Every crisis is an opportunity. “The debt crisis and years of recession have hit Spanish media hard: some 70 news outlets have closed in the last four years and a reported 9,000 journalists are currently without work,” Michael Levitin writes for Truthout and Occupy.com in a piece about the new, employee-owned, cooperative Spanish magazine...
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When at the NH state house, testifying on a bill to repeal our Stand Your Ground law, I decided to check on our old friend described in my last blog: the plaque. Since the 2001 adventure, that chunk of bronze has been sitting in a vault just off from the room where the Senate...
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The other day I was at the archives reading a letter from Veteran Sidney Rosenblatt to Estelle Katz. Sydney was writing about how the letters he received from home gave him the strength to carry on. His writing was beautiful and his story came alive as I held his letter in my...
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Dr. Josep Maria Massons Esplugas, former head of the surgical team for the International Brigades, passed away in Barcelona on November 10, 2012. Born in Valls (Tarragona, Catalonia) on January 18, 1913, he received his medical degree from the University of Barcelona in 1934 and went on to earn a surgical position at the...
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Today the Spanish press covers another success of the ARMH , which to date has carried out 153 exhumations of mass graves and recovered the remains of 1,330 victims of Francoist violence. Spain is second only to Cambodia in terms of the numbers...
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Editor’s note: This is the first in a series of three articles about the work of the Asociación para la Recuperación de la Memoria Histórica (ARMH), a grassroots Spanish organization helping the victims of Francoism in their pursuit of truth, justice and reparations. Click here for the second and third. In early January, El...
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Alan Warren writes: The Life and Death of the Spanish Republic by Henry Buckley is about to be published this April 30th by Tauris Publishing. This extraordinary book is a very rare find, since virtually the entire print run prior to distribution was destroyed during the London Blitz in 1940 and only a few...
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In part with a 50,000 euro Basque Spanish Civil War remembrance project, the bodies of approximately 100 Basque fighters are set to be exhumed this February.
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Alasdair Fotheringham, writing for the UK’s Independent, recalls the life of Harry Randall, the photographer and Lincoln Brigade veteran who passed away in late last year: Arriving in Spain on 1 July 1937, after a brief spell training with the MacKenzie-Papineau Battalion –Canadian, but containing a large number of Americans – Randall was appointed head...
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Our friends from Fayón, Zaragoza, invite us to visit their newly inaugurate museum on "1938-- La Batalla del Ebro."
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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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