At the presentation yesterday of The Power of Reason, the book and DVD based on his interview with novelist Manuel Rivas and Isabel Coixet's prize-winning documentary Listening to Judge Garzón, Baltasar Garzón said he fully expects to lose his trials in front of the Spanish Supreme Court. But, he added, "I have never moved...
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At the memorial gathering on March 6 in honor of Lincoln vet Nate Thornton, who passed away on January 2, poet and playwrite Angelina Llongueras read her poem in tribute of him:
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Medea Benjamin and Charles Davis write in Common Dreams on the case of Bradley Manning--the army intelligence office who allegedly leaked tens of thousands of State Department cables to the whistle-blowing website WikiLeaks, exposing cover-ups of potential war crimes and other irregularities:
The lesson is clear, and soldiers take note: You're better off...
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Anna Grau, New York correspondent to the Spanish newspaper ABC, has just published a moving tribute to Maynard Goldstein, the last surviving Lincoln veteran to fight in the battle of Jarama, who passed away in January:
It was inhumanely cold in New York some weeks ago when I went out into the...
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The Club Julio A. Mella in Spanish Harlem was named after the founder of Cuba’s Communist party. The exhibition “Nueva York: 1613 – 1945” (New-York Historical Society and Museo del Barrio), featured the original of this painting of that club by Henry Glintenkamp, as part of the exhibition’s final section. In this closing sequence...
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After a decade of research, Prof. Paul Preston at the London School of Economics has just finished writing The Spanish Holocaust, which tallies, narrates, and explains the tremendous cost in human lives and suffering of the Spanish Civil War and its aftermath. The book, which has already won a prize, will be out...
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As I mentioned in an earlier post, the curators of the museum show “Nueva York: 1613 – 1945” (New-York Historical Society, Museo del Barrio) used the Spanish Civil War in New York as a kind of provisional endpoint for the exhibition’s sweeping narrative about Spanish-speakers in Gotham. The exhibition showed how the war brought...
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Goodbye Barcelona, a musical by Karl Lewkowicz and Judith Johnson about the International Brigades, is scheduled to open for a four-week run in London in November. A fund-raising reading of songs from the show was held in London on Friday 4 March; speakers included historian Paul Preston, novelist Victoria Hislop and Lola Ruiz...
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Today in the Chronicle, Bob Egelko reviews the ramifications of the WikiLeaks revelations regarding US pressure on foreign governments and judiciaries to block legal investigation of US officials, including the Guantánamo torture case opened by Baltasar Garzón:
The documents also quoted U.S. diplomats as urging Spain to transfer the case from Judge...
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ChristieBooks has just posted an English translation of Julián Casanova's op-ed in El País from last month, comparing Chile to Spain:
Pinochet learned a lot from Franco. ... The legacy of the crimes of the two dictatorships was tackled very differently in the two countries. In Spain, in the wake...
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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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New information about the New Zealand-born Spanish Civil War surgeon Doug Jolly (1904-1983) has emerged following the recent publication of his biography, Frontline Surgeon.
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On September 24, 1945, Dr. Barsky delivered this speech during the Spanish Refugee Appeal rally at Madison Square Garden.
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In 1944, Barsky wrote A Surgeon Goes to War, an 18-chapter memoir of his time in Spain, which was never published but can be consulted at NYU’s Tamiment Library. This is the first chapter.
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Self-effacing and shy though he was, Dr. Edward Barsky’s experience in Spain made him an outspoken activist, tireless organizer, innovative frontline surgeon, and political prisoner. “Eddie is a saint,” Hemingway wrote. “That’s where we put our saints in this country—in jail.”
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The Volunteer is thrilled to honor Dr. Barsky on the fiftieth anniversary of his death.
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For Edward Barsky, political and humanitarian activism were two sides of the same coin. Those who persecuted him begged to differ.
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The time she spent in civil-war Spain loomed large in the life of Martha Gellhorn, the St. Louis-born war journalist. “The truth is that Martha could not stop thinking, feeling, and writing about her Spanish experiences.” “Objectivity bullshit.” That’s what Martha Gellhorn (1908-1998) called the journalism of her day. Her letters to personalities like...
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Among the thousands of Jewish volunteers who joined the International Brigades were many descendants of the Sephardim. What was it like for them to “return” to Spain? Three case studies: Lini de Vries, César Covo, and Samuel Nahman, aka Manny Harriman.
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How the 22-year-old Jewish American dancer Janet Riesenfeld performed flamenco to help raise money for the Second Republic under fascist attack.
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Why did Jawaharlal Nehru, future prime minister of India, visit civil-war Spain in 1938? As it turned out, the triangular relationship between Britain, Spain, and India had deep cultural and geopolitical implications.
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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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