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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Founded by the Veterans of the Abraham Lincoln Brigade
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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The Volunteer, February 1974 He was one of my oldest friends. We knew each other long before Spain in the street of Brownsville. If there was one thing that characterized him, it was his zest for life. He would sing on picket lines, while we dragged furniture back for evicted neighbors. On Friday morning,...
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The Volunteer for Liberty, V. 1, No. 25, December 6, 1937. You asked him why he came to Spain, how he came to hate fascism. You ask because his background is Mississippi and Texas, where reaction is strong in the ruling class. His folks were planters in Mississippi. If you trace the family you...
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The Volunteer for Liberty V.2, No. 30, August 26, 1938 For the Lincolns it was action from the very start. Even before we crossed the Ebro we were under enemy fire and what’s more important, the enemy was under our fire. I don’t mean only the artillery fire that was sweeping the approaches to...
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The Volunteer for Liberty, V2, no. 33, October 6, 1938 All was not exactly quiet on the British Battalion’s sector during the last action of Hill 565. This despite the fact that the Battalion was theoretically in reserve, in accordance with the accepted reserve police of the Division, the Army Corps and the Army....
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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 be overjoyed to hear it. We knew he was captured (during the March retreat) and almost certainly felt that he was killed. Now we have...
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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 our Brigade. Here, at one time, peasants had utilized the natural shelter, filled its mouth with masonry and constructed a home. The cavern is partitioned...
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The Volunteer for Liberty, V2, No. 31, September 5, 1938. It was a great game. The Mac-Paps put up a swell battle and lost gamely. (It isn’t too much out of the way to say they took it sort of hard, so why not...
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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, His curse is manifold: He’s taken toll of the North and South The gore it reached far; And they tell the tale of his “charity”...
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The City College of New York (CCNY) was founded in1847 as the Free Academy of the City of New York. Offering free tuition, the school served as a combination prep school, high school and college. It was renamed the College of the City of New York in 1866 and became the City College of...
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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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Teesside, an industrial region in Northeast England that in the nineteenth century grew to be a center of shipbuilding and iron and steel production, spawned no fewer than thirty International Brigade volunteers. Of the nine who were born in the borough of Stockton-on-Tees, moreover, six played leading roles in Spain: five rose to the rank of Lieutenant...
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The first thirty-six Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests for Phase IV were submitted December 30, 2024. Phase IV is intended to focus on volunteers on whom we have minimal information. At some point in the future, I plan to resubmit some volunteers who were returned as not found or on whom no information...
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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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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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