Gert Hoffmann, the Austrian International Brigader, will be turning 94 soon. He sends us the following note :
Reflecting on the anniversary of the end of the Second World War, I recall the hopes we had in that moment of great relief, of peace finally regained. But I wonder--I have wondered for decades--whether...
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The BBC commemorated the 74th anniversary of the bombing of Guernica last week with a radio program. Listen to the podcast here.
The president of Ecuador, Rafael Correa, has announced that judge Baltasar Garzón--currently suspended from his post in Spain and working as special advisor to the International Criminal Court--may play an observer's role in the reform of the Ecuadorian judiciary, the Americas Society reports. Garzón visited the country last week. Ecuador is getting ready...
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The University of Iowa Press has just published Hemingway's Second War: Bearing Witness to the Spanish Civil War by Alex Vernon:
In 1937 and 1938, Ernest Hemingway made four trips to Spain to cover its civil war for the North American News Alliance wire service and to help create the pro-Republican documentary...
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Today the Spanish government released an online, interactive national map detailing the location of Civil War events as well as thousands of mass graves that have been identified over the past dozen years, thanks in large part to the efforts of grassroots organizations such as the Asociación para la Recuperación de la Memoria...
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Manuel Rivas's interview with Garzón, filmed by Isabel Coixet last fall and screened at the Berlin Film Festival earlier this year, is now available for viewing online at Filmin.es for a modest fee (90 min., Spanish, 2.95 euros). See it here.
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"I have no lack of memory, and many Socialists like me have no lack of memory, either. We know what dirty tricks this gentleman has played on us. And we are not going to forgive him." ("Yo no carezco de memoria y muchos socialistas como yo no carecemos de memoria. Y sabemos las putadas...
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Dogstar7 has uploaded a video with an interview of the family of Clarence Kailin, veteran of the Abraham Lincoln Brigade, on the 125th Anniversary of Haymarket. See the video here:
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Baltasar Garzón spoke last night at the University of Minnesota. See the whole speech here:
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"Bradley Manning, the soldier being held on suspicion of leaking classified material to Wikileaks, is being moved to a different prison after what the Associated Press describes as "international criticism about his treatment," Richard Adams reports in the Guardian. ALBA's Bay...
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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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