Marlene Sidaway from the International Brigade Memorial Trust writes with sad news (listen to Sam here):
We are very sorry to have to tell you that our much loved and respected Chairman, SAM LESSER (RUSSELL), has died at the age of 95.
Sam was a founding-member...
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From our friend Manus O'Riordan: On 29 September 2010, TG4--the Irish language TV station--showed (with English language subtitles) a new documentary on the Irish Socialist Republican leader James Connolly, who was the inspiration for the 15th International Brigade’s Connolly Column. Manus is interviewed briefly in the 10th minute of Part 1. This documentary will remain accessible...
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With the Abraham Lincoln Brigade in Spain, an 18-minute silent film by Henri Cartier-Bresson and Herbert Kline that was recently discovered in the ALBA archives (clip here) and is now on display at the International Center of Photography, will be screened on October 23 at 1:30pm as part of MoMA's...
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Impunity Watch at Syracuse University reports:
A representative from Spain told the UN Human Rights Council on Tuesday that they would not be investigating alleged war crimes committed during the Francisco Franco dictatorship in accordance with an amnesty law passed by the Spanish government in 1977. Mexico had called on...
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La Colonia: Spanish Immigrants in New York, 1898-1945, the stunning photography exhibit curated by ALBA Board member James D. Fernández and co-sponsored by ALBA, which has been on show for a little over a week now at NYU's King Juan Carlos I of Spain Center, is generating a lot of media buzz in Spain,...
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On October 14 and 15, ALBA's Prof. Anthony Geist will be at Casa Aboy in San Juan to screen his documentary on the Lincoln Brigade, Souls Without Borders, and to open ALBA's traveling exhibit They Still Draw Pictures: Children's Art in Wartime from the Spanish Civil War to Kosovo. More information
Prize-winning graphic novelist Paco Roca has just released El ángel de la retirada (The Angel of the Retreat), EFE reports, a historical novel based on a script by the novelist Serguei Duonovetz set among second-generation exiles in post-war France. The main character, Victoria Valiente, has to decide whether or not to return to...
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October 16 is the date, the Museum of the City of New York the place. Order tickets here. Download the press release with all the details here.
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Among the buzz-generating new films at the San Sebastián festival last week was the Catalan film Pa negre (Black Bread), by Agustí Villaronga (1953), set right after the Civil War. Indiewire reports:
“Bread” has one of the most jaw-dropping prologues in recent memory, in which a horse-drawn cart is pushed off...
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El País's Sunday magazine published a large spread on the Mexican Suitcase yesterday. Read it here.
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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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