Must history repeat itself? Foreign correspondent and Spanish Civil War historian Michael Petrou claims that Western democracies need to learn from their mistakes in 1936 Spain to prevent a similar fate in 2013 Syria.
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Los brigadistas chinos en la Guerra Civil: La llamada de España (1936-1939), by Hwei-Ru Tsou and Len Tsou, was published this month by Los Libros de la Catarata in Madrid, Spain. This new book is a Spanish edition of the original Chinese book, The Call of Spain: The Chinese Volunteers in the Spanish Civil War (1936-1939) which was...
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Paco de Onís at Skylight Pictures writes:
This indelible image captures the moment at the Guatemalan trial of former dictator General Efraín Ríos Montt, when he and his mustachioed legal team are listening to Judge Jasmín Barrios as she pronounces him guilty of commiting genocide and crimes against humanity against the Maya Ixil people,...
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More on the Ríos Montt conviction in today’s broadcast of Democracy Now! http://m.democracynow.org/stories/13637
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The BBC reports from Guatemala City, where ALBA/Puffin Award winners Fredy Peccerelli and Kate Doyle have been testifying in the historical trial of former dictator Efraín Ríos Montt:
Friends and Family of the Abraham Lincoln Brigade hosted a presentation on the Asian volunteers in the Spanish Civil War earlier this month in Tamiment Library at New York University. To a packed house house, Len Tsou described how he became interested in the topic after viewing the film The Good Fight, which features a...
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On the 82 anniversary of the founding of the Spanish Republic, Appellate Court Judge, E.J. Salcines, tells a wonderful story about the Republican flag at Tampa’s Centro Asturiano. 14 April 2013, Salcines Park, West Tampa https://vimeo.com/64033205
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The images from the Len Crome lecture and conference on George Orwell’s Homage to Catalonia are now available on the IBMT’s Flickr site.
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An excellent post at the NYRblog by human-rights leader Aryeh Neier about the unprecedented prosecution of Guatemala’s former head of state: …the prosecution of General Efraín Ríos Montt in Guatemala, now eighty-six years old, stands out in at least one respect. For the first time, a former head of state is being tried for...
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On Sunday, participants in Argentina’s National Day of Memory march stretched the whole length of the Avenida de Mayo—from the Congressional Plaza to the Plaza de Mayo, in front of the presidential palace. That’s a distance of almost two kilometers. They came together to commemorate March 24, 1976, when the military overthrew a democratically-elected...
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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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