Forced online by the ongoing pandemic, ALBA’s events have been generating strong interest from around the world. On September 12, ALBA’s Bay Area friends organized an 85-minute celebration of the newly restored national monument to the Lincoln Brigade in San Francisco. Hosted by Richard Bermack and featuring film footage by Vicente Franco, the program...
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(Register here.) Following the first successful online workshop this past summer, ALBA and the Collaborative for Educational Services are proud to announce a new online workshop for teachers grades 4-12 (Social Studies, Spanish, English Language Arts, & other subjects)
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Once again, the annual Watt Essay Award received a record number of submissions from around the world. The jury was especially impressed by the high quality of nearly all the submissions this year. Considering that these students produced this inspiring work during a pandemic...
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In the fall of 2019, Shannon O'Neill joined the Tamiment-Wagner team and NYU Special Collections as the Curator for the Tamiment-Wagner Collections.
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In September, the cabinet of Pedro Sánchez, Spain’s Socialist Prime Minister, approved the draft for a new Law of Democratic Memory that seeks to go farther than existing legislation,...
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Dear Friends, No pasaron. They did not pass. As this issue goes to print, we are emerging from one of the most intense election seasons the United States has...
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Robin D.G. Kelley is the Gary B. Nash Professor of American History at UCLA. The author of many books, including a biography of Thelonious Monk, he co-edited "This Ain't Ethiopia, But It'll Do": African-Americans and the Spanish Civil War (1990) and currently serves on ALBA’s Honorary Board.
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Isabel Allende, the Chilean author and philanthropist, spoke at ALBA’s Lincoln Brigade Monument Celebration on September 12, 2020. This is what she said.
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The war of 1936-39 in Spain had much in common with the many other conflicts being waged in societies across Europe after the First World War, as those who sought to maintain old hierarchies clashed with those striving for change. Yet the evident similarity...
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The Dutch photographer Lini Bunjes was among the first foreign volunteers to join the defense of the Spanish Republic. A free-spirited and independent woman, she attracted suspicion from both...
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From 1939 to 1975 a manor located in the province of La Coruña, Galicia, was used as a summer residence and office by the dictator Generalissimo Francisco Franco. For...
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After the outbreak of the Civil War in July 1936, not a week went by in Hollywood without a fundraiser for the Republican cause. The film colony was passionately...
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In June, the Martha Graham Dance Company performed Immediate Tragedy, a long-lost solo piece that Graham performed in 1937 in support of the Spanish Republic. Its reconstruction was only...
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Fighting Fascist Spain: Worker Protest from the Printing Press, by Montse Feu. Urbana, Chicago and Springfield: University of Illinois Press, 2020.
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Guardian Newspapers has published two reviews of the new book by Giles Tremlett, ‘The International Brigades: Fascism, Freedom and the Spanish Civil War’. On Saturday 3 October, The Guardian’s review...
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The University of Washington’s Stroum Center for Jewish Studies added part of Dr. Joseph Butwin’s oral history project to its Digital Jewish Studies online collection in 2018. Butwin noted...
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Originally published in The Volunteer, V. 1, No. 1 1978. September 21, 1938, Hill 281, Sierra de Caballs. “The men of the Botwin and Shevchenko companies distinguished themselves in...
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Who were the soldiers who served in Franco’s insurgent army? Until recently, few historians or social scientists thought to ask this question. A new book complicates long-held assumptions.
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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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Nobody remembers Lloyd Mallan. I came across his name while writing a book on poet- playwright Federico García Lorca’s iconic afterlife. Mallan’s piece on the poet’s assassination, published in 1939, was instrumental in spreading to the U.S. and Canada a highly embellished narrative of poetic martyrdom that helped shape the public image of Lorca....
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For an English translation of this article, see here.
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On May 30, 1937, the Republican freighter Ciudad de Barcelona was hit by a torpedo fired by a lurking Nationalist submarine. The torpedo tore a gaping hole in the ship and it rapidly sank. A Republican seaplane drove the submarine away with a depth charge attack, then landed and began rescuing men in the...
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Dr. Irving Busch (1896-1960), a graduate of Columbia University’s College of Physicians and Surgeons, volunteered to serve in Spain with the American Medical Bureau. In Spain, he served with the Republican Medical Services. Both before and after Spain Busch was an amateur photographer and he carried his camera along with him. After his death...
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The picture of a young man in a jaunty hat and a big smile stared out of the 1978 issue of The Volunteer. The photo was accompanied by a request for information about Sidney Lorraine who died in Spain during the course of The Retreats. There is no evidence of any replies. Sidney Hotchkiss...
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Many American veterans went on to serve in WWII and Korea. This list is a work in progress. Those marked with an “*” were killed during the war. Office of Strategic Services Aalto, William Oliver WWII US Army, joined December 1941 served as 1st SGT transfer to OSS April 12, 1942; Dismissed after he...
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Eddie O’Neill was born in the same County Tyrone neighborhood as the poet Charlie Donnelly (1914-1937), who was killed in action at Jarama while serving as a platoon leader with the James Connolly Section of the Abraham Lincoln Battalion. Inspired by the sacrifice of his fellow countryman and fellow Irish Socialist Republican, Eddie set...
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“A prominent competitive player in the United States gave a series of lectures and played over famous games from the past. To hear him talking—in our squalid surroundings—with such knowledge about a game once played by Napoleon on the island of St. Helena, was an uplifting and inspiring experience.” In his memoir To...
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With the submission of the August batch freedom of information act (FOIA) requests ALBA will have filed for over 1,000 passport records of American volunteers. Due to the ongoing pandemic responses to the submissions have been minimal. However, we did receive three responses this week. This is only the second batch received in the...
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A short video of the graves visited in 2021. Memorial Day is the day traditionally set aside to remember Americans who served in the military. And, yet, Americans who went to Spain to fight fascism are rarely, if ever, included in the remembrances on this day. The Lincoln Battalion Memorial...
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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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