Joining forces with ProPublica, Ira Glass's This American Life recently featured Fredy Peccerelli and Kate Doyle, winners of the 2012 ALBA/Puffin Award for Human Rights Activism, in an extensive and gripping piece of reportage focusing on the case of Dos Erres. Dos Erres is a remote farming town in rural Guatemala were more...
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"How do you bring tolerance and democracy to a country in which a murderous military, which over the years killed some two hundred thousand of its own citizens, is effectively still in power?," the New Yorker's Peter Canby asks in a piece about Fredy Peccerelli and Kate Doyle, winners of the 2012 ALBA/Puffin...
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Yvonne Scholten, biographer of the Dutch miliciana Fanny Schoonheyt, are interested in obtaining information on the Dutch Lincoln Brigade volunteer Bart van der Schelling. He was admired as a baritone–he recorded Songs of the Spanish Civil War, a number of them with Pete Seeger. In later life he acquired a reputation as a primitive painter. He and...
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John Hanc tells the moving story of a nephew discovering the story of his uncle, Louis Stoloff, who left his home on the Lower East Side to die fighting fascism in Spain:
When Stoloff left New York City, he was 27, the median age of the 2,800 Americans who went to fight....
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On Start the Week Andrew Marr discusses Spain’s economic crisis, and the legacy of Franco. In the last decade Spain has begun to unearth some of the mass graves of the hundreds of thousands of people who were killed in the 1930s by both sides in the civil war. Paul Preston discusses what he...
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Richard Bermack and Jeannette Ferrary have shared their photographs of the 2012 ALBA celebration in the San Francisco Bay Area. See a slideshow here.
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David Schwittek has just put up the 15-minute video summary of the ALBA's 2012 New York City celebration, held on May 13, including the ceremony for the 2012 ALBA/Puffin Award for Human Rights Activism, given to Kate Doyle and Fredy Peccerelli. Watch the video here:
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Alan Warren sends along an announcement about the forthcoming 75th anniversary of the Battles of Quinto and Belchite:
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On Wednesday 30th May 2012 there will be a commemoration at Malgrat de Mar, north of Barcelona to commemorate the 75th anniversary of the sinking of the Ciudad de Barcelona. Four relatives of survivors will be attending and all are welcome. The event will start at Malgrat de Mar ajuntament at 0900 and...
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Investigations continue into the scandal of thousands of stolen and illegally adopted Spanish newborns, a practice that begun during the Franco years but continued well into the democratic period. See last week's CBS item here; previous Volunteer coverage here.
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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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