On November 4, days after a IB conference was held in Barcelona, the cabinet of Pedro Sánchez, Spain’s Prime Minister, voted to grant Spanish passports to some 170 descendants of International Brigade volunteers.
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On October 16, as part of the annual Susman Lecture, Joyce Horman, a lifelong human rights activist and current member of ALBA’s Honorary Board, shared her life story in an online conversation with ALBA board member Gina Herrmann. Joyce and her husband Charles were...
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ALBA Marks Jarama March and Franco’s Death On November 20, ALBA board member Nancy Wallach, daughter of Lincoln vet Hy Wallach, was joined by a group of IB family members to present a lively online event to mark the fiftieth anniversary of Franco’s death...
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On September 19, ALBA’s popular monthly series of online film discussions featured a well-attended session on two well-known newsreel compilations, led by Jordana Mendelson and Ameya Tripathi, both of...
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More than 30 New York City teachers and others joined ALBA’s annual, full-day teaching workshop on November 4. Titled “The United States and World Fascism: Human Rights from the...
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Dear Friends, Since the never-ending news cycle has us all gasping for air, it’s hard to recall what life was like last week—let alone last year. Still, it will...
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Targeted by the far right, Rutgers historian Mark Bray and his family went into exile in October. Speaking with The Volunteer from Madrid, he reflects on the current political situation. “Fascism shamelessly takes over institutions that, under liberal norms, are supposed to remain neutral.”
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Kirsten Weld has spent years studying Latin American dictatorships and the citizens who fight to hold them accountable. That experience has proven valuable in her current role as president of the AAUP chapter at Harvard, which, in March, sued the federal government for targeting...
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Tina Modotti’s short life took her from Italy to North Beach and from there to Mexico, Berlin, Moscow, and civil-war Spain. Rightly known as a pathbreaking modernist photographer, she was also a radical activist. “Modotti spent the second part of her working life fighting...
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For Miguel G. Morales, the archive is an endless treasure trove. His new short on Cuban volunteers in the Spanish war brings it to life. Next up: a feature-length...
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After the Nazis occupied the Netherlands, the Seegers family did not hesitate to join the resistance. They had experience fighting fascism: their son Piet had fought for the Spanish...
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Antifascism has long been synonymous with American values. In 1934, student activists at New York’s City College arguably understood this better than many do today.
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Levante UD, the Spanish soccer club that recently recovered its 1937 Cup of Free Spain, has another victory to celebrate. Our football correspondent reports.
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The climate of the Cold War was anti-radical—but it was also white supremacist, as Paul Robeson experienced firsthand. Yet it didn’t faze him, Lindsey Swindall explains. “He not only...
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Although this text by Ivens is little known—and has never been translated before—it offers an eye-opening reflection on the power of his filmmaking.
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In six hour-long episodes, two historians discuss their ancestors, attempting to describe their family members’ possible frames of mind amid war.
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Sarah Watling, Tomorrow Perhaps the Future: Writers, Outsiders, and the Spanish Civil War (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2023), 372 pp.
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Charlotte Beradt, The Third Reich of Dreams: The Nightmares of a Nation, trans. Damion Searls Princeton University Press. 129 pp. $24.95
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In February 1937, American volunteers saw their first military action in the Spanish Civil War, fighting as part of the International Brigades in the struggle to defend Madrid. With...
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Read the latest print edition of The Volunteer in pdf.
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Jay Greenfield died peacefully on June 29, at the age of 92. Having grown up in Rockaway, Queens, Jay was a graduate of Cornell University and Harvard Law School,...
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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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The family of Paul Andrew Mooney (1910-1961) is searching for documentation to substantiate information he provided to his family about serving in the International Brigades. Paul Mooney was born and raised in Cincinnati, Ohio. He graduated from Hughes High School in 1929 and attended the University of Cincinnati in 1929, 1935 and 1936. In...
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Teesside, an industrial region in Northeast England that in the nineteenth century grew to be a center of shipbuilding and iron and steel production, spawned no fewer than thirty International Brigade volunteers. Of the nine who were born in the borough of Stockton-on-Tees, moreover, six played leading roles in Spain: five rose to the rank of Lieutenant...
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The first thirty-six Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests for Phase IV were submitted December 30, 2024. Phase IV is intended to focus on volunteers on whom we have minimal information. At some point in the future, I plan to resubmit some volunteers who were returned as not found or on whom no information...
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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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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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