Ten years after founding the Association for the Recovery of Historical Memory (ARMH), Emilio Silva estimates that there are still more than 1,800 mass graves to exhume in Spain, El País reports. The Spanish government will soon publish an online map detailing their exact locations. Since 2006, a year before the approval of...
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On Saturday, October 16th, Pete Seeger, Patti Smith, and Guy Davis performed at an unforgettable fundraising event for ALBA, "Songs for the Cause: Music, Education, and Activism," sponsored by the Puffin Foundation and hosted at the Museum of the City of New York (MCNY). (See photos by Alan Entin here.)...
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In a press release coinciding with the twelfth anniversary of Judge Garzón's request for detention of Augusto Pinochet (1998) and the second anniversary of his brief (auto) opening an investigation into Francoist crimes against humanity, the Spanish section of Amnesty International has decried Spain's increasingly lackluster record in the fight against impunity,...
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The Brazilian Bar Association (Ordem dos Advogados do Brasil) has launched a solidarity campaign on behalf of the embattled Spanish judge Baltasar Garzón, who has been suspended from his duties at Spain's National Criminal Court in the wake of his attempt to open an investigations of crimes against humanity committed during the Civil...
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The Spanish Senate approved a proposal to enforce the Law of Historical Memory by converting the Valley of the Fallen monument into a site which will recognize the victims of the Civil War and Franco’s dictatorship, reports Natalia Junquera, for El País .
The progressive coalition, Entesa Catalana del Progrès, (made up of...
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Spanish Supreme Court Justice Manuel Marchena, who is prosecuting Judge Baltasar Garzón for alleged irregularities related to courses taught at New York University in a program cosponsored by some Spanish banks and corporations, has himself frequently given talks and classes paid for by some 25 different corporate sponsorships, Público reveals. Moreover, neither Marchena...
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Robert Llopis sends along the program for the Fifth Tribute Week to the International Brigades, which will be celebrated in Benissa (País Valencià) from October 29 to November 7, 2010.
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Today, the day Spain commemorates its conquest of Latin America (Día de la Hispanidad), known as Columbus Day in the U.S., the Spanish Minister of Justice spoke on Spanish national public television to defend the research going on at the Valley of the Fallen, and denied that any mass graves are being...
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The renowned, boundary-pushing Brossa String Quartet (Brossa Quartet de Corda) has just released a new CD with songs from the International Brigades, including "Si me quieres escribir," "Los cuatro generales," "Viva la Quince Brigada," and "Tango del Camp d'Argelers." The album can be bought here. See here for a video of...
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Next week the Association for the Recovery of Historical Memory (Asociación para la Recuperación de la Memoria Histórica, ARMH), founded and led by Emilio Silva, will be celebrating the tenth anniversary of its first exhumation of a mass grave, which took place on October 23-24, 2000 in Priaranza del Bierzo (León), Público
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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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