On March 23, ALBA celebrated Women’s History Month at the International Center of Photography, in New York, with photographer Espe Pons, the author of Maybe Never Again, a photobook about foreign women who joined the Republican struggle against fascism. Pons was joined by ALBA’s Jo Labanyi, Cynthia Young, and Kathleen Brown, and Helen Oclee-Brown...
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ALBA's film discussion series continues with a Pride Month feature and Jaime Camino's "Spain Again," with Alvah Bessie.
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The first in a series of online roundtable gatherings about the challenges and opportunities of teaching antifascist history today took place on April 16, focusing on the situation in American higher education. For 90 minutes, Kirsten Weld (Harvard), Bill Mullen (Purdue), and Deborah Cohn (Indiana Bloomington) discussed questions raised by ALBA’s moderator, Sebastiaan Faber,...
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At a moving and inspirational ceremony on May 2 in New York City, two ALBA/Puffin Awards for Human Rights Activism were awarded to Bay Resistance and Unión del Barrio, two California-based organizations.
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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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Leaf through the print edition of The Volunteer.
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Victor Grossman was a lifelong communist, journalist, and bridge-builder between the United States and the socialist world.
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As this issue is going to print, ALBA’s Human Rights Committee is hard at work finalizing the process of selecting this year’s winner of the ALBA/Puffin Award for Human Rights Activism. Keep an eye on your email and social media for an announcement. Jack Mayerhofer, chair of ALBA’s Human Rights Committee said, “We are...
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On Sunday, December 7, at a holiday gathering in NYC, descendants of veterans of the Abraham Lincoln Brigade, ALBA board members, and supporters gathered under the theme, “The Things We Carry.” Brought together by familial ties and mission, descendants of ALB vets reflected on the artifacts and memories they carry on behalf of their...
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In six hour-long episodes, two historians discuss their ancestors, attempting to describe their family members’ possible frames of mind amid war.
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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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Adrian Pole’s sharp-eyed and sensitive new book notices what so many historians have missed about the International Brigades: that this army was filled with Spanish recruits. Interactions with everyday Spaniards made up a substantial chunk of foreign soldiers’ days in the rearguard. Due to the high mortality of Brigade units, maintaining fighting readiness demanded...
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Amirah Inglis’s (1926-2015) collection of photographs assembled for her research on Australians in the Spanish Civil War (1987) is posted on JSTOR’s website. The collection includes 119 images varying from pamphlet covers, post cards, to photographs of volunteers who supported the Spanish Republic at home, and of volunteers who went to Spain. Inglis planned...
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After attending the AABI event honoring the Abraham Lincoln Battalion in Madrid, in February 2025, Anita Caref, a retired adult literacy educator, started an antifascist children’s book club.
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Ca-Vostra, a bar-hotel in the historic center of Ibiza Town that the Austrian painter Lene Schneider-Kainer opened in 1933, served for years as a refuge for artists and intellectuals fleeing Nazism—until she herself was forced into exile. Sol Izquierdo reconstructs a remarkable life.
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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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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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