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
Yesterday the Telediario of Spanish national television covered La Colonia: Spanish Immigrants in New York, 1898-1945,a photography exhibit curated by ALBA Board member James D. Fernández, and co-sponsored by ALBA. The segment can be viewed here(beginning at the 01:01:18 mark.) The show has already received a good amount of coverage in the Spanish media. More video interviews here.
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The Spanish Civil War Memory Project of the University of California at San Diego--whose library hosts one of the world's largest collections on the subject--has posted a first video with an introduction and victims' testimonies (in Spanish).
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Photographer Peter Marshall pays tribute to the recently deceased SCW vet.
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EITB reports:
This week's New Yorker's Goings On section includes the announcement of the Puffin-hosted benefit performance this coming Saturday October 16 by Pete Seeger, Patti Smith, and Guy Davis at the Museum of the City of New York. Order tickets here. Download the press release with all the details here.
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More than 112,000 descendants of Spanish Civil War exiles have requested and received Spanish citizenship, Europa Press reports, taking advantage of a provision to that effect included in the Law of Historical Memory that was adopted in December 2007.
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Professor Rafael Escudero has criticized the Spanish Attorney General (fiscal), Público reports, for misinterpreting the legal consequences of the Law of Historical Memory, which was adopted in December 2007, and which declares Francoist sentences "illegitimate," without going so far as to annul them altogether. As families of several prominent victims of Francoism--notably the poet...
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An oral history account of Åge Kjelsø, who served in the Thälmann Battalion and was arrested after the May 1937 events, published in Danish in the mid-1970s and recently translated:
From Albacete I went to the Andalucian front in southern Spain, and in the war of manoeuvre there we came...
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NYU student Melissa Howley blogs about her adventures in the Abraham Lincoln Brigade archival collection:
I looked through the Milton Wolff collection on this trip to the Tamiment Library. Immediately upon opening the box and scanning the folders I was drawn to the Hemingway Correspondence.
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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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