In a recent exchange with a commenter on this blog, I mentioned how sometimes, when posting here, I feel like a hopeful child throwing a message in a bottle into the vast cybersea. And occasionally I experience the thrill of confirming that the message has arrived to an intended (if unknown) recipient. Those moments...
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The #YoSoy132 movement is broadening its scope beyond Mexico. On June 30th, many Mexican-Americans living in New York held a "symbolic vote" for Mexico's president in the city's Union Square. As the North American Congress on Latin America reports, the movement is focused on "the democratization of the country’s political system and the...
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The IBMT now has its own news area on YouTube. Our first video is an 18-minute film by Marshall Mateer on the June 2012 crossing of the Pyrenees by a group of enthusiasts from several countries to commemorate the international volunteers who joined the fight against fascism in Spain 75 years ago. View...
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A new exhibit in the Eretz Israel Museum in Tel Aviv focuses on the varied reactions of Jews in Palestine to the Spanish Civil War.
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Many readers young and old are familiar with Ernest Hemingway's classic novel, A Farewell to Arms. Few, however, may be completely aware of the painstaking revision Hemingway underwent in writing the ending to his famed novel, reworking its final lines at least 37 times before deciding on the final version. Now, 83 years the...
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The #YoSoy132 movement (coined by sensationalist pundits as "the Mexican Spring") was a crucial news story in the month of June. With Mexico's presidential election drawing near, the movement's criticism of Enrique Peña Nieto and unjust media coverage garnered much attention over the past month, attracting comparisons to both the Arab Spring and the...
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Come from Afar a novel by Gayla Reid, tells the story of a female Australian nurse who volunteers for the Spanish Relief Council during the Spanish Civil War.
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The poet Feerico Garcia Lorca is to be memorialized in an new opera by Argentine composer Osvaldo Golijov premiering this month.
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The famous folk songs Red River Valley and Jarama Valley were recently featured in the HBO series Hemingway and Gellhorn, sung by Brooklyn (played by Eric Schneider). Brooklyn is, in a way, the spirit of Woody Guthrie: hopeful, innocent, idealistic like those young American men who went to Spain to fight fascism (among them...
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The Spanish football team "La Roja's" victory in the Euro 2012 represents more than just a few good players after a long history of the politicization of the sport in Spain.
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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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