Features

From the Lincoln Brigade to Mauthausen: How an Anarchist Saved 300 Spaniards

February 25, 2024
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From the Lincoln Brigade to Mauthausen: How an Anarchist Saved 300 Spaniards

Despite their name, the famous International Brigades of Spain’s Republican Army included thousands of Spanish soldiers who served alongside the foreign volunteers. Among them was César Orquín, an anarchist from Valencia who served as a commissar in the Lincoln Battalion. Details of his extraordinary life, long shrouded in mystery and scandal, have recently come...
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How the Story of Scottish IB Nurse Chrissie Wallace Reached Her Long-Lost Son

February 25, 2024
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How the Story of Scottish IB Nurse Chrissie Wallace Reached Her Long-Lost Son

Over the many years I spent researching the presence of the International Brigades in the town of Vic and its surroundings, in northern Catalonia, I’d always been curious about the case of Simon Bulka, a medical captain, and his wife, the nurse Chrissie Wallace, both from Scotland, who were assigned to the International Hospital...
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Women of Jewish Palestine and Spain: The Case of the Meites Sisters

February 25, 2024
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Women of Jewish Palestine and Spain: The Case of the Meites Sisters

The lives of Ruth and Haya Meites, two sisters who left Jewish Palestine in order to help Republican Spain in its struggle against fascism, illustrate the level of international women’s participation in the Spanish Civil War—and its limits.
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Premature Antifascism and The Power of Self-Identification

February 25, 2024
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Premature Antifascism and The Power of Self-Identification

“Oh, you were a premature antifascist,” the chair of the Yale Classics department replied to Bernard Knox when, during a job interview in 1946, Knox told him about his stint with the International Brigades preceding his US army service during World War II. “I was taken aback,” Knox wrote later. “If you were not...
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How Contemporary Spanish Photo Books Redefine the Memory of the War

February 25, 2024
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How Contemporary Spanish Photo Books Redefine the Memory of the War

Contemporary Spanish photographers are finding new ways to return to the memory of the Civil War, departing from the sober documentary approach that was dominant until recently.
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Ben Shahn Returns to Spain, or the Intangible and Untimely Heritage of Anti-Fascism

February 24, 2024
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Ben Shahn Returns to Spain, or the Intangible and Untimely Heritage of Anti-Fascism

We talk about the “return” of Picasso’s Guernica to Spain, even though that massive painting had never been here before its “repatriation” in 1981. The magnificent show “Ben Shahn: On Non-Conformity” curated by Laura Katzman and on display until February 26 at the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía, elicits a similar sense:...
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Finding Ruby: A Memoir

February 17, 2024
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Finding Ruby: A Memoir

Richard Rothman is Special Pro Bono Counsel to Weil Law Firm, where he previously served as co-head of Complex Commercial Litigation. In 2023, Rich was honored with the New York Law Journal’s prestigious Lifetime Achievement Award. In his forthcoming memoir Finding Ruby, Rothman explores the lives of two grandfathers of his who fought with...
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Spanish Connections: A Memoir

February 17, 2024
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Spanish Connections: A Memoir

Mark L. Asquino (born in 1949) is a Foreign Service officer who retired in 2015 after a long career with postings including in Latin America, Europe, Central Asia, and Africa. Asquino’s memoir, Spanish Connections (2023), narrates a diplomatic journey that ended in Equatorial Guinea, Spain’s only former colony in sub-Saharan Africa, where he served...
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From Spain to East Berlin and Arizona: A Signed Fan and a Photograph Tell Their Story

November 18, 2023
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From Spain to East Berlin and Arizona: A Signed Fan and a Photograph Tell Their Story

When IB vet Hans Maslowski visited his family in East Berlin in 1969, he gave them a Spanish fan signed in 1938 by 31 fellow antifascists. More than 50 years later, his great-nephew finds out who they were.
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Marianne Angermann and Franz Bielschowsky: Two German Antifascists in Republican Madrid

November 18, 2023
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Marianne Angermann and Franz Bielschowsky: Two German Antifascists in Republican Madrid

Marianne Angermann, a young German biochemist, joined a Madrid lab in late 1935 to work with her compatriot Franz Bielschowsky, a Jewish refugee who’d been there since 1933. When the war broke out the following year, both decided stay in Spain and serve the Republican war effort as medical personnel. Marianne’s letters to her...
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