Emilio Silva, founding president of Spain’s Association for the Recovery of Historical Memory, was in New York to receive the fifth ALBA/Puffin Award for Human Rights Activism. Spain’s transition to democracy, he said, failed to address the country’s moral debt to the thousands of victims of violence during the Spanish Civil War and the...
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Here is a video summary and a photo gallery of our Annual Celebration and Award Ceremony in New York City, May 9, 2015, at the Japan Society.
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Why should we care about the past? This is one of the essential questions we ask when we work with students and teachers. We believe it is a question worth pondering, and worth answering thoughtfully.
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This letter, from New York City Chancellor of Education Carmen Fariña, was read at the ALBA/Puffin Award ceremony on May 9 in New York. Presenting it was Alyce Barr,...
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In March and April, ALBA’s Peter N. Carroll and Sebastiaan Faber worked with more than two dozen high school teachers in Newton, Massachusetts, and Columbus, Ohio to develop human-rights...
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Master Teacher Kelley Brown speaks about the rise of the Common Core and her experience teaching with ALBA’s materials in Massachusetts.
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Cultural anthropologist Francisco Ferrándiz has spent the last 13 years of his life studying the impact of Civil War exhumations in Spain, working in close collaboration with groups like the Association for the Recovery of Historical Memory. Thanks to their efforts, Spanish citizens have exhumed more than 6,000 bodies since 2000—most of them civilian...
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Time and justice are inseparable: it is impossible to do justice without a proper awareness of time. Time does not only pass for the dead; it also passes for the living—the living who are waiting, at the side of the graves, for the return...
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Pierre Daura, John Rossen, and Herman Bottcher—a Catalan painter, an American factory worker and a German carpenter—forged a close friendship in the trenches of Spain. A Japanese mortar round, a poem, and a painting united their lives, leaving a lasting artistic legacy.
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My formative experiences took place in Italy within a political culture deeply shaped by the values of international solidarity, social justice, and antifascism that motivated the women and men...
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An exhibit in Hamburg displays images of the Chapaiev Battalion taken by soldiers and Gerda Taro, from the collection of Alfred Kantorowicz and the ICP.
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I wasn’t even born, never saw a soldier point a rifle into the face of a woman, her hair beginning to gray, run red. I witness from a distance...
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The last known International Brigade veteran in France, César Covo, died in March in Rennes, France, just a few weeks from his 103rd birthday. His death marks the silent...
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Richard Rhodes, Hell and Good Company: The Spanish Civil War and the World it Made (New York: Simon and Schuster, 2015).
José Alejandro Ortiz Carrión with Teresita Torres Rivera, Voluntarios de da Libertad. Puertorriqueños en defensa de la República Española 1936-1939 (San Juan: Ediciones Callejón, 2015).
What you leave to friends and loved ones–and the causes you champion– are ways of expressing your hopes and dreams for the future. Help perpetuate your part in the...
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Editor’s note: At the initiative of ALBA board member Chris Brooks, who maintains the online biographical database of US volunteers in Spain, the ALBA blog will be regularly posting...
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Editor’s note: At the initiative of ALBA board member Chris Brooks, who maintains the online biographical database of US volunteers in Spain, the ALBA blog will be regularly posting...
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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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