Trump’s election creates new challenges for everyone involved in history teaching. What is it like to teach history when the nation’s president appears to chronically ignore factual evidence? What’s the task ahead?
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As a sergeant in the Mackenzie-Papineau Battalion, Alex Maclure firmly aligned himself with New Zealand volunteers in the International Brigades. In the above letter, published in the Communist Party of New Zealand’s Workers’ Weekly, he refers to himself as a ‘Pig Islander’, a term then applied to New Zealanders by other nationalities. Yet Alexander...
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The archives of the Communist International in Moscow, now partly available online, hold many small treasures. When we found the news bulletin published by a group of Cuban veterans of the International Brigades who were interned in the French concentration camp of Argelès-sur-Mer, we sent it to Denise Urcelay-Maragnès, who wrote a book on...
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Among the American medical volunteers in the Spanish Civil War, Dr. Leo Eloesser, a thoracic surgeon affiliated with San Francisco General Hospital, organized a team of west coast doctors and nurses and brought his considerable experience of military medicine to Republican Spain. His extraordinary experience is chronicled in a recent volume written by a...
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Pablo Durá is the author of The Lincoln Brigade, a new graphic novel based on the life story of Oliver Law, of which we are proud to feature an excerpt in this issue.
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What will Governor Dalrymple sacrifice for the Dakota Access Pipeline? Activist and former Green Party candidate Winona LaDuke reminds us that Standing Rock is only the most recent chapter in a long history of dispossession. “The Lakota people have survived many invasions.”
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Como de costumbre, ALBA organizó su taller para profesores de secundaria en Nueva York el día de elecciones. Poco después, una de las participantes nos envió esta sentida reflexión.
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Sixteen years ago I moved to New York, not as an economic migrant nor as a political exile, but as a student. The years went by and I stayed. I am from the 9/11 generation, I arrived in the city just a couple of months before the terrorist attacks on the Twin Towers and,...
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Eighty years ago an epic struggle began, largely to be overwritten in public memory by World War II and smeared by the anti-communist witch-hunts that followed. Now a dramatic and intensely political musical play, Heart of Spain, ran at the Zellerbach Playhouse on the University of California at Berkeley campus.
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In 2009 an anonymous black International Brigades volunteer became famous when his picture garnered the attention of the international news media. The Spanish government wanted to give the photograph of the man, taken in Barcelona in January 1937 by Catalán photojournalist Agustí Centelles, as a gift to newly elected U.S. President Barack Obama in...
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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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The first thirty-six Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests for Phase IV were submitted December 30, 2024. Phase IV is intended to focus on volunteers on whom we have minimal information. At some point in the future, I plan to resubmit some volunteers who were returned as not found or on whom no information...
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My grandfather (Nana), Suresh, moved to the United States in 1959 as a young man on a student visa pursuing his master’s degree. His parents, my great grandparents, sought value in being ‘foreign educated’ and bringing his education home – to Mumbai, India to run their family business. 2 years after my Nana moved...
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Peter N. Carroll, a respected and prolific writer, poet, and US historian, died after a short illness on September 16, surrounded by his family. He was 80. Born in New York City in 1943 to a secular Jewish family, Peter grew up in the Bronx and Queens, where his father worked as a composer,...
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LA RÉPUBLIQUE -QUOTIDINEN DE COMBAT RADICAL ET SOCIALISTE, February 5, 1938 Foreign Volunteer Arrested On March 27 last, 29 North Americans were arrested on board the boat Sans-Pareil while they were attempting to reach the Spanish Coast. They were sentenced to a prison term for violating the decree of February 18, 1937 on the...
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The “Spanija” series translates selected autobiographical accounts by Yugoslavian and Montenegrin volunteers of their actions in the Spanish Civil War. Dr. Ray Hoff used Google translate from Croatian to English and he edited the selections. As this is a machine translation, the idiomatic features of Croatian or Serbian and the translation of names and...
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The Spanija series translates select autobiographical accounts by Yugoslavian and Montenegrin volunteers of their actions in the Spanish Civil War. Dr. Ray Hoff used Google Translate from Croatian to English and he edited the selections. As this is a machine translation, the idiomatic features of Croatioan or Serbian and the translation of names and...
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Peter Verburgh’s translation from the French Newpaper Le Journal about a group of 29 Americans arrested in France. “29 American Volunteers Arrested in Muret” Le Journal, 5 April 1937 Toulouse, 4 April- The Control services of the Non-Intervention Committee do not remain inactive, especially with the help of the French Police and Gendarmerie. Thus...
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ALBA Board Member Steve Birnbaum made the trek on Memorial Day to the Home of Eternity Cemetary in Oakland, California to pay tribute to ALB veteran Hans Joachim. Joachim was born in Berlin, Germany in 1906 and moved to the US in 1924. He served in Spain with the George Washington Battalion and later...
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Please find attached photos of my visits to the graves of Lester Rowlson and Tersil Obriot last weekend. I left a brigade flag and a fresh white rose at each. ,,, I was also proud to include aspects of my Clapton CFC scarf; you might have heard of this small football club in London that...
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Peter Verbergh translated this article from CeSoir describing the arrest of the Dallet-Nelson Group. “The Interrogation of the Passengers of the Sans-Pareil”, CeSoir, March 29, 1937 (From our Special Correspondent) Perpignan March 28 (By Telephone) Yesterday morning around 10am, The Coast Guard Vessel Cebère docked in the port of Port-Vendres alongside the torpedo boat...
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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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