“Community” is a word that comes up a lot in our work.
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Founded by the Veterans of the Abraham Lincoln Brigade
“Community” is a word that comes up a lot in our work.
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Dear Friends, Extraordinary times call for extraordinary measures. For the first time in the 16-year history of the ALBA/Puffin Award, two recipients received the full prize: Bay Resistance and Unión del Barrio, two California-based organizations that have spent many years developing networks, tactics, and strategies to protect vulnerable populations against state and corporate abuse....
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Ninety years is a particularly significant interval of time, as it matches, more or less, the limits of a human being’s lifespan.
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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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Dear Friends, Since the never-ending news cycle has us all gasping for air, it’s hard to recall what life was like last week—let alone last year. Still, it will be a while before we forget this past November 4. For one, it’s not every day that a politician opens a victory speech quoting Eugene...
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Emilio Silva, Nébeda (Madrid: Alkibla, 2025), 212 pp.
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Jay Greenfield died peacefully on June 29, at the age of 92. Having grown up in Rockaway, Queens, Jay was a graduate of Cornell University and Harvard Law School, where he was a Law Review editor. Following service as a lieutenant in Korea, he began his long career at Paul, Weiss, Rifkin, Wharton &...
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The title of this new occasional feature of The Volunteer is the Esperanto word for “archive.” In it, we will present, translate, and contextualize iconic non-English language documents related to the anti-fascist struggle in Spain.
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The Jewish Museum in New York City is presenting the first U.S. retrospective in nearly half a century dedicated to social realist artist and activist Ben Shahn (1898-1969). Curator Laura Katzman reflects on Shahn’s social justice work as it relates to the antifascist struggles of his day.
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Dear Friends, “There will be Brigades forming again,” John Garfield’s character says at the end of The Fallen Sparrow, the 1943 spy thriller in which he plays Kit McKittrick, a traumatized Lincoln vet who singlehandedly foils a Nazi plot. Although the phrase is easy to miss, it is key to understanding the story’s political...
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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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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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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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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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