Dublin IBMT member Luke O’Riordan has posted a 1971 Irish TV programme (watch here) on his late grandfather, Irish International Brigader Michael O’Riordan (12 November 1917- 18 May 2006), a veteran of the 1938 Battle of the Ebro, whose 75th anniversary is being marked this year. Luke has also posted a recording of his recently...
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Chela Scott Weber, associate head of the Tamiment Library, which houses the ALBA collection, writes in the NYU Libraries newsletter on a new donation, The Joseph North and Helen Oken North Papers: The North Papers span the 1910s through the 1960s, most of them from 1930 to 1960. Joseph North was a journalist who covered...
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Amy Goodman at Democracy Now! gets the latest news on Edward Snowden from Michael Ratner, an attorney to Wikileaks and Julian Assange, member of ALBA's Honorary Board, and president emeritus of the Center for Constitutional RightsRead more »
Muriel Rukeyser (1913-1980) was an American poet who happened to be in Spain in July 1936, covered the Civil War as a journalist, and would revisit it time and again in her later work. Her previously unpublished Spanish Civil War novel Savage Coast has just been released, edited by Rowena Kennedy-Epstein (see here for a sneak peek...
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Our friends at the International Brigade Memorial Trust have announced their annual commemoration in London (poster here)
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The Spanish authorities are not investigating crimes under international law committed during the Civil War and Franco period, sending the message that impunity for human rights abuses is allowed, Amnesty International said in a new report that was released yesterday. The report, titled Time Passes, Impunity Remains, examines how the Spanish authorities have refused to investigate...
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Around 200 people gathered on Saturday at the monument to the International Brigades on the campus of the Complutense University to protest the removal of the monument ordered by Madrid’s highest court. Among the speakers was University President José Carrillo, who said his office still has not received the court’s decision, and who vowed...
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Paul Preston is impossible to avoid. Author of twelve books, editor of several more, and director of an important series on the subject, he towers mile-high in the landscape of Spanish Civil War scholarship. And yet in person he can be quite elusive. A previously arranged meeting for an interview in London first had...
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Carles Geli, writing for El País, highlights some compelling stories from the newly translated Los brigadistas chinos en la Guerra Civil: La llamada de España (1936-1939), by Hwei-Ru Tsou and Len Tsou
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Paco de Onís at Skylight Pictures writes:
This indelible image captures the moment at the Guatemalan trial of former dictator General Efraín Ríos Montt, when he and his mustachioed legal team are listening to Judge Jasmín Barrios as she pronounces him guilty of commiting genocide and crimes against humanity against the Maya Ixil people,...
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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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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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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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