Yesterday marked the successful conclusion of ALBA’s second week-long high-school teachers institute in Tampa, Florida, led by Professors Fraser Ottanelli, Peter Carroll, and Roberto Alicea. (Brochure here.) Sherman Dorn, who has lent his expertise on state standards to help out with the institute, reflects on his experience in his blog: We’ve had some wonderful...
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Maclean's, Canada's only weekly current affairs magazine, has a piece on Garzón this week, by Katie Engelhart:
But while he is now “opening wounds in his own country,” says Reed Brody of Human Rights Watch, Garzón has long been at the vanguard of international criminal prosecutions. “He’s a reference point...
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The trailer was just released for There Be Dragons, a new film by Roland Joffé (The Mission, The Killing Fields), the narrative of which starts out during the Spanish Civil War, as the movie's Facebook page explains:
There Be Dragons is an epic action-adventure-romance set during the turmoil of...
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The International Center of Photography is working full-speed to prepare for a major exhibit with images from the so-called "Mexican Suitcase"--the long-considered-lost negative archive of Spanish Civil War photographs by Robert Capa, David "Chim" Seymour, and Gerda Taro. Scheduled to open on September 24, the exhibit is already attracting media attention, witness the...
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A monument to Spanish Civil War volunteers from Nottinghamshire, which has been the object of repeated controversy, was rededicated this week in a special ceremony, the Retford Times reports:
The move brought together the county's trades council as well as Labour and Liberal Democrat party members at Read more »
In an interview with El País published on Wednesday, investigative magistrate Baltasar Garzón--suspended while under investigation for allegedly overstepping his judicial boundaries when he initiated an investigation of crimes against humanity committed during the Civil War and the Franco dictatorship--expressed his desire to return to his post at the Audiencia Nacional, the...
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This coming weekend at the Royal Artillery Museum in London: "Britons in the Spanish Civil War," a Living History Event, by La Columna, a UK-based re-enactment group:
Dressed as members of the British Battalion of the International Brigade (IB) and British Aid for Spain campaigners, La Columna’s re-enactors...
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A lot of Spanish Civil War music is available on the web: in addition to a whole series of YouTube clips and the legendary Smithsonian Folkways albums (to be reissued next year), which include online liner notes for volume 1 and volume 2, Geoff Lawes has been working on a
An essay by Liam McNulty in the new Cambridge Undergraduate History Journal, pp. 16-31 (see also the companion blog post):
This week a group of young Spaniards is participating in the seventh annual Summer Camp to Recover the Historical Memory of Extremadura, ABC reports. Organized by the Asociación para la Recuperación de la Memoria Histórica de Extremadura (ARMHEX), the camp brings young people between 18 and 30 years of age from Aragón, Murcia,...
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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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