Now available for pre-order: Letters from the Spanish Civil War by Ohio volunteer Carl Geiser, introduced and edited by Peter N. Carroll and Fraser Ottanelli. From the publisher, Kent State University Press:
Letters from the Spanish Civil War provides a unique perspective into the motivations that led...
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Corbera d’Ebre, a village in north-eastern Spain, will be honoring members of the British Battalion of the International Brigade. A plaque will be unveiled on September 24th with the names of 23 soldiers who died on the last day of the Battle of Ebro. The 16th Battalion of the International Brigade was formally named...
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Now online: highlights from a Concert for the International Brigades held in Logroño, Spain, on 30 April 2013. Co-sponsored by the International Brigade Memorial Trust, the concert featured the Spanish and British musicians who played at the IBMT's annual commemoration in London’s Jubilee Gardens in July 2012.
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We have just received news that Carlos Blanco Aguinaga passed away on September 11. Born in the Basque city of Irún in 1926, Carlos Blanco fled with his family across the French border in September 1936, when he was ten years old, and was later exiled to Mexico, along with twenty thousand other Spanish...
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Harold Smith Hoff was born in Kansas in 1906 and moved with dust-bowl refugees to El Centro California with his father, a Church of the Brethren Elder. In 1920, the family gave up farming and moved to Glendora CA. Harold attended Citrus Union High School and had one year of college at LaVerne College...
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In the summer of 2012, I set out on the trip of my lifetime: To discover the father I never knew. I had to go to Spain to see many of the places and events he described in the journal he wrote as an ambulance driver in Spanish Civil War from 1937-1938.
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Jules Paivio, the last Canadian veteran of the Spanish Civil War, died last week at the age of 97. He volunteered to fight for the Spanish Republic at the age of 17. His family had taught him to "believe in justice, liberty and fair play for all." Yet, when asked why he volunteered...
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Today marks the 40th anniversary of Augusto Pinochet's CIA-backed coup, overthrowing the democratically elected presidency of Salvador Allende. In the weeks that followed, thousands of leftists were arrested, beaten, and murdered, including the famous folk singer Víctor Jara. After tracking down Jara's murderer to the United States, Jara's widow Joan filed a lawsuit against...
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The last stand of the British Battalion in the Spanish Civil War of 1936-39 will be remembered on Tuesday 24 September 2013 with the unveiling of a memorial in the village close to where the final day’s action took place exactly 75 years ago. The ceremony will be held at 12 noon in Corbera d’Ebre in...
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In the first days of Augusto Pinochet’s 1973 coup, Chilean Army officer Pedro Pablo Barrientos tortured and killed popular folk singer Víctor Jara. Jara, a respected artist who had joined the Communist Party, was arrested the day after the coup with hundreds of other students and professors at Santiago Technical University. Although Jara’s widow 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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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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