Alasdair Fotheringham, writing for the UK’s Independent, recalls the life of Harry Randall, the photographer and Lincoln Brigade veteran who passed away in late last year: Arriving in Spain on 1 July 1937, after a brief spell training with the MacKenzie-Papineau Battalion –Canadian, but containing a large number of Americans – Randall was appointed head...
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David Lethbridge's new biography covering Dr. Norman Bethune's participation in the Spanish Civil War, Norman Bethune in Spain: Commitment, Crisis, and Conspiracy, published by Sussex Academic Press, is now available for pre-ordering.
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“There is not a single one among the conservative or neo-Francoist historians who does not manipulate or skew the historical evidence. They sell bold-faced lies. This sounds harsh, I know. But I have proven it time and again. In Spain, the myths propagated by Francoism have survived, conveniently freshened up, and are mobilized in...
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Dr. Moisès Broggi i Vallès, who passed away at age 104 on the last day of the year, was a renowned Catalan surgeon who during the Civil War headed up in the surgical unit serving the International Brigades. Politically active from an early age and almost until the very end, Dr. Broggi was a pacifist,...
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The past months have been a time of loss for the International Brigade community. Harry Randall, Adolphe Low, Jim Benét, David Lomon, and Albert Hirschman left us, as did Sylvia Thompson, widow of Lincoln Brigade and Second World War veteran Bob Thompson (1915-1965) and Dr. Moisès Broggi, the Catalan physician who headed up the...
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Our friends from the UK write: We are sad to report the sudden death of David Lomon, the last known survivor in Britain of the more than 2,500 volunteers from the British Isles who joined the International Brigades. He died this morning (21 December 2012), aged 94, after being taken to hospital overnight. David...
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Spanish Civil War veteran Jim Benét, who passed away earlier this week, “drank several times alongside writer Ernest Hemingway,” Brett Wilkison writes for the Press Democrat: He forged his own path as a respected newspaper and TV reporter in the Bay Area, covering the Free Speech movement on the UC Berkeley campus in the...
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We just received the sad news that Jim Benét, journalist and veteran of the Abraham Lincoln Brigade, passed away this weekend in Santa Rosa, California. This past August he was interviewed for Public Radio International; in July, he spoke with Nadya Williams for a piece in the Volunteer.
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Sad news from Princeton’s Institute of Advanced Study: Albert Hirschman, German-born brilliant scholar and veteran of the Spanish Civil War, passed away at the age of 97. From the IAS website: Renowned social scientist Albert O. Hirschman, whose highly influential work in economics and politics in developing countries has had a profound impact on economic...
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Victor Grossman in Berlin writes to report sad news: the death, earlier this month, of German IB veteran Adolphe Low, who was granted French citizenship in 1945 and remained in France. He was the last of the German International Brigade veterans. Adolphe Low was born as Adolf Löw in Cottbus, south of Berlin, in...
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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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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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