Under the title History, Memory, Cinema, the Harvard Film Archive is screening a series of documentaries by Chilean filmmaker Patricio Guzmán this month (Feb. 11-21):
Few filmmakers have understood the tremendous potential of cinema to shape historical consciousness as perspicaciously and courageously as Chilean documentarian Patricio Guzmán (b. 1941). In...
Read more »
The ArtDaily reports:
Work begins this week to add over 5 million digital objects, ranging from Spanish civil war photographs and handwritten letters from philosopher Immanuel Kant, to Europeana from 19 of Europe’s leading research and university libraries.
More here.This year's Portland International Film Festival (February 10-26) features several Spanish Civil War-inspired movies, including Alex de la Iglesia's The Last Circus (Balada triste de trompeta), Agustí Villaronga's Black Bread (Pa negre), and Oriol Porta's A War in Hollywood (Hollywood vs. Franco). More details here.
Read more »
The Iranian Press TV today features an item on the ongoing exhumations of mass graves in Spain. Includes 2:30 minute video.
After nearly four decades ... the Spanish government ratified a law authorizing exhumation of the war's mass graves. Since that time, however, a mere ten percent of the burials...
Read more »
Anne Chisholm, in this Sunday's Telegraph, and Michael Eaude, in the Independent, review Javier Cercas' Anatomy of a Moment, a prize-winning fictionalized history of the failed February 1981 coup:
The Anatomy of a Moment is extensively researched, rigorous with the facts. It is not only history, though, for where...
Read more »
A team of researchers directed by Luis Avial has been scanning the surroundings of the Jarama river--where the Lincoln Battalion faced its first bloody battle in February 1937--in search of the graves of fallen soldiers, La Razón reports. The researchers are confident they may well discover mass graves with the remains of British,...
Read more »
Ronald Fraser, author of the pathbreaking oral history Blood of Spain, reviews Julián Casanova's newly translated The Spanish Republic and Civil War (Cambridge, 2010) in the most recent issue of the New Left Review:
The belief that the Spanish Civil War can essentially be reduced to a struggle...
Read more »
Jim Jump sends us the new IBMT Newsletter with, as usual, a wealth of information: obits for Sam Lesser and Penny Feiwel, news on the Jubilee Gardens IB Memorial and a full overview of all UK memorials, information on the possible location of George Nathan's grave, an announcement of a new play on...
Read more »
ALBA and Veterans for Peace are proud to announce the Annual ALBA Bill Susman Lecture by Marjorie Cohn, editor of The United States and Torture: Interrogation, Incarceration, and Abuse (NYU Press, 2011), past president of the National Lawyers Guild, professor of law at the Thomas Jefferson School of Law, and author of three other books (see www.marjoriecohn.com): "Human...
Read more »
Alan Warren writes: Last week I was examining letters written by Welsh Brigader Alwyn Skinner in the Richard Burton archives at Swansea University. I made a note of one passage written on August 14th 1937 when Alwyn was based at Tarazona de la Mancha. He writes the following:
One night this week...
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