They're done. After the much-publicized atttempt a year ago to locate the body of the poet Federico García Lorca, who was assassinated in August 1937, the autonomous government of Andalusia has declared that no new searches will be undertaken, El País reports. Officially the 70,000 euro search project aimed to recover the bodies...
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Stacey Guill, writing in the Hemingway Review, revisits Joris Ivens' pathbreaking documentary The Spanish Earth:
Ivens acknowledged the "artistic" or creative element to Hemingway's contributions during this period, recalling that Hemingway helped with "the general strategy of the film. He showed a quick comprehension and understanding of the documentary film...
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GREX, a research group at the Université de Paris Ouest-Nanterre, is looking for texts and testimonies from former members of the International Brigades who passed through the French and North-African internment camps between 1939 and 1944, with the idea of compiling an exhaustive inventory of camp testimonies. See the group's work in progress here.
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Jeffrey R. Ryan, a history teacher from Massachusetts, has just published A Volcano Heard Afar (Dorrance Publishing Co.), a novel whose protagonist is a US volunteer in Spain who, upon his return, becomes a victim of McCarthyism.
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The Center for Constitutional Rights reports:
two leading human rights groups filed papers urging a Spanish judge to open a criminal investigation into the role of former Bush administration officials, including torture memo authors John Yoo and Jay Bybee, for their part in creating a legal framework...
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"Obama decided long ago to turn the page on the abuses and illegalities of the Bush administration," the Executive Director of the Center for Constitutional Rights states in a Huffington Post column on the revelations about US pressure on Spain's judiciary in relation to torture investigations;
The U.S. was particularly...
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The Telegraph reports:
The Palace of El Pardo, an old royal residence set in hunting grounds on the northeastern outskirts of Madrid, served as el Caudillo's home following his victory in the Spanish Civil War until his death in 1975. But guided tours around the palace will no longer include...
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At a massive celebration of the International Human Rights Day, with performances by Sting and others, Baltasar Garzón received the Azucena Villaflor award--named after one of the founders of the Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo--from Argentine President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner. See BBC coverage here, and footage here and here.
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Lee Kutnick, former secretary of the Friends of the Abraham Lincoln Brigade, passed away two weeks ago. From an obituary in the San Francisco Chronicle:
Lee worked tirelessly as a community and union organizer, devoting her life to making the world a better place for working people. She was Secretary...
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Robert Llopis reports on the inauguration of the "Parc Dels Internacionals," dedicated to the International Brigades, at Benissa this past October 30th as part of the Homage to the IB, in the presence of a representative of the City of Benissa, Irene Filip from the Dokumentationsarchiv des österreichischen Widerstandes (Archive of the Austrian Resistance,...
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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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Although this text by Ivens is little known—and has never been translated before—it offers an eye-opening reflection on the power of his filmmaking.
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Antifascism has long been synonymous with American values. In 1934, student activists at New York’s City College arguably understood this better than many do today.
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After the Nazis occupied the Netherlands, the Seegers family did not hesitate to join the resistance. They had experience fighting fascism: their son Piet had fought for the Spanish Republic. When Tom King started digging into his family history seventy years later, he fell from one surprise into the other.
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Tina Modotti’s short life took her from Italy to North Beach and from there to Mexico, Berlin, Moscow, and civil-war Spain. Rightly known as a pathbreaking modernist photographer, she was also a radical activist. “Modotti spent the second part of her working life fighting for revolution.”
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Kirsten Weld has spent years studying Latin American dictatorships and the citizens who fight to hold them accountable. That experience has proven valuable in her current role as president of the AAUP chapter at Harvard, which, in March, sued the federal government for targeting students and faculty—and won.
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Targeted by the far right, Rutgers historian Mark Bray and his family went into exile in October. Speaking with The Volunteer from Madrid, he reflects on the current political situation. “Fascism shamelessly takes over institutions that, under liberal norms, are supposed to remain neutral.”
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I. In the Beginning Second child, Bernard, born March 1, 1915 Older brother, my father, Jacob (Jack), born June 3, 1912 Younger sister, Roslyn, born (June 1, 1922) disabled, hospitalized, died February 10, 1942 Their father, Abraham, died March 21,1930 Their mother, Nettie, died April 29, 1953 Bernie Brilliant student, graduated High...
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The title of this new occasional feature of The Volunteer is the Esperanto word for “archive.” In it, we will present, translate, and contextualize iconic non-English language documents related to the anti-fascist struggle in Spain.
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In recent years, citizen groups in Leipzig and Madrid have fought to preserve the buildings that were backdrops in two of Robert Capa’s best-known photographs. Their steadfast dedication has created two sites of historical memory whose significance extends far beyond Capa’s original images.
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On November 8, 1937, Salaria Kea, a 26-year-old African American nurse from Ohio, had been in Spain for seven months and one day. The country was in disarray. Half its territory was controlled by fascist rebels. Cities were being bombed, and civilians were killed by the thousands. Thousands more were forcibly displaced. But Kea...
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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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