United We Dream, the national network of youth-led immigrant activist organizations that fight for the rights of millions of undocumented immigrants in the United States, has been selected as winner of the 2013 ALBA/Puffin Award for Human Rights Activism. The United We Dream Network (UWD) will receive the award at ALBA’s annual event...
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A survey of Lincoln veterans in the 1980s showed that 80 percent of the surviving volunteers were immigrants or children of immigrants. Some had participated in the mass migrations before WWI but many were relative newcomers who were "internationalists" rather than nationals.
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Harry Belafonte, Pete Seeger, and Oliver Stone join ALBA in inviting you to a celebration of the third ALBA/Puffin Award for Human Rights Activism, featuring United We Dream and music by Barbez and Bernardo Palombo. (Tickets | Invitation | Press Release...
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After more than seven decades of impunity, those who committed crimes during Francisco Franco’s dictatorship may finally have to face a judge. Spain has never lifted its 1977...
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The struggle to end impunity for state violence has been a central concern of the human rights movement in Latin America for decades. Efforts by victims, rights advocates, and...
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Several years ago, a researcher from the small Galician town of As Pontes, participating in the excavation of a mass grave from the Spanish Civil War in the heavily...
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While his friends Robert Capa and Gerda Taro were most at ease in action shots, Chim’s range was much wider. And although Chim--aka Dawid Szymin, aka David Seymour--was a master at the photo story, many of his single images are striking on their own.
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In 2013, the Wayne State University Abraham Lincoln Brigade Veterans Scholarship Committee will celebrate its 30th anniversary awarding scholarships to deserving students. It has been a long road that began during the Spanish Civil War when nearly 100 Michiganders joined the International Brigades. Four...
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Antonio Frasconi, the great graphic artist, illustrator, teacher and humanitarian, created this woodcut of the Lincoln Memorial, which resides in the nation’s capitol next to the famous words of the Gettysburg address, “That government, of the people, by the people, and for the people...
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Editor’s note: This is the first in a series of three articles about the work of the Asociación para la Recuperación de la Memoria Histórica (ARMH), a grassroots Spanish...
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Emilio Silva Faba was born in the town of Pereje (León) in 1892. In 1915 he emigrated to Argentina, where he lived in Ezpeleta, in the province of Buenos...
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Historian and ALBA emeritus chair Peter N. Carroll will be delivering the 2013 Bill Susman Lecture, “From Guernica to Human Rights,” next March 28 in New York City, at...
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The economic crisis in Spain, which many thought short-lived, appears to have no end in sight. In a desperate attempt to understand what has happened and what the near...
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This is the story of my service in the Spanish Civil War during the years 1937 and 1938 as a soldier in the Abraham Lincoln Brigade of the 15th...
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Ralph S. Abascal (1934-1997), attorney and defender of farmworkers’ rights, argued the case that resulted in the ban on the use of DDT and other deadly pesticides in California’s...
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Garbo: The Spy. A documentary by Edmon Roch (Spain, 2009; US release 2012, distributed by First Run Features, 88 minutes).
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Not in My Father's Footsteps. By Terrence Rundle West. (General Store Publishing House, 2011).
The Road, and Nothing More. By J.T....
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Nearly 200 people attended “George Orwell: Homage to Catalonia, 75 Years On,” a conference held this past March 2 by the International Brigade Memorial Trust in Manchester, UK. Among...
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Can anyone shed any light on the origins of this sketch? It belonged to Arthur West, an activist in the Aid Spain movement in Nottingham and a prominent local...
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Jim Benét, lifelong journalist and veteran of the American Regiment de Tren (Transport) in the International Brigades, died in December near his home in northern California of a blood...
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Tom Buchanan. East Wind: China and the British Left, 1925-1976 (Oxford University Press, 2012); “Shanghai-Madrid Axis’? Comparing British Responses to the Conflicts in Spain and China, 1936-39”, Contemporary European History...
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Moises Broggi i Vallès, Catalan surgeon who served in the 35th International Division Medical Services, passed away on December 31, 2012. As a young doctor, working in an on...
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On the last day of 2012, Dr. Moisès Broggi decided to not celebrate New Year’s Eve for 105th time in his life. Some months earlier we had finished up...
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Dear ALBA, On behalf of the Broggi family (Dr. Moisés Broggi was my wife’s grandfather), I want to thank you for the thoughtful obituary published in The Volunteer. …...
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Sylvia H. Thompson, who spent her life fighting for the poor and oppressed and championing the legacy of the veterans of the Abraham Lincoln Brigade, died of cancer in...
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Dr. Josep Maria Massons Esplugas, former head of the surgical team for the International Brigades, passed away in Barcelona on November 10, 2012. Born in Valls (Tarragona, Catalonia) on...
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David Lomon, who died on 21 December 2012, aged 94, was the last known survivor in Britain of the more than 2,500 volunteers from the British Isles who joined...
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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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