Michael Kerrigan reviews ALBA Board member Antonio Muñoz Molina's ambitious Civil War novel, La noche de los tiempos, for the Times Literary Supplement (pdf):
Written with lyric intensity and epic scope, La noche de los tiempos engages as only a novel can with the everyday stuff...
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Guénaël Mettraux writes an incisive op-ed for the International Herald Tribune :
The reaction to Garzón’s latest investigative efforts and the Brazilian Supreme Court’s recent upholding of a law of amnesty that applies to the crimes of Brazil’s military dictatorship are powerful reminders that states can still decide what to do with...
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The History News Network reports on the "Picasso: Peace and Freedom" exhibit at the Tate in Liverpool. The show's pièce de resistance is the painting The Charnel House, on display in the UK for the first time in fifty years:
The Charnel House was based on a short...
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"There is international support for the view that a national prosecutor or investigating judge is entitled to seek to go behind a national amnesty in respect of international crimes in his or her own country," nine prominent international law scholars write in a letter published today in The Guardian:
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The trial of Baltasar Garzón has revealed that the Spanish courts have become politicized to a worrisome extent, Sinikka Tarvainen writes in the Earth Times:
For more than a decade, judges have increasingly come under the influence of politicians, many Spanish analysts say, concerned that such a situation is undermining...
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Erna Paris reflects in The Globe and Mail on President Obama's recent renunciation of the Bush national security doctrine and notes an increasing impact of the work done by the International Criminal Court, among other places in Spain:
Although the ICC is still a toddler in institutional terms,...
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The Spanish newspaper Público is publishing a series of stories of victims of Francoist repression--stories that, it says, the Spanish courts are refusing to hear. In November 2008, a month after his controversial October 2008 brief indicting the Franco regime for crimes against humanity, judge Baltasar Garzón disqualified himself from the case (se inhibió), passing...
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Picasso was no friend of Franco--or was he? "Although his political sympathies are known to have lain with the hard left, it turns out he was not above breaking bread with Franco's regime.", Vanessa Thorpe reports in today's Guardian on new information discovered by Picasso experts John Richardson and Gijs van Hensbergen:
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Yesterday the French Minister of Culture , Frederic Mitterrand, revealed a statue in honor of the Dutch documentary filmmaker Joris Ivens, whose The Spanish Earth (1937) is one of the best known documentaries of the Spanish Civil War. The sculpture, 36 feet high, is the work of Irish artist Bryan McCormack. The Joris Ivens Foundation reports:
Carl Geiser, a key political leader in the Abraham Lincoln Brigade and author of a pioneering book,Prisoners of the Good Fight, died November 28 in Corvallis, Oregon. View images of the memorial service here.
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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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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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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...
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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...
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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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