ALBA is now accepting nominations for the 2013 ALBA/Puffin Award for Human Rights Activism. About the Award The ALBA-Puffin International Award for Human Rights Activism is granted on an annual basis to individuals or organizations whose work has had an exceptionally positive impact on the advancement and/or defense of human rights. The Award was established in 2011 to...
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A British archive has released a new virtual exhibition on Basque refugees in Carshalton, England during the Spanish civil war.
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Three more bodies have been recently exhumed with the help of a Canadian university student working with the Association for the Recovery of Historical Memory to find the remains of Franco's victims.
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Trade Unionists in Scotland honor.
the 75th anniversary of the founding of the International Brigades; remember lost comrades.
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In addition to marking the 11th anniversary of the more recent terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center, today is also the 39th anniversary of General Augusto Pinochet's military coup in Chile, in which he forced a brutal, militaristic government upon the country. As the Associated Press reports, riots began earlier today, as...
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Yesterday Mexican leftist politician and presidential runner-up Andrés Manuel López Obrador announced his decision to leave the country's Democratic Revolution Party. As the New York Times reports, López Obrador "was one of many political figures who abandoned the ruling Institutional Revolutionary Party in 1988 and was a popular Mexico City mayor before seeking...
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The words and deeds of the Lincoln Vets still Speak to a generation of present-day Spaniards. I received an email during the last week of August from Nacho Garcia, a young Spaniard from Burgos who maintains a blog, The Jaily News, named after the underground newspaper written by the International Brigade prisoners who...
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Helen Graham’s The War and Its Shadow, just out from Sussex Academic Press, is “a book concerned with what must now be considered the most important revisionist project in the study of world history, and that is the significance and truth of the Spanish Civil War”, writes Gary Raymond in the Wales Arts Review;...
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A judge in the Spanish city of Valencia has recently stripped former dictator Fransisco Franco of his title of ‘Honorary Mayor,’ awarded to him in May 1939. Compromis, a’s left-wing coalition, said that “To maintain this distinction for the top figure in the military uprising and subsequent dictatorship is a clear attack on the...
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A new 154-page report issued by Human Rights Watch details new cases of torture committed by US government representatives. From the press release:
The United States government during the Bush administration tortured opponents of Muammar Gaddafi, then transferred them to mistreatment in Libya, according to accounts by former detainees and recently uncovered...
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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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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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