Another hurdle has been cleared in the fight against impunity in Guatemala, in which the winners of this year's ALBA/Puffin Human Rights Award have played a seminal role. This morning the Associated Press reports:
A former U.S.-backed dictator who presided over one of the bloodiest periods of Guatemala’s civil war has no...
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Peter N. Carroll, ALBA's chair emeritus, will give the annual Len Crome lecture organized by our British friends in the International Brigade Memorial Trust this coming Saturday, March 3, at 2:30pm, at London's Imperial War Museum. Peter will speak on "“The Spanish Civil War in the 21st Century: From Guernica to Human Rights."...
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Judge Baltasar Garzón, whose career was terminated recently by the Spanish Supreme Court, received a standing ovation from Argentina's Congress as President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner thanked him, on behalf of "millions of Argentines," for his groundbreaking work in defense of human rights (video here.) Garzón's disbarment, President Kirchner said, is "an offense...
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Within a couple of days' time, the last surviving German and Scottish volunteers of the Spanish Civil War, Fritz Teppich and Thomas Watters, passed away. Victor Grossman sends us a note on Teppich (below); an obit from Neues Deutschland is here (in German). A BBC obit for Watters is here; a brief...
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In an ostensible attempt to save face, the Spanish Supreme Court absolved Judge Baltasar Garzón yesterday from "prevarication," or knowingly making a decision against the law, in relation to Garzón's opening of an investigation into crimes against humanity committed by the Franco regime during and after the Spanish Civil War (NYTimes, Guardian)....
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ALBA's James D. Fernández is interviewed by the Spanish press about the baffling court case around Garzón's stay as holder of NYU's King Juan Carlos I Chair. The case was eventually closed. Read the interview here (in Spanish).
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The online magazine FronteraD just published a polemical review (in Spanish) by me of a David Rieff's polemical book Against Remembrance. Read it here.
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James D. Fernández, vice-chair of ALBA and professor of Spanish at NYU, has an op-ed in today's El País commenting on some of the more Kafkaesque chapters of the witch-hunt against Judge Garzón--and the collateral damage inflicted on those who found themselves in the crossfire. Read the piece here.
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Rickard Jorgensen, who has generously supported the development of the Abraham Lincoln Brigade collection at NYU's Tamiment library, writes:
After much work by Mike Nash, Gail Malmgreen, Elizabeth Compa, Evan Daniel, Laura Helton, Julie Kessle, Porsche Martin and Jessica Weglein, the "Randall: Fifteenth International Brigade Photograph Collection" and the "Photograph International Brigades...
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The Basque city of Gernika will be commemorating the 75th anniversary of the April 26, 1937 bombing during the Spanish Civil War with a series of events starting this month. See the full program here (pdf).
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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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