What’s In A Beard? Unattributed The Volunteer for Liberty, V. 1, No. 28, December 27, 1937 Beards were introduced by Sampson an ingenious Easterner who put over the slogan “Hair for Strength” and made big money. Like other speculators he wrecked his career on a woman and ended his life in an orgy of...
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Look Pretty Please by Harry Randall, Brigade Chief Photographer The Volunteer for Liberty, V.2, No. 32, September 17, 1938 When the photographic section of the XVth International Brigade Commissariat was established, its tasks were seen as threefold: first, to make a photographic record of the XVth Brigade –where we have been, what we...
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![Aaron Lopoff by A. C. B. [Alvah Bessie]](https://albavolunteer.org/wp-content/themes/volunteer/thumb.php?src=https://albavolunteer.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/08/Lopoff-Wolff-Watt-and-Brandt-300x184.jpg&h=80&w=80&zc=1&q=80)
Aaron Lopoff ~ Alvah Bessie The Volunteer for Liberty, V. 2, No. 33, October 6, 1938. During the days when we used to joke about withdrawal of the volunteers and wonder when the car was coming down the road with the...
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The Volunteer for Liberty, V. 1, No. 9, August 9, 1937. Lincoln Battalion Commissar by H. A. “Don’t let ‘em get Steve!” This is the word that travels like a flash of lightning through the Lincoln-Washington Battalion lines before and during the attack. Steve Nelson, Political Commissar of the Lincoln-Washington Battalion, tireless worker. At...
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The Volunteer for Liberty, V.2, No. 33, October 6, 1938. Among the unsung heroes of the Ebro action are the Brigade chauffeurs who bring the men food, munitions, and material. Because they work unostentatiously and efficiently, they have become accepted in a matter of fact way, as a cog in the war machine. And...
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The Volunteer for Liberty, V.2, No. 35, November 7, 1938. Nick Myers, Commissar of Co. 1, Mac-Pap Battalion was wounded in the attack on Asco by the same shell that laid out Lionel Edwards the Company Commander. “I heard it coming” he says “but I was in a hurry and kept going. I ran...
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Ukes and Finns of the Mac-Paps, The Volunteer For Liberty, v. 2, No. 29, August 13, 1938. Our battalion has them too. We mean the Ukes and the Finns. They come from Canada too, but most of them have not only experienced the class struggle in Canada but have received an even more adequate...
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Notre Combat, Journal de la 15ème Brigade Internationale, No. 32, August 19, 1937, p. 7. Dimitrov Heroes by Ivan Gosnjak The First Section of the Matija Gubec Company of the Dimitrov Battalion is almost wholly composed of comrades coming from Canada. These comrades are, in the main, Croats who were compelled by economic circumstances...
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Bennett Jeffries Doty, Soldier of Fortune, attorney and author died April 4, 1938 in an unidentified hospital near Gandesa, Spain. Doty was born to Lemuel Humphries Doty (1866-1962) and Margaret “Mell” Jeffries Doty on August 16, 1900 in Faunsdale, Hale County, Alabama. Doty, who had an adventurous streak, joined the Tennessee Army National...
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THE VOLUNTEER Volume 2, January 15, 1938 No other International volunteer in Spain has been in so unique a position as Dr. Jack Klein, the American dentist with a roving commission. Ever-busy, ever smiling he has covered all the fronts, travelling over 10,000 miles in his dental truck, and treated about 3,000 persons, including...
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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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The Abraham Lincoln Brigade, New York’s Volunteers In the spring semester of 2020, the first thirty-three students completed biographical sketches that were published to a student-built website. Stuyvesant High School teacher David Hanna declared his goal for students to compile biographical entries for each of the approximately 800 volunteers who went to Spain from...
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A new episode of the podcast “Family Secrets of the Spanish Civil War” is now available. In the podcast, which premiered in October 2024, historians Patricia Schechter and Dan Czitrom discuss the impact of the Spanish war on their and others’ families. This episode features the children of Anna and Alvin Warren. Below is a...
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In 2025 the fourth stage of ALBA’s Passport Project wrapped up. The fourth stage focused on volunteers on whom we have very little information to enable a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) search. Most of the volunteers submitted had at least a year of birth to reference. Expectations...
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On the fiftieth anniversary of Franco’s death, the New York Times published an article by Jason Horowitz about the “nostalgia” for Francisco Franco being expressed by a growing number of younger Spaniards, most of whom have no direct experience of the dictator. As is common these days in the Times’ coverage of any number...
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The family of Paul Andrew Mooney (1910-1961) is searching for documentation to substantiate information he provided to his family about serving in the International Brigades. Paul Mooney was born and raised in Cincinnati, Ohio. He graduated from Hughes High School in 1929 and attended the University of Cincinnati in 1929, 1935 and 1936. In...
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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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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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