Goodbye Barcelona, a musical by Karl Lewkowicz and Judith Johnson about the International Brigades, is scheduled to open for a four-week run in London in November. A fund-raising reading of songs from the show was held in London on Friday 4 March; speakers included historian Paul Preston, novelist Victoria Hislop and Lola Ruiz...
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Today in the Chronicle, Bob Egelko reviews the ramifications of the WikiLeaks revelations regarding US pressure on foreign governments and judiciaries to block legal investigation of US officials, including the Guantánamo torture case opened by Baltasar Garzón:
The documents also quoted U.S. diplomats as urging Spain to transfer the case from Judge...
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ChristieBooks has just posted an English translation of Julián Casanova's op-ed in El País from last month, comparing Chile to Spain:
Pinochet learned a lot from Franco. ... The legacy of the crimes of the two dictatorships was tackled very differently in the two countries. In Spain, in the wake...
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"Don't mess with Wisconsin," Christopher Hitchens tells his Vanity Fair readers this week, recalling the state's solid progressive tradition:
To make a stop in Madison, either as author or speaker or both, used to be no ordinary part of a radical tour. You bumped up against a tradition that went back a...
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As the chief prosecutor of the International Criminal Court, Luis Moreno Ocampo, has announced an investigation of Qaddafi and his circle for possible crimes against humanity, El País reports that judge Baltasar Garzón, who has been working at the ICC since his suspension from Spain's criminal court last May, will serve as advisor...
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Calling for a no-fly zone over Libya, Australian Foreign Minister Kevin Rudd said in a speech to the Human Rights Council in Geneva that "we should never forget Guernica," The Australian reports. "Guernica is known throughout the world for the bombing of the civilian population. We have seen evidence of that in Libya....
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This week's New York Times Magazine features an 8.300-word piece by Jennifer Egan on Lori Berenson, the US woman who served 15 years in a Peruvian prison for abetting a left-wing terrorist plot in Perú:
In 1980, when Lori was 11, three American nuns were murdered in El Salvador. “That stayed...
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An hour-long BBC radio program broadcast this past Sunday--with several new and many archival interviews, and the participation of Richard Baxell and Paul Preston-- can now be listened to online, here.
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Next week, March 8-10, the Universidad Complutense in Madrid will feature a three-day event (program here in pdf) on the International Brigades, organized by the AABI (Asociación de Amigos de las Brigadas Internacionales) and the Facultad de Bellas Artes, with the goal of exploring the idea of an IB memorial on the university...
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Jorge Videla and Reynaldo Bignone, former military leaders of Argentina, are being accused of overseeing the systematic theft of babies from political prisoners. Their trial has opened, the BBC reports:
More than 100 children are known to have been given for adoption to military or police couples. The long-awaited trial,...
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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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