Alan Warren writes: Last week I was examining letters written by Welsh Brigader Alwyn Skinner in the Richard Burton archives at Swansea University. I made a note of one passage written on August 14th 1937 when Alwyn was based at Tarazona de la Mancha. He writes the following:
One night this week...
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AFP reports:
Spain's attorney general's office on Tuesday rejected a demand that it open a national probe into allegations that newborn babies were stolen from their mothers and sold to other families for decades under a policy approved by Franco's dictatorship. ... "The attorney general's office refused to open an inquiry at...
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The memorial for Nate Thornton, Veteran of the Abraham Lincoln Brigade, who died on January 2, 2011 will take place on Sunday, March 6 at 2:00 pm
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Donna Brennan and Arya F. Jenkins, of AllReel Media, have kindly shared a 10-minute video compilation of "Songs for the Cause," the benefit concert held this past October 16 at the Museum of the City of New York, with Pete Seeger, Patti Smith, and Guy Davis. The compilation includes selections of the speeches given by...
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In its on-going coverage of the State Department cables made available by Wikileaks, El País has published a report from the US ambassador in Santiago sent after the death in 2006 of dictator Augusto Pinochet, whose heading made a tongue-in-cheek reference to Chevy Chase's famous running gag on Saturday Night Live's Weekend Update...
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The ALBA website features several full-fledged thematic introductions and lesson plans, such as this unit on Jewish volunteers in the Spanish Civil War, prepared by Peter N. Carroll, Fraser M. Ottanelli and Rajel Ibañes Sperber:
Jewish men and women accounted for over one fourth of all international volunteers and played a prominent...
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The AP's Daniel Woolls reports:
A Spanish association of people searching for lost children or parents filed a petition Thursday with the attorney general to investigate allegations that newborns were stolen from their mothers and sold to other families for decades, including as recently as the mid-1990s. The petition was signed by around...
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Pascale Bonnefoy reports for the NY Times:
A Chilean judge has opened the first official investigation into the death of former President Salvador Allende, the democratically elected Socialist who died during the 1973 military coup led by Gen. Augusto Pinochet. Mr. Allende, 65,...
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About a third of the 2,800 volunteers who left from the United States to help defend the Spanish Republic died in Spain. Of the survivors, many went on to fight fascism during World War II in the U.S. Armed Forces. An extensive selection of their letters home was published in 2006 as The...
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The Asociación de Amigos de las Brigadas Internacionales (AABI) has been gathering photographs of International Brigade monuments worldwide, from London, Amsterdam, and San Francisco to Belfast, Seattle, and Stockholm. Click here for an overview; send information on any missing monuments to the AABI at aabi@brigadasinternacionales.org
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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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