Peter Wong reviews Army of Crime, a new film on the French Resistance during WWII, which is running this coming week at the San Francisco Sundance Kabuki:
A riveting political thriller, Robert Guediguian’s historical drama “Army of Crime” spices the summer filmgoing season with an enthralling ensemble portrait of heroic...
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Bernard Knox, renowned classicist and Spanish Civil War veteran, died this week, age 95. From the New York Times obit:
An American born and raised in Britain, Bernard Knox led a life as richly textured as the classics he interpreted for modern readers. After studying classics at Cambridge, he fought with...
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In an op-ed for today's issue of Público, the writer Félix Población, inspired by a resolution adopted in June by the Friends and Family of the Abraham Lincoln Brigade (FFALB), argues it is high time that Madrid names a street after Oliver Law, the Brigade's African American commander, who died in the summer...
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Read British journalist David Eade's article on recent revelations about illicit adoptions of babies by Francoist families:
In wider Spain during the Franco era it has been established that children were indeed taken from their parents without their knowledge and passed on to an adoptive family. It is reported Judge Baltasar...
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An anonymous short story just posted on the Experience Project: He was from London and unemployed in the mid 1930’s and feeling ever more bolshevik by the day – so, he signed up to go to Spain and fight Franco and Hitler – and that Mussolini person. … My grandfather worked in an engineering...
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Ronan Bennett, writing in the Guardian to lament the demise of the UK Film Council, fondly recalls a recent documentary project based on the memoirs of Stuart Christie, the legendary Anarchist bookseller (with the world's best SCW film website), who in 1963 helped conspire to kill the victor of the...
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Gilberto Bosques (1892-1995), the Mexican diplomat who saved thousands of lives of anti-fascist European refugees in the wake of the Spanish Civil War and the outbreak of World War II, has been honored with the opening of his own museum in Puebla, La Jornada reports. Mexican president Lázaro Cárdenas appointed Bosques consul to...
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The Spanish labor party (PSOE) has denounced the removal of plaques commemorating the victims of executions from the walls of the cemetery of Granada, Europa Press reports. The plaques have been removed by the Granada city government, run by the conservative Partido Popular (PP), The plaques had been put up a couple of days earlier, at...
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In an interview with a Spanish gossip magazine, Louis de Bourbon, the pretender to the French throne, defends the legacy of Francisco Franco, who also happens to be his great-grandfather, Expatica reports. More here (in Spanish).
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Yesterday marked the successful conclusion of ALBA’s second week-long high-school teachers institute in Tampa, Florida, led by Professors Fraser Ottanelli, Peter Carroll, and Roberto Alicea. (Brochure here.) Sherman Dorn, who has lent his expertise on state standards to help out with the institute, reflects on his experience in his blog: We’ve had some wonderful...
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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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