The National Library in Madrid has recently digitized over 100 photographs taken at San Pedro de Cardeña, the concentration camp for the International Brigade prisoners which the fascists established at the site of an abandoned monastery in Burgos. This startling photograph was taken during April 1938, inside San Pedro, shortly following the fascist capture...
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Ronald V. Dellums, a tireless advocate for peace, justice, and equality, served his Oakland, California district for 27 years in the House of Representatives. A vigorous supporter of the Veterans of the Abraham Lincoln Brigade, he carried on their example when he stated, at the beginning of his career in Congress, that he was committed...
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“Without ethical consciousness the audience is only sensual, one of aesthetes… without ethical consciousness, the painter is only a decorator,” declared Robert Motherwell, the creator of the monumental series “Elegy to the Spanish Republic”, which was recently on display at the Dominique Levy Gallery in NYC, where it ran from November 2015 through January...
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The first thing you see as you approach the Civil War Shelters Museum on Gisbert Street in Cartagena are the trees growing out of the mountainside. Their unusual network of thick, exposed roots pushing out of the ground suggests that these ancient trees might have been around since the Bronze Age, witnessing Hannibal as...
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Last October I joined the IBMT tour headed by Pauline Fraser and Charles Jepson, which took us along the trenches of Quito, the battle sites of Belchite, and included a visit to the new Battle of the Ebro Museum at Fayon. In the spirit of the Brigades, we were truly an international group, comprised...
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Good news from Ireland: The International Brigade Commemoration Committee is pleased to announce that in cooperation with the Belfast City Council a stained glass window will be unveiled later this year to the men from Belfast who went to join the International Brigades in Spain and to the men and women who supported Spanish...
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The voices of British Battalion’s Charlie Donnelly, Bob Doyle, John Cornford, Jim Haughey and Dolores Ibárruri (La Pasionaria) were heard again at the Shankill Road Library in Belfast this August. Moving readings of their poetry and memoirs were delivered by Marlene Sideway, IBMT President and actor, Dr. Sinead Morrissey, Belfast’s first poet Laureate, and...
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On February 1, 2014 I had the honor of bringing fraternal greetings from ALBA to the International Brigades Commemoration Committee, where an overflow crowd met to honor these men from Belfast who joined common cause in the earliest battlefields in the war against fascism in Spain. The International Brigades Commemoration Committee exists to...
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The visitor enters a small passageway leading to the 17 room Pablo Casals Museum in Vendrell, Spain, at once immersed in cello music and a voiceover narration from the diary of a young Casals. The music surrounds a display of some of the first instruments belonging to the artist. This multisensory approach to the...
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On July 8, a delegation organized by Friends and Family of the Abraham Lincoln Brigade met with Juan Ramón Martínez Salazar, the Consul General of Spain and Íñigo Ramírez de Haro Valdés, Attaché for Cultural Affairs, to follow up on the letter to the Ambassador protesting the removal of the IB monument in Madrid,...
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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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I am searching for information about Morton ‘Vic’ Vicker. I have reason to believe he was in the International Brigades during the Spanish Civil War. I did not meet Vic until November of 1969 in Aguacate, Cuba, on the first Venceremos Brigade.* We bunked together, cut cane together, and spent a lot of time talking. I was...
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A preview of a Q&A with Robin D.G. Kelley that will appear in the December issue of The Volunteer.
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Guardian Newspapers has published two reviews of the new book by Giles Tremlett, ‘The International Brigades: Fascism, Freedom and the Spanish Civil War’. On Saturday 3 October, The Guardian’s review by Dan Hancox gave the following misleading impression: ‘The brigades drew an astonishing array of international literary figures – Orwell, Hemingway, Spender, Auden’. None of...
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The University of Washington’s Stroum Center for Jewish Studies added part of Dr. Joseph Butwin’s oral history project to its Digital Jewish Studies online collection in 2018. Butwin noted that “initiative” for the project came the “Vets themselves.” The web pages discuss the project’s history and offers individual pages on five veterans: George Watt,...
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Originally published in The Volunteer, V. 1, No. 1 1978. September 21, 1938, Hill 281, Sierra de Caballs. “The men of the Botwin and Shevchenko companies distinguished themselves in particular by their heroic defense of every inch of ground. They resisted to the last grenade when the enemy broke into their trenches. Nearly all...
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Edward Muscala’s hastily scrawled graffiti on the wall of the Hermitage of San Gregoria de Aguaviva during the battle of Teruel was preserved by the town. Ann Marti first reported on the inscription in her article In the Footsteps of the Lincoln-Battalion. This relic of the war was recently spray painted by vandals. Town...
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The Volunteer, Volume 1, No. 1, 1978. I cried when I heard you died, Larry. The tears flowed while rage racked my insides How could you die Larry not you not yet we are almost there! ...
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Originally published in The Volunteer, Volume1, No. 1, 1978. In view of the importance of the ‘Yates Project’ – refer to letter, national mailing of March ’78 – we called James Yates with some last minute questions. He very kindly sent us some last minute answers. Without a doubt his is a ‘work’ that...
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A long-time ALBA supporter contacted the office to inquire about a possible volunteer Herbert Rathman. In the mid-1960s, Rathman was the Science Chairman at Rhodes Preparatory School, a private school located at 11 West 54th Street in Manhattan. Rathman had told his students that he was a veteran of the Spanish Civil War and served...
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ALBA wholeheartedly rejects white supremacy and racial inequality. We condemn the murder of George Floyd in Minneapolis, and the systemic police brutality in black communities throughout the United States.
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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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