Compiling a biographical entry for a volunteer often involves a complicated process of locating data points from a wide variety of sources and assembling them into a coherent structure. George Zoul’s entry took several years to assemble. In 2012, I ran an internet query on George Zoul a volunteer on whom I had very...
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Last month was the 80th anniversary of the sinking of the Ciudad de Barcelona. For those who don’t know about this event, or may have only a foggy recollection, here is a brief summary of what happened in May 1937. The ship Ciudad de Barcelona had been nationalized by the Republican government, and in...
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Saul Friedberg’s short piece on Raleigh Frohman provides crucial information regarding his fate. It figures prominently in Charles Antin’s search to understand his cousin’s disappearance. Together the two articles shed light on Frohman’s service in Spain. Chris Brooks, Notes from the Biographical Dictionary Project, 2017. Raleigh Frohman, by Saul Friedberg April 22, 1996...
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A brief article in the March 24, 1939 student paper, The Cornell Daily Sun, with the title “ASU Spring Dance Will Be Tonight” mentioned that the dance was “in honor of Cornell men who fought in the war in Spain.” The American Student Union noted that volunteers Victor Tiship and John Shulman from the...
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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. Murra is mentioned several time in Rolfe’s book The Lincoln Battalion and I have no reason to doubt the accuracy of the references. I would however like to supplement what...
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Those who read Ed Lending’s Los Rompedores or Jim Persoff’s The Noblest Fruit of Them All may be interested in viewing Gustav Marten’s album of Spanish Civil War photographs. Martens served in the 14th Battery “Dimitrov” DECA (anti-aircraft) along with Lending and Persoff. There are several photographs of Persoff and thumbnail sketches of the...
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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. 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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The war in Spain was barely over, but the scramble to define the legacy of the International Brigades was on. Were they valiant antifascists, or had they been agents, victims, or dupes of world communism? In pre-1945 US popular culture, the brigadistas were often portrayed as heroic antifascists. At the same time, there were...
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China was entangled in multiple local and global crises when this image was published on the back cover of a Shanghai-based magazine.
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The Republic’s fight against fascism was not limited to the trenches. There was also a quieter, though no less vital front—the judiciary—where the Republic fought to preserve legality, due process, and democratic norms.
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Major US films and series about the Spanish Civil War have been few and far between. Why has Hollywood shied away from a topic that, on the face of it, presents such a trove of compelling stories?
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Close to 35 years after serving as a head nurse in the Spanish Civil War, Fredericka Martin, by then an accomplished author, returned to Spain to revisit the hospital sites where she had her fellow volunteers had saved hundreds of lives. Another half century later, Gina Benavidez, a doctoral candidate, followed Martin’s trail.
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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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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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