British and Spanish archaeologists have spent two years investigating Spanish battle sites. American journalist Steve Dinnen joined the dig at Belchite. “We are not here to tell nice stories about the past. The past hurts.”
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An unpublished poem by Víctor Jiménez Jódar, with translation by ALBA's Antony Geist.
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What a surprise, a few minutes ago, to open the June issue of The Volunteer and to see on page 14 the article about my father, Pierre Daura, with reproductions of two of his paintings.
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Mari Pepa Colomer y Dolors Vives fueron las primeras dos mujeres de la España republicana en conseguir su título de piloto y ambas trabajaron como instructoras para el Ejército de la República durante la Guerra Civil. Vivieron vidas de leyenda, pero una década después de su fallecimiento, la mayoría de los españoles no las conocen. (Version in...
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Mari Pepa Colomer and Dolors Vives were the first two women in the Spanish Republic to earn their pilot’s license, working as flight instructors for the Republican Army. Both led lives of legend and enjoyed an uncommon longevity—yet a decade after their deaths, most Spaniards have never heard of them.
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(English translation.) El tiempo y la justicia son inseparables: es imposible hacer justicia sin tener una conciencia del tiempo. El tiempo no sólo pasa para los muertos; también pasa para los vivos–los vivos que están esperando, al borde de la fosa, para el retorno de los restos de sus seres queridos. Están esperando a...
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I wasn’t even born, never saw a soldier point a rifle into the face of a woman, her hair beginning to gray, run red. I witness from a distance the dark-eyed girl in Capa’s photo snuggled on a rice sack in a train station. Her pose wistful: to where railroad tracks began and will...
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Pierre Daura, John Rossen, and Herman Bottcher—a Catalan painter, an American factory worker and a German carpenter—forged a close friendship in the trenches of Spain. A Japanese mortar round, a poem, and a painting united their lives, leaving a lasting artistic legacy.
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Time and justice are inseparable: it is impossible to do justice without a proper awareness of time. Time does not only pass for the dead; it also passes for the living—the living who are waiting, at the side of the graves, for the return of their family members’ remains. They are waiting for a...
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Cultural anthropologist Francisco Ferrándiz has spent the last 13 years of his life studying the impact of Civil War exhumations in Spain, working in close collaboration with groups like the Association for the Recovery of Historical Memory. Thanks to their efforts, Spanish citizens have exhumed more than 6,000 bodies since 2000—most of them civilian...
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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 family of Paul Andrew Mooney (1910-1961) is searching for documentation to substantiate information he provided to his family about serving in the International Brigades. Paul Mooney was born and raised in Cincinnati, Ohio. He graduated from Hughes High School in 1929 and attended the University of Cincinnati in 1929, 1935 and 1936. In...
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Teesside, an industrial region in Northeast England that in the nineteenth century grew to be a center of shipbuilding and iron and steel production, spawned no fewer than thirty International Brigade volunteers. Of the nine who were born in the borough of Stockton-on-Tees, moreover, six played leading roles in Spain: five rose to the rank of Lieutenant...
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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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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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