We just received the sad news that Spanish Civil War veteran George Sossenko has passed away. Born in Russia, George left his parent’s home in Paris, France, at age 17 to join those fighting against Francisco Franco’s nationalist forces in the Spanish Civil War. He initially went to the offices of the French Communist...
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Andrew Sullivan points to, and comments on, one of the more detailed and complex accounts of the precise relationship between the freshly appointed Pope Francis I and the Argentine military junta, provided by Democracy Now´s Amy Goodman in an interview with journalist Horacio Verbitsky. This is Sullivan; the quotes are from Goodman’s interview with...
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From the BBC (see video here):
A court in Buenos Aires has sentenced the former military ruler Reynaldo Bignone to life in jail for crimes against humanity committed when he was in power in the 1980s. The 85-year-old former general is already serving three other jail sentences for similar crimes. Mr...
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Alan Warren writes from Spain: This week marks the 75th anniversary of the start of the Great Retreats. To remember the men who were killed in this Retreat I have posted to a piece of research on the unpublished autobiography of Fausto Vilar Esteban. His memoirs, as yet unpublished, are a wonderful source of...
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Nearly 200 people attended “George Orwell: Homage to Catalonia, 75 Years On,” a conference held this past March 2 by the International Brigade Memorial Trust in Manchester, UK. Among the audience were George Orwell’s adopted son Richard Blair and Quentin Kopp, son of Georges Kopp, Orwell’s commanding officer in Spain. The speakers included Richard...
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Historian and ALBA emeritus chair Peter N. Carroll will be delivering the 2013 Bill Susman Lecture, “From Guernica to Human Rights,” next March 28 in New York City, at 6:00pm, at the Instituto Cervantes (211 E 49th Street, New York, NY 10017). Admission is free. In his lecture, Peter N. Carroll will explore changing...
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Democracy Now covers the historic trial targeting the infamous Operación Cóndor, through which right-wing Latin American dictatorships coordinate the repression of dissent.
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Marjorie Cohn, who teaches at Thomas Jefferson School of Law and gave ALBA's 2011 Susman lecture, underscores the "uncommon courage" of Bradley Manning in a column on Portside.
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Amy Goodman's Democracy Now spoke with Michael Ratner, president emeritus of the Center for Constitutional Rights, ALBA honorary board member, and defense counsel for Julian Assange in the United States, about the Bradley Manning case, the pretrial hearing of which Ratner attended:
For the first time, 25-year-old U.S. Army Private Bradley Manning has...
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Aaron Shulman, who moved to Spain a couple of years ago, compares his happy personal life with the stunningly desolate social and economic landscape around him:
To say that unemployment is bad in Spain is like saying that the sea is watery. The situation is that oceanically obvious. Since the Read more »
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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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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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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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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