Our friend Manus O'Riordan writes:
On June 6, 2011, Athol Books of Belfast, Northern Ireland, published a new web booklet on its site entitled The Vindication of Brigadista and Union Man Jack James Larkin Jones: in refutation of the British intelligence campaign of character assassination. This booklet brings together a series of five articles written...
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In the first piece of positive judicial news for Judge Baltasar Garzón in a long time, the Supreme Court has announced the recusal of five of the seven Supreme Court justices initially assigned to the tribunal in charge of judging Garzón for alleged abuse of power when opening an investigation into crimes committed by...
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The death earlier this week of the Spanish-French novelist Jorge Semprún Maura at age 87 has spurred dozens of reflections on the importance of his life and work--both intimately tied up with the major events and movements of the twentieth century. Semprún, who wrote most of his books in French, was the son of...
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PBS's History Detectives airing on June 28, 2011, includes a moving episode on the friendship between Lincoln Brigaders Sol Fellman and Doug Roach, featuring interviews with Matti Mattson and ALBA's Jim Fernández. View the whole 18-minute segment here. Be sure to check the listings of your local PBS station for more details. 
A Moment in the Sun, the monumental new historical novel by ALBA board member John Sayles, is praised by Tom LeClair in this weekend's Times book review:
“A Moment in the Sun” is, it should be said, nearly 1,000 pages long. Sayles responds to readers’ presumed resentment against its bulk (a resentment...
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The uproar continues around Diccionario Biográfico Español, whose first 25 volumes were released last week by the Royal Academy of History, as the Spanish Parliament is demanding a thorough revision. The Financial Times covers the controversy; and I joined in on a collective op-ed that appeared yesterday in Público:
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The New Yorker's Dan Kaufman had lunch with Baltasar Garzón when he was in New York in May to receive the first ALBA/Puffin Award for Human Rights Activism:
“My family on my father’s side was more progressive, while on my mother’s side they were more conservative,” Garzón said. His mother’s brother, Gabriel,...
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A lovely evocation, in video and prose, of Harold Meloffsky, Ernie Arion, and Bernie Abramofsky (Aibel) by Spanish journalist Pablo Mediavilla, marred only by a gratuitous and puzzling swipe at NYU students. Historical irony: the recipient of most of the letters on which these evocations were based, was Miriam Sigel, mother of the NYU...
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The amount of archival materials related to the Spanish Civil War that are being made available online keeps growing. The Archivo Rojo, managed by the Spanish Ministry of Culture, provides a stunning number of photographs (more than 3,000) gathered by the Junta Delegada de Defensa de Madrid to denounce the atrocities committed by...
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Today I’d like to share with you my honest understanding of what has been going on in Spain over the last few weeks. It’s not easy to make sense of what’s going on; the mainstream Spanish press, in my opinion, has been getting things quite wrong, or else ignoring the situation, except in its...
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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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