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...
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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.
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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...
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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.
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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...
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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...
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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...
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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...
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Today's El País features a five-minute video about the work of Emilio Silva and others, who over the past decade have been working on the "recovery of historical memory." Tomorrow El País will be publishing a larger piece to commemorate the ten-year anniversary of Silva's Association (ARMH). Click here for a
As the unforced confessions of former President George W. Bush about the use of torture by the U.S. government have given new urgency to calls for a judicial investigation and prosecution for war crimes (see for instance David Cole in this week's issue of the Nation, and the press release from Amnesty...
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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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The family of Paul Andrew Mooney (1910-1961) is searching for documentation to substantiate information he provided to his family about serving in the International Brigades. Paul Mooney was born and raised in Cincinnati, Ohio. He graduated from Hughes High School in 1929 and attended the University of Cincinnati in 1929, 1935 and 1936. In...
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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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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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