With the twentieth ratification, the UN Convention against Enforced Disappearance took effect on December 23. The convention defines an enforced disappearance as occurring when authorities deprive an individual of liberty and then refuse to provide information regarding the person's fate or whereabouts. Human Rights Watch welcomed the news:
The...
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Alexei Barrionuevo reports in the New York Times:
Jorge Videla, a former Argentine dictator, was sentenced to life in prison on Wednesday in the murder of 31 political prisoners who were killed after the 1976 coup that swept him into power. Mr. Videla, 85, is considered to have...
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The autonous government of Madrid has initiated an investigation of the theft of newborn babies who were then given up for adoption, a practice reported to have occurred in the Franco years, El País reports. The parents were told their child had died. The preliminary investigation, which focuses on the 1960s, is meant...
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The most recent issue of the journal History of Psychiatry features an article by Olga Villasante on "War Neurosis during the Spanish Civil War," focusing on the work of IB-member Gregorio Bermann (1894–1972), who "organized the frontline Neuropsychiatric Service at the Hospital de Chamartín de La Rosa (Madrid). Bermann wrote about his personal experience in the...
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This coming January, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art is screening a series of Spanish Civil War films by Henri Cartier-Bresson and others: a first program on Jan. 20th, including Victoire de la vie (Cartier-Bresson and Herbert Kline, 1937, 47 min.) and L'Espagne vivra (Henri Cartier-Bresson, 1938, 44 min.), and a second program...
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They're done. After the much-publicized atttempt a year ago to locate the body of the poet Federico García Lorca, who was assassinated in August 1937, the autonomous government of Andalusia has declared that no new searches will be undertaken, El País reports. Officially the 70,000 euro search project aimed to recover the bodies...
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Stacey Guill, writing in the Hemingway Review, revisits Joris Ivens' pathbreaking documentary The Spanish Earth:
Ivens acknowledged the "artistic" or creative element to Hemingway's contributions during this period, recalling that Hemingway helped with "the general strategy of the film. He showed a quick comprehension and understanding of the documentary film...
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GREX, a research group at the Université de Paris Ouest-Nanterre, is looking for texts and testimonies from former members of the International Brigades who passed through the French and North-African internment camps between 1939 and 1944, with the idea of compiling an exhaustive inventory of camp testimonies. See the group's work in progress here.
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Jeffrey R. Ryan, a history teacher from Massachusetts, has just published A Volcano Heard Afar (Dorrance Publishing Co.), a novel whose protagonist is a US volunteer in Spain who, upon his return, becomes a victim of McCarthyism.
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The Center for Constitutional Rights reports:
two leading human rights groups filed papers urging a Spanish judge to open a criminal investigation into the role of former Bush administration officials, including torture memo authors John Yoo and Jay Bybee, for their part in creating a legal framework...
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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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