ALBA’s annual celebrations in New York City and Berkeley, California (video; photos), commemorated the 75th anniversary of the bombing of Guernica and honored the groundbreaking work of two tireless defenders of human rights in Latin America: Fredy Peccerelli, Executive Director of the Guatemalan Forensic Anthropology Foundation, and Kate Doyle, Senior Analyst of U.S. policy in Latin...
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The New Yorker, CNN, ProPublica, PRI, NPR, and EFE were among the media featuring this year's ALBA/Puffin Award winners. “How do you bring tolerance and democracy to a country in which a murderous military, which over the years...
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Edited speeches by the recipients of the 2012 ALBA/Puffin Award for Human Rights Activism and the ALBA/Puffin Student Activist Award, presented at the Museum of the City of New York.
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Judge Baltasar Garzón, winner of the 2011 ALBA/Puffin Award for Human Rights Activism, sent a video message to congratulate this year's winners, while the Asociación de Amigos de las...
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My interest in Guatemala began when I was a student, when I learned that in 1954, the United States had engineered a coup against Guatemala’s elected president, Jacobo Árbenz,...
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Joining forces with ProPublica, Ira Glass's This American Life recently featured Fredy Peccerelli and Kate Doyle, winners of the 2012 ALBA/Puffin Award for Human Rights Activism, in an...
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Names matter. Paul Preston’s choice of The Spanish Holocaust, his latest and most ambitious account of the massive violence unleashed in the wake of the 1936 coup, is as polemical as it is well-pondered. It reflects a conscious attempt on Preston’s part to reframe how we think about the war in Spain and its...
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Now in its fifth year, ALBA’s educational program aims to reach high school teachers of social studies and Spanish who will use archival sources related to the Spanish Civil War in their classrooms. Three separate programs filled the calendar during the spring term; three...
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On March 27, 1938, Avelino González Mallada, former mayor of the Asturian city of Gijón, died in a car crash on a country road in Woodstock, Virginia. The next day, The New York Times explained that “Señor Mallada was in this country on a sixty-day...
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(Versión en castellano aquí.) At the end of 2004 a good friend of mine found, by chance, a piece of graffiti on a wall in the chapel of...
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Patience Darton must be one of the few people ever to describe Ernest Hemingway as ‘charming and humble.’ She recorded her impression of him in a letter written from...
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A Spaniard named Carlos Rodríguez del Risco was imprisoned in the Nazi concentration camp of Mauthausen from 1940 to 1945. Although he was sympathetic to the Spanish Republic when...
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The great majority of books on 20th-century history treat the period from 1917 to 1991 as one of unremitting rivalry between Soviet communism and Western capitalist democracy, a rivalry...
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La originalidad de la participación cubana en la Guerra de España reside en su importancia numérica en relación con la de los países hispanoamericanos, especialmente las islas antillanas de...
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One of the last surviving veterans of the Abraham Lincoln Brigade, Vernon Bown, died of pneumonia at a VA hospital in Martinez, California, on March 23, as reported by...
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“I felt I was not reading history, I was helping to write it,” said one of the Bard College students who visited the Abraham Lincoln Brigade Archives (ALBA) on...
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Julian Bell: From Bloomsbury to the Spanish Civil War. By Peter Stansky and William Abrahams. Stanford University Press, 2012. (Buy at Powells and support ALBA.) In 1966, Peter Stansky...
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Smith, Richard K. and R. Cargill Hall. Five Down, No Glory: Frank G. Tinker, Mercenary Ace in the Spanish Civil War. Naval Institute Press. Oct. 2011. 377 pp. illus. ...
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I have always known about the Abraham Lincoln Brigade. It was part of my family's proud heritage. My Aunt Toby Jensky was a nurse and administrator in the American...
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Northern California is the fortunate home to two of the remaining Lincoln Brigade veterans: former newspaperman James Benét, now 98, and Delmer Berg, a very lively 96. Two of...
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Planning for your will and your legacy? The Veterans of the Abraham Lincoln Brigade established their legacy with the Abraham Lincoln Brigade Archives. Now you can continue their “good...
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I had the pleasure of visiting the ALBA archives a couple of weeks ago with Alan Levine, a New York-based civil rights attorney with a longstanding interest in the...
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The Supreme Court in Madrid has denied an appeal from the Fundación Francisco Franco to relocate a statue of Franco on horseback to its original location in the La...
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I have always been intrigued by the men and women of the Abraham Lincoln Brigade. They fought for the right reasons- stopping tyranny, and supporting a legally elected government...
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In this 1983 interview with Martha Gellhorn, the renowned journalist, novelist, and war correspondent discusses in great length her views regarding the Great Depression, the Spanish Civil War,...
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BBC Mundo released a short video interviewing three of the Basque children who were sent to England 75 years ago.
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Lydia Syson, author of the forthcoming A World Between Us, which tells the story of the Spanish Civil War to children, was interviewed about her work last week...
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In this video just uploaded by the Yiddish Book Center as part of the Wexler Oral History Project, Pauline Katz retells her grandfather's story about how
"Witness," the BBC World Service radio show, commemorated the bombing of Guernica last week. Listen to the 9-minute program here. In Germany, Der Spiegel did the same.
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Documents from the planned 1936 'Spanish Olympiad' have now been digitized and published by the University of Warwick.
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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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