 North Americans were arrested on board the boat Sans-Pareil while they were attempting to reach the Spanish Coast. They were sentenced to a prison term for violating the decree of February 18, 1937 on the...
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The “Spanija” series translates selected autobiographical accounts by Yugoslavian and Montenegrin volunteers of their actions in the Spanish Civil War. Dr. Ray Hoff used Google translate from Croatian to English and he edited the selections. As this is a machine translation, the idiomatic features of Croatian or Serbian and the translation of names and...
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The Spanija series translates select autobiographical accounts by Yugoslavian and Montenegrin volunteers of their actions in the Spanish Civil War. Dr. Ray Hoff used Google Translate from Croatian to English and he edited the selections. As this is a machine translation, the idiomatic features of Croatioan or Serbian and the translation of names and...
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Peter Verburgh’s translation from the French Newpaper Le Journal about a group of 29 Americans arrested in France. “29 American Volunteers Arrested in Muret” Le Journal, 5 April 1937 Toulouse, 4 April- The Control services of the Non-Intervention Committee do not remain inactive, especially with the help of the French Police and Gendarmerie. Thus...
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ALBA Board Member Steve Birnbaum made the trek on Memorial Day to the Home of Eternity Cemetary in Oakland, California to pay tribute to ALB veteran Hans Joachim. Joachim was born in Berlin, Germany in 1906 and moved to the US in 1924. He served in Spain with the George Washington Battalion and later...
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Please find attached photos of my visits to the graves of Lester Rowlson and Tersil Obriot last weekend. I left a brigade flag and a fresh white rose at each. ,,, I was also proud to include aspects of my Clapton CFC scarf; you might have heard of this small football club in London that...
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Peter Verbergh translated this article from CeSoir describing the arrest of the Dallet-Nelson Group. “The Interrogation of the Passengers of the Sans-Pareil”, CeSoir, March 29, 1937 (From our Special Correspondent) Perpignan March 28 (By Telephone) Yesterday morning around 10am, The Coast Guard Vessel Cebère docked in the port of Port-Vendres alongside the torpedo boat...
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Only five veterans of the Spanish Civil War are known to be buried in Virginia outside of Arlington National Cemetery: two in Richmond, two in Norfolk, and one in Big Stone Gap. ALB Tribute visited the graves of Harry Edward Farris and Thomas Moore in Richmond as well as Manuel Lizarrago and Crawford Morgan...
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ALBA's project to provide a complete list of the more than 2,800 individuals who left from U.S. territory to fight with the Spanish Republic
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