Mike Hall writes for the AFL/CIO blog about a new online exhibit on the activism of Paul Robeson, who famously traveled to Spain in support of the Spanish Republic and the volunteers of the Lincoln Brigade:
Paul Robeson, once the premier African American artist of the 20th century, is well known...
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Manus O'Riordan, Ireland Secretary of the International Brigade Memorial Trust, alerts us to the resuscitation of charges in relation to Irish IBer Fran Ryan that have already been refuted. On 11 September 2011, the Irish edition of News International’s Sunday Times carried the following report by Lorraine Wemyss:
The campus of Queen's University Belfast was festooned with Nazi...
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Jim Jump sends us the latest newsletter from the International Brigade Memorial Trust, ALBA's British sister organization. Among the many items of interest: news on the sundry 75th anniversary celebrations in the UK and Spain; a report on the celebration at Jubilee Garden; an obituary for Nathan Clark; a portrait of John Harnor,...
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A group of cyclists will set off from Edinburgh next Monday (19 September) for a tour of Britain and Ireland to remember the volunteers from the British Isles who joined the International Brigades.
Organised by the National Clarion Cycling Club 1895 (NCCC), the IBMT-supported ride will mark the 75th anniversary of the formation of the...
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This week's issue of Newsweek covers the documentary Mexican Suitcase (trailer, Kickstarter), which is also screened this week at the San Sebastián Film Festival (Sept. 19 & 20, details here), for the DocMiami International Film Festival, and as opening feature for the AFI Latin American Film Festival in Silver Spring, MD, on...
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Alan Warren writes: Nacho Eli Garcia, historian and expert on San Pedro de Cardena prison, where International Brigaders were held (He is also the creator of the excellent blog "The Jaily News"), has just announced that over the weekend of November 4th to 6th an International conference, exhibition and memorialisation will be...
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This year's Teaneck International Film Festival, held November 11-13, will feature a screening of the classic Spanish Civil War documentary The Good Fight, by Mary Dore and Sam Sills. More details here.
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Judge Baltasar Garzón, recipient of the first ALBA-Puffin Award for Human Rights Activism, will speak at Harvard University's Law School on the topic of "International Crimes and Universal Jurisdiction." September 26, 2011, 12:00 - 1:30 pm. Location: Harvard Law School, Pound Hall 213, 1563 Massachusetts Avenue, Cambridge; Contact: hrp@law.harvard.edu
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Under the heading “New theories about a 20th century icon” El País reports that José Luis Alcaine has found extremely interesting parallels between the film version of Hemingway’s novel A Farewell to Arms, and Picasso’s Guernica. Alcaine, a director of photography who has worked with Pedro Almodóvar and Victor Erice, summarises his conclusions...
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"The discovery of 4,500 photographic negatives shot by famed war photographers Robert Capa, Gerda Taro and David "Chim" Seymour during the Spanish Civil War is given respectful treatment in writer-director Trisha Ziff's Mexican Suitcase," Robert Koehler writes in Variety:
The thrilling frontline photography -- unique in its era -- serves here to illustrate the...
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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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In the spring of 2024, while cleaning up an old family home, Kate Fogarty came across the typescript of a play about the Lincoln Brigade written by her grandfather, Charlie Nusser, who served in Spain from February to October 1937 and fought in the US Army during the Second World War. Ten months after...
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In this new occasional feature of The Volunteer, whose title is the Esperanto word for “archive,” we will present, translate and contextualize iconic foreign language documents related to the anti-fascist struggle in Spain. If you have a favorite document in a language other than English, let us know!
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A dossier on the lies and deceptions surrounding the Spanish Civil War could fill a library, and it’s become commonplace to underscore the mendacity of the journalists reporting on events in Spain. Still, a careful analysis of the way that major international news agencies covered the war tells a more complicated story.
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The Barcelona-born muralist Roc Blackblock, who started painting walls 25 years ago, takes his inspiration from photography to put the spotlight on historical struggles against fascism, for democracy, and for human rights as a way of intervening in the political present. “Having a good photograph to work from makes a huge difference.”
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As a lifelong organizer and a student of history, I knew enough about the Abraham Lincoln Brigade to know that JFREJ at least aspires to organize within the tradition that they so distinctly represent. But I've taken the last month to do a deeper dive into that history. And I have been profoundly inspired...
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Camp Kinderland was first established 102 years ago by Jewish working-class immigrants who wanted to take their children out of the city’s hot summer streets and, through the camp program and its related Yiddish shul, familiarize them with their progressive Jewish traditions and heritage. Through the years, Camp Kinderland has upheld the principles that...
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Lincoln vet Bill Gresham’s Nightmare Alley cemented his fame as a noir novelist. Yet most of his Spanish Civil War poetry was never published—until now. William Lindsay Gresham (1909-1962), the Lincoln Brigade veteran whose bestselling crime novel Nightmare Alley (1946) inspired two films, was never the same after the Spanish Civil War. He rarely...
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“The past isn’t dead,” William Faulker famously wrote; “it isn’t even past.” The quote came to mind me while attending a remarkable gathering last September in the ancient Spanish town of Azuara, a small community of roughly 500 inhabitants, 40 miles south of Zaragoza (Aragón). Azuara was transformed by the Spanish Civil War. Over...
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The first American to die in the Spanish Civil War was a 47-year-old mining engineer from New York who had married a Spaniard, moved to Madrid in 1933, and covered the 1934 revolution for the US media. As soon as he heard about the 1936 coup, he joined the Republican army. Leo Edwin Fleischman...
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The way we think about George Orwell today was profoundly shaped by the Cold War—and by the groundbreaking work of Peter Stansky, who started writing about him shortly after his death. When the Spanish Civil War broke out in the summer of 1936, Peter Stansky was four years old—and although he lived in Brooklyn,...
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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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