Marlene Sidaway from the International Brigade Memorial Trust writes with sad news (listen to Sam here):
We are very sorry to have to tell you that our much loved and respected Chairman, SAM LESSER (RUSSELL), has died at the age of 95.
Sam was a founding-member...
Read more »
From our friend Manus O'Riordan: On 29 September 2010, TG4--the Irish language TV station--showed (with English language subtitles) a new documentary on the Irish Socialist Republican leader James Connolly, who was the inspiration for the 15th International Brigade’s Connolly Column. Manus is interviewed briefly in the 10th minute of Part 1. This documentary will remain accessible...
Read more »
With the Abraham Lincoln Brigade in Spain, an 18-minute silent film by Henri Cartier-Bresson and Herbert Kline that was recently discovered in the ALBA archives (clip here) and is now on display at the International Center of Photography, will be screened on October 23 at 1:30pm as part of MoMA's...
Read more »
Impunity Watch at Syracuse University reports:
A representative from Spain told the UN Human Rights Council on Tuesday that they would not be investigating alleged war crimes committed during the Francisco Franco dictatorship in accordance with an amnesty law passed by the Spanish government in 1977. Mexico had called on...
Read more »
Some videos of interviews made by El País at the opening La Colonia: Spanish Immigrants in New York, 1898-1945, the stunning photography exhibit curated by ALBA Board member James D. Fernández and co-sponsored by ALBA, on display till the end of 2010 at the King Juan Carlos I of Spain Center in New York....
Read more »
La Colonia: Spanish Immigrants in New York, 1898-1945, the stunning photography exhibit curated by ALBA Board member James D. Fernández and co-sponsored by ALBA, which has been on show for a little over a week now at NYU's King Juan Carlos I of Spain Center, is generating a lot of media buzz in Spain,...
Read more »
On October 14 and 15, ALBA's Prof. Anthony Geist will be at Casa Aboy in San Juan to screen his documentary on the Lincoln Brigade, Souls Without Borders, and to open ALBA's traveling exhibit They Still Draw Pictures: Children's Art in Wartime from the Spanish Civil War to Kosovo. More information
Prize-winning graphic novelist Paco Roca has just released El ángel de la retirada (The Angel of the Retreat), EFE reports, a historical novel based on a script by the novelist Serguei Duonovetz set among second-generation exiles in post-war France. The main character, Victoria Valiente, has to decide whether or not to return to...
Read more »
October 16 is the date, the Museum of the City of New York the place. Order tickets here. Download the press release with all the details here.
Read more »
Among the buzz-generating new films at the San Sebastián festival last week was the Catalan film Pa negre (Black Bread), by Agustí Villaronga (1953), set right after the Civil War. Indiewire reports:
“Bread” has one of the most jaw-dropping prologues in recent memory, in which a horse-drawn cart is pushed off...
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