Great news from the Netherlands, where a group of volunteers has started an online biographical database of all the Dutch who fought in Spain between 1936 and 1939 to defend the Spanish Republic against the forces of General Franco. This is the first exhaustive investigation into the Dutch volunteers.In the Netherlands the Spanish Civil...
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The 1971 break-in at the FBI office in Media, PA, which led to the discovery of FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover’s secret COINTELPRO operation, was never solved by the FBI. But the mystery of that break-in was revealed earlier this year in Betty Medsger’s book "The Burglary: The Discovery of J. Edgar Hoover’s...
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The voices of British Battalion’s Charlie Donnelly, Bob Doyle, John Cornford, Jim Haughey and Dolores Ibárruri (La Pasionaria) were heard again at the Shankill Road Library in Belfast this August. Moving readings of their poetry and memoirs were delivered by Marlene Sideway, IBMT President and actor, Dr. Sinead Morrissey, Belfast’s first poet Laureate, and...
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Ruby Dee, legendary actress, author and activist was honored with a public memorial celebration at the Riverside Church in New York City on Sept. 20. She and her husband Ossie Davis, long-time friends of the veterans of the Lincoln Brigade, were extraordinarily generous and bold, lending their celebrity to a host of leftist causes....
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Over the course of three days, a selection of cutting-edge human rights documentaries will challenge, educate, and inspire audiences at IMPUGNING IMPUNITY: ALBA’s Human Rights Documentary Film Festival (program and trailers here). Now in its fourth year, and featuring films produced since 2013, this annual film festival brings human rights struggles to life through...
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The exhibition of Lincoln Vet Ralph Fasanella’s paintings “Ralph Fasanella: Lest We Forget,” organized by the Smithsonian American Art Museum, opens on Tuesday (Sept. 2) at the American Folk Art Museum. (Through Nov. 30, 2 Lincoln Square, 212-595-9533, folkartmuseum.org.)
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Annual IBMT Len Crome Memorial Conference Date: Saturday 7th March 2015 Guernica: the destruction of a town and the creation of a masterpiece Speakers: Gijs van Hensbergen, Nicholas Rankin, Helen Little and Manuel Moreno Date: Saturday 7th March 2015Time: 11 am – 5 pm (optional meal in the evening).Venue: The Manchester Conference Centre and Hotel, Sackville Street, M1 3BBCost: Conference and...
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The legacy of the courageous, young war photographer, Gerda Taro, was once buried in history. With the discovery of the photographic negatives, that have come to be known as The Mexican Suitcase, she is being rediscovered and her legacy celebrated. The first female photojournalist to shoot from the front lines, and the first to...
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A United Nations Working Group on Enforced or Involuntary Disappearances released a report on Thursday giving Spain 90 days to provide “schedule indicating the measures that will be taken” in regard to a long list of recommendations. The report comes on the heels of a fact-finding mission conducted last September. It addresses a wide-range of...
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Wilfried Stuckmann and his wife were visiting Spain from Germany when they accidentally discovered that their luxury hotel had been a concentration camp during the Spanish Civil War. The hotel booking site had given no clue as to the Hostal San Marco’s dark past. It had been touted for its impressive antique furnishings and...
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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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To be, or not to to be, that is the question. / Are you now, or have you ever been, that is the question
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Few Americans know how integral Seattle has been to radical movements of the 20th century. In fact, it was Seattle-based Lincoln vets who played an important role in the installation of the first US monument to the International Brigades.
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In 1946, the leadership of Edward Barsky’s Joint Anti-Fascist Refugee Committee stood up to the House Un-American Activities Committee. For Ernestina González and Manuel Magaña, the brave gesture of defiance was only one chapter in their activist lives.
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The iconic group portrait of raggedy Lincoln Brigade volunteers that’s become ALBA’s calling card over the years is now finally available in an uncropped, high-res print. When and where was it taken? And who exactly are these 29 men?
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Tina Modotti and Vittorio Vidali, who dedicated a major part of their lives to the Communist International, have long been surrounded by myth. New research by the historian David Jorge suggests that they consistently strove for broad leftist fronts—even when the leadership of the Comintern favored other tactics.
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Leon Bibel, a New-York-based painter, printmaker, and teacher who worked with the WPA and was only discovered by the public years after his death in 1995, was primed from birth to identify with the Republican cause in the Spanish Civil War.
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Can conservation be a revolutionary practice? In his new book, The Monument of Tomorrow, Miguel Caballero shows that it certainly can. The story it tells is also the story of the Madrid that the Abraham Lincoln Brigade encountered—and helped shape—during the war.
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Few political leaders of modern Spain have been as maligned as Prime Minister Juan Negrín, who died in exile in 1956. But his personal papers, which have been only open to researchers since 2014, challenge long-standing portrayals of Negrín advanced by anti-Communist critics on both the left and right.
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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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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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