Notes from the Biographical Dictionary Project. Saul Freidberg provided several short biographical sketches on fellow veterans. The sketches provide insight into Friedberg as well. While over the years I have always felt that my relations with Bill Titus were very important to me, my memories of him lack any real specificity, so that...
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The January 2, 1937 issue of the Socialist Call announced the formation of a 500-man volunteer military formation: The Eugene V. Debs Column (hereafter Debs). The Debs would serve with the Republican armed forces in Spain. The American Socialist party initiated an...
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Henry J. Foner, the popular emcee at the reunions of the Veterans of Abraham Lincoln Brigade in New York City for many years, died on January 11 at age 97.
Mr. Foner who lost his academic job along with his three older brothers in the 1940s because of Communist ties, became a labor leader of...
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Notes from the Biographical Dictionary Project. Saul Freidberg provided several short biographical sketches on fellow veterans. The sketches provide insight into Friedberg as well. by Saul Friedberg, April 23, 1996 Joe Gibbons Although Gibbons was a very close and dear friend, I don’t remember very much about him beyond that I knew him in...
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Blast from the Past is an ongoing series of posts reprinting articles from historical issues of The Volunteer. Cultural Life in a Concentration Camp By Morgan Havard, London Chairman of the International Brigade Association The Volunteer for Liberty, Volume 5, No. 1, January 1944 I cannot imagine feeling any more impotent and helpless than I...
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From the Spanish Civil War to Nuremberg and Beyond PDPs: 22.5 Graduate Credits: 1 Offered by: Professional Development›History and Social Studies Description What is fascism? Where did it come from? How does it impact human rights? How did ideology shape the Spanish Civil War and WWII? What legacies did they pass on in the...
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The global union federation ITF (International Transport Workers’ Federation) has released an illustrated booklet recounting the organization’s fight to support the lawful Republic during the Spanish Civil War, and how the lessons it learnt there allowed it to work with Allied intelligence to fight Nazism in World War Two. It tells the inspiring story...
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Como de costumbre, ALBA organizó su taller para profesores de secundaria en Nueva York el día de elecciones. Poco después, una de las participantes nos envió esta sentida reflexión.
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Blast from the Past is an ongoing series of posts reprinting articles from historical issues of The Volunteer. “Of Comradeship and Courage: Three Friends, Three Volunteers” by Morris Brier The Volunteer, v.9 n. 3, November 1987, pp. 8-10. Why at this stage of history do I speak of three comrades, three friends? To me...
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In 2009 an anonymous black International Brigades volunteer became famous when his picture garnered the attention of the international news media. The Spanish government wanted to give the photograph of the man, taken in Barcelona in January 1937 by Catalán photojournalist Agustí Centelles, as a gift to newly elected U.S. President Barack Obama in...
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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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