Sir Geoffrey Cox, the New Zealand journalist who covered the Spanish Civil War (see, among other places, Paul Preston's We Saw Spain Die, reviewed here), is featured this week at New Zealand History Online.
Read more »
Agence France-Presse has come out with a piece on the ten-year anniversary of the Association for the Recovery of Historical Memory:
Over the past 10 years, the association has opened some 150 mass graves and exhumed around 1,500 corpses in its quest for truth, which is emerging just as slowly,...
Read more »
Bethune Imagined, a play based on the life of Norman Bethune, the Canadian physician whose innovations in blood transfusion techniques during the Spanish Civil War were documented in the film Heart of Spain (Herbert Kline, 1937), has opened to mixed reviews:
When the world remembers Canadian icon Norman Bethune, it...
Read more »
Patti Smith, who last month performed in an ALBA benefit event alongside Pete Seeger and Guy Davis, has won the National Book Award with her memoir Just Kids, the BBC reports.
Read more »
The author of the acclaimed SCW novel Winter in Madrid (reviewed earlier in The Volunteer) speaks with The Guardian's Sarah Crown:
for Sansom, the novel was, and is, a personal endeavour. Studying the period, he was "appalled – by the way the Spanish people were treated by Franco's fascists, the...
Read more »
The Halifax Evening Courier reports that the memorial plaque commemorating Ralph Fox, who died in late 1936 fighting in the International Brigades, has been moved. More here.
Read more »
Público today featured the Spanish Civil War Memory Project developed by Luis Martín-Cabrera at the University of California, San Diego, which for the past three years has been collecting and making available online interviews with those who experienced the Civil War and Francoist repression (catalog of videos here). Among the project's...
Read more »
A long piece by Alasdair Fotheringham in today's Independent:
Today, 71 years after the Spanish civil war ended, 35 years after Franco's death, and four years after a law was passed authorising exhumation of the war's mass graves, barely 10 per cent of the estimated 2,052 sites have been...
Read more »
Complementing the well-known collection of Spanish Civil War posters at the University of California, San Diego, and ALBA's own online posters, the University of Barcelona's Memòria Digital de Catalunya, a vast online repository, contains the digital images of more than 1,100 posters and pamphlets of the Spanish Civil War. Click...
Read more »
In a curious game of judicial ping-pong, a Madrid judge has sent an important case back to the National Criminal Court, specifically to the department that was led by Judge Baltasar Garzón before his controversial suspension, and which is now headed by Judge Pablo Ruz, El País reports. The case, which involves the...
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.
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 »
Peter Verbergh translated this article from CeSoir describing the arrest of the Dallet-Nelson Group. “The Interrogation of the Passengers of the Sans-Pareil”, CeSoir, March 29, 1937 (From our Special Correspondent) Perpignan March 28 (By Telephone) Yesterday morning around 10am, The Coast Guard Vessel Cebère docked in the port of Port-Vendres alongside the torpedo boat...
Read more »
Only five veterans of the Spanish Civil War are known to be buried in Virginia outside of Arlington National Cemetery: two in Richmond, two in Norfolk, and one in Big Stone Gap. ALB Tribute visited the graves of Harry Edward Farris and Thomas Moore in Richmond as well as Manuel Lizarrago and Crawford Morgan...
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