As the labor movement occupied the front pages, in other words, so did news about fascism spreading across Europe. It was no coincidence that many union members saw their struggle as part of a united front against fascism and volunteered to fight in Spain.
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Sacco and Vanzetti: Film Screening and Discussion Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti—two Italian immigrant anarchists who were accused of a murder in 1920 and executed in Boston in 1927 after a notoriously prejudiced trial—are the subject of Sacco and Vanzetti, a documentary by ALBA...
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Labor Activist Karen Nussbaum to be Featured in Susman Lecture November 14 This year’s Susman Lecture will feature longtime labor activist Karen Nussbaum, co-founder in 1972 of 9to5: Organization of Women Office Workers and founding director of Working America. Born in Chicago Illinois into...
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In June, Iago Macknik-Conde, the New York high school senior featured in our last issue, performed his play about the Lincoln Brigade at the National History Day competition for...
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As part of the Alvah Bessie Program, launched last year, the government of Catalonia has confirmed the identities and places of death of 212 International Brigade volunteers from Germany,...
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Dear Friends, The three threads running through this issue are directly linked to ALBA’s mission and history. The first thread underscores how important it is to identify fascism wherever...
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Has fascism arrived in the United States? Will it soon? Or has it been living among us for many years? These are the questions that drive the twelve essays gathered in Fascism in America: Past and Present, a new collection edited by Gavriel Rosenfeld and Janet Ward, two prominent historians of the Holocaust.
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Sarah Watling is an award-winning author who recently published Tomorrow Perhaps the Future, in which she weaves together the stories of women whose lives were affected by the Spanish Civil War, including Martha Gellhorn, Josephine Herbst, Sylvia Townsend Warner, Valentine Ackland, Jessica Mitford, Nancy...
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The Right’s culture war on schools, universities, and history teachers—thinly disguised as a crusade against straw men like “divisive concepts” and “critical race theory”—is showing no sign of letting up. According to a tracking project at the UCLA Law School, between September 2020 and...
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In 1999, Catherine Wigginton Greene won ALBA’s Watt Award with an essay on Salaria Kea, the only African American nurse to serve in the Spanish Civil War. Twenty-four years...
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Bob Ford, who worked in Hollywood and fought in Spain and World War II, suffered relentless surveillance because of his radical past, as did his wife, Augusta Ain. In...
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![When Did World War II Start? And When Will It End? Reflections inspired by <em>Guernica</em> [part 1]](https://albavolunteer.org/wp-content/themes/volunteer/thumb.php?src=https://albavolunteer.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/08/Barton_Carter-712x1024.jpg&h=50&w=50&zc=1&q=80)
Before the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, James D. Fernández had agreed to visit Picasso’s Guernica in Madrid with a group of students from the Institute for Doctoral Studies...
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The Eblana Club in Dun Laoghaire, Ireland, joined in the many celebrations going on this year of the 125th anniversary of Paul Robeson’s birth, when they invited me to...
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Solidarity requires a combination of teaching, learning and encouragement. I’ve never seen anything like the camaraderie surrounding the historical memory of the International Brigades in Spain. I’ve studied one...
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All families have secrets, and I discovered mine at a young age, in a box or paper bag, I don’t remember which, in the closet. I knew even then...
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¡Brigadistas! An American Anti-Fascist in the Spanish Civil War, by Miguel Ferguson. Edited by Paul Buhle and Fraser Ottanelli. Art by Anne Timmons. New York: Monthly Review Press, 2022....
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Generalísimo. Las vidas de Francisco Franco, 1892-2020, by Javier Rodrigo. Barcelona, Galaxia Gutenberg, 2022. 494 pp.
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Spanish Republicans and the Second World War: Republic Across the Mountains, by Jonathan Whitehead., Philadelphia and South Yorkshire: Pen and Sword Books, 2021. 304 pp.
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Norah Chase, who died on May 28, 2023, was the daughter of Homer Chase, a Lincoln veteran from New Hampshire. Norah worked as a professor of English at Kingsborough...
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Dan Bessie, who passed away on July 1 in Brantôme, France, was born in rural Vermont, where his parents, Lincoln vet Alvah Bessie and Mary Burnett, eked out a...
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To the Editors: I was so pleased to see Bruce Barthol on the cover of The Volunteer. I would see him at events in Rohnert Park at the home...
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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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On Friday April 26, 2024, as part of my work with the Abraham Lincoln Brigade Tribute Project I set out to visit the grave of Harry Farris in North Henrico, VA. I located the cemetery easily but my search for his grave proved a bit more complicated. I had the section he is buried...
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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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With deep sadness, I write of the passing of Helene Susman, widow of Bill, at the age 103. She did not go to Spain with the Lincolns nor held a position with the VALB or ALBA, but to me and many others she was a founder of our small organization and a kindred spirit....
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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 places are...
Read more »
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 places are...
Read more »
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...
Read more »
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...
Read more »
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...
Read more »
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...
Read more »
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...
Read more »
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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