The Independent sent a reporter on the annual Jarama walk, in which veterans, family members and sympathizers commemorate the first major battle action the International Brigades saw in Spain. (Meanwhile, efforts continue to locate the graves of the thousands of soldiers who died during the bloody battle.) Stephen Kelly's long piece appears...
Read more »
Yesterday's San José Mercury News features an obituary of Hank Rubin, the Lincoln vet and well-known Bay Area food critic who passed away in February:
Long before Chez Panisse was born, before Berkeley's Schoolyard Garden was sown, and healthy, wholesome, local food became such bywords, there was the Pot Luck, a small Berkeley...
Read more »
Manus O'Riordan, Ireland Secretary of the International Brigade Memorial Trust, writes to let us know that the Irish language TV channel TG4 has placed temporarily back online the song “Roll Away the Stone” which he sang on May Day 2009 at the funeral of Jack James Larkin Jones, President of the...
Read more »
The conflict in Libya has stirred up memories of, and analogies with, the Spanish Civil War. Earlier this month, Australian foreign minister Kevin Rudd warned of aerial bombing campaigns, stating that "we should never forget Guernica." Later, Tony Karon in Time magazine considered to what extent 2011 Libya is comparable to 1936 Spain:
The Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore has just uploaded a 105-minute video recording of a visit by Lincoln vet Lou Gordon to the Spanish class of Professor Noël Valis (now at Yale). Watch the video here.
Read more »
At the presentation yesterday of The Power of Reason, the book and DVD based on his interview with novelist Manuel Rivas and Isabel Coixet's prize-winning documentary Listening to Judge Garzón, Baltasar Garzón said he fully expects to lose his trials in front of the Spanish Supreme Court. But, he added, "I have never moved...
Read more »
At the memorial gathering on March 6 in honor of Lincoln vet Nate Thornton, who passed away on January 2, poet and playwrite Angelina Llongueras read her poem in tribute of him:
Read more »
Medea Benjamin and Charles Davis write in Common Dreams on the case of Bradley Manning--the army intelligence office who allegedly leaked tens of thousands of State Department cables to the whistle-blowing website WikiLeaks, exposing cover-ups of potential war crimes and other irregularities:
The lesson is clear, and soldiers take note: You're better off...
Read more »
Anna Grau, New York correspondent to the Spanish newspaper ABC, has just published a moving tribute to Maynard Goldstein, the last surviving Lincoln veteran to fight in the battle of Jarama, who passed away in January:
It was inhumanely cold in New York some weeks ago when I went out into the...
Read more »
After a decade of research, Prof. Paul Preston at the London School of Economics has just finished writing The Spanish Holocaust, which tallies, narrates, and explains the tremendous cost in human lives and suffering of the Spanish Civil War and its aftermath. The book, which has already won a prize, will be out...
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
sign up to receive email updates from ALBA. Support ALBA through a tax-deductible gift! To inquire about a donation, please contact the ALBA office at info@alba-valb.org or 212-674-5398.
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...
Read more »
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...
Read more »
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...
Read more »
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,...
Read more »
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...
Read more »
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...
Read more »
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...
Read more »
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...
Read more »
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...
Read more »
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...
Read more »
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
Search the Database