Few things can improve the pleasure of longer days and warm weather the way a good book does. Whether soaking up the sun or chilling in the A/C, pick up one, or all five, of these non-fiction works that center on or have a connection to the Spanish Civil War. Dr. Ariel May...
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Beatriz Gomez-Acuna visited the grave of Canadian-American Stanley Emil Blaskiewicz (who post-war changed his name to Blake) in Chicago. Joe Roth visited Aubrey Kirby Kelley’s grave in Ryan, Texas and placed a Republican flag. Thank you both for taking the time to honor these American Volunteers. For those who may be interested in participating...
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Blaine from Las Vegas visited Emil Meersand’s grave this week. Thank you Blaine and thanks in advance to all the volunteers who will visit the graves over the next week. For more information about the project see Progress on Honoring Those Who Served in Spain. If you wish to participate you can still volunteer....
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Raymond Hoff and Nancy Phillips’ nationwide project to honor the Veterans of the Abraham Lincoln Brigade by placing Spanish Republican Flags and flowers on their graves is bearing fruit. The first two visits were recently completed. Theron Snell completed a six-hour round trip to Roswell, New Mexico to visit veteran Joseph Vogel’s grave. Ken...
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Not for King or Country: Edward Cecil-Smith, the Communist Party of Canada, and the Spanish Civil War, by Tyler Wentzell. University of Toronto Press, 2020. 386 pp. $32.95.
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Spanish Trenches: The Minds and Deeds of the Irish who Fought for the Spanish Republic in the Spanish Civil War, by Barry McLoughlin and Emmet O’Connor. University College of Dublin Press, 2020. 400 pp. $35.
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Since 2014, volunteers have visited the graves of Lincolns and honored them on Memorial Day by putting down a simple white rose and an International Brigades flag. This year, ALBA helped advertise this project through a link to the online version of the Volunteer Newsletter1. The response from that approach has been rewarding and...
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Due to the untiring work of Ray Hoff, ALBA’s volunteer data base now has three new photographs. Hoff who identified and contacted family members of Isadore “Jack” Ehrenberg, and Robert Gavin and his younger brother Eugene Victor Gavin. These families provided the photographs. Family members are encouraged to review the data entries and provide...
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Veteran Joe Brandt’s pamphlet Black Americans in the Spanish People’s War Against Fascism. 1936-1939 was published by the Veterans of the Abraham Lincoln Brigades in 1979. It was the first attempt to document the history of African American volunteers in the Spanish Civil War. The Smithsonian Institute’s National Museum of African American History and...
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2024 Update – Additional photographs were located in the three years since this piece was posted. Other photographs are now in the database. African Americans in the Spanish Civil War: “This Ain’t Ethiopia, but It’’ll Do” by Danny Duncan Collum was published in 1991. In the thirty years since the book was originally...
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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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By Tony Fox 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...
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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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