Among the audience this year were more than 50 New York City high school students whose teachers are alumni of ALBA’s professional-development workshops. On May 5, two days after what would have been Pete Seeger’s one hundredth birthday, more than 200 people gathered in the same auditorium of the Museum of the City of...
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Thank you very much to the Abraham Lincoln Brigade Archives and the Puffin Foundation. I wanted to share the story of one father and daughter whom federal enforcement agents separated from each other at the border during the crisis this past summer. A father...
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Dear Friends, More than 50 New York City high school students, together with their history teachers, attended our annual event on May 5. It’s been a while since we had so many young faces in the audience. Along with some 150 other attendees, they...
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We are thrilled to announce that ALBA has hired a new executive director. Mark Wallem is an accomplished human rights lawyer who comes to ALBA with more than 20...
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Among the 35,000 volunteers who traveled to Spain to support the Loyalist cause during the Spanish Civil War were two Iraqis. This is what we know about them.
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Alvah Bessie’s 1939 memoir still reads like a compelling lesson in twentieth-century history—as does the rest of Bessie’s activist life.
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The notion that the Spanish Civil War ended on April 1, 1939 is a convention that is as taken for granted—in textbooks, scholarship and the media—as, say, the date of Franco’s death, November 20, 1975. Yet the death of Franco is a fact, while the establishment of the end of the war in 1939...
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What prompted the migrant caravan? A first-hand look at two epicenters of the immigration story.
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The ALBA collection at NYU’s Tamiment Library is an extraordinary trove of documents, images, and artifacts chronicling the lives of the almost 3,000 American men and women who joined the Spanish Civil War. It collection represents about ten percent of these volunteers—a respectable sampling....
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Darryl Anthony Burrowes, Historians at War: Cold War Influences on Anglo–American Representations of the Spanish Civil War. Brighton, Great Britain: Sussex Academic Press, 2019.
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Sanctuary The village creek serpentines to open seas where I stand all day at the ocean shore, feeling the Earth’s core tremble. Sailor Melville got it right,...
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On April 13, 2019 in the Catalonian village of Els Guiamets in the famed Priorat wine region, the anti-fascist activist and Nazi camp survivor Neus Català died in an...
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Over the last few years, several announcements have mourned the passing of the last British volunteers in the Spanish Civil War. First there was David Lomon, then Philip Tammer, and then recently Stan...
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To the Editors: I was privileged to attend the ALBA event at the Museum of the City of New York with a friend whose cousin died fighting with the...
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Originally published in The Volunteer for Liberty, V2, No. 33, October 6, 1938 Deep in a natural cave at the head of a baranco is the command post of...
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The Volunteer for Liberty, V2, No. 31, September 5, 1938. It was a great game. The Mac-Paps put up...
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The Volunteer for Liberty, V2, no. 33, October 6, 1938 ARAGON BALLAD Francisco Franco, fascist chief, Of him is the story told, His “justice” fills the Aragon hills,...
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The Volunteer for Liberty, V2, No. 30, August 26, 1938 Copernico is alive! Throughout the Brigade there are those who knew and it follows, admired him, who will...
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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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