Dear Friends, No pasaron. They did not pass. As this issue goes to print, we are emerging from one of the most intense election seasons the United States has ever lived through, following four years that have revealed the best and the worst faces of this country. On the one hand, we saw a...
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To the Editors: Thank you for that amazing story about that amazing photo of an amazing woman: Marina Ginestà, whose life is the stuff of legend. As it happened, I recently visited Spain, where I picked up a magazine with that photo on the cover—but it had no description of who she was. I was...
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As the chaos of this pandemic summer seems to foreshadow an even more eventful fall—please be sure you’re registered to vote!—we’re poised to continue our work with more determination than ever. Teaching history, inspiring activism, and upholding human rights: It’s hard to think of a time in recent memory when ALBA’s motto applied more...
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“Why should one care about events taking place far away?” This is one of the “essential questions” that drive our work with teachers around the country. Together with the question “When do you stand up for what you believe in?” it captures the spirit of the internationalist commitment that drove the almost 40,000 volunteers...
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Dear Friends, We at ALBA would like to express solidarity with all those affected by the COVID crisis. When the brave men and women of the Lincoln Brigade departed on their odyssey for Spain, they were practicing the solidarity that has always been at the heart of our organization. If we wish to endure...
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How can we leverage our educational system into a building block for an anti-fascist front? This has long been the key question behind ALBA’s work.
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It’s late summer, a time when news used to be slow. It no longer is. On the Mediterranean, the fearless life-saving professionals of ProActiva Open Arms, led by the visionary Òscar Camps, are battling narrow-minded, xenophobic European governments for the right to help drowning African migrants safely reach the shores of Italy and Spain....
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To the Editors: I was privileged to attend the ALBA event at the Museum of the City of New York with a friend whose cousin died fighting with the Abraham Lincoln Brigade. It was a moving experience. ALB volunteers and their stateside supporters were driven by a passion for a better world. They were...
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A few years ago, my wife and I visited Vienna and made a side trip by train to Mauthausen.
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Dear Friends and Comrades: One foot in the past and one foot in the present, with our eyes set on the future: that’s ALBA’s signature straddle. As our tagline says, we teach history to inspire activism and uphold human rights. Inspired by the anti-fascist activism of the Abraham Lincoln Brigade, ALBA taps into America’s...
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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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I am searching for information about Morton ‘Vic’ Vicker. I have reason to believe he was in the International Brigades during the Spanish Civil War. I did not meet Vic until November of 1969 in Aguacate, Cuba, on the first Venceremos Brigade.* We bunked together, cut cane together, and spent a lot of time talking. I was...
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A preview of a Q&A with Robin D.G. Kelley that will appear in the December issue of The Volunteer.
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Guardian Newspapers has published two reviews of the new book by Giles Tremlett, ‘The International Brigades: Fascism, Freedom and the Spanish Civil War’. On Saturday 3 October, The Guardian’s review by Dan Hancox gave the following misleading impression: ‘The brigades drew an astonishing array of international literary figures – Orwell, Hemingway, Spender, Auden’. None of...
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The University of Washington’s Stroum Center for Jewish Studies added part of Dr. Joseph Butwin’s oral history project to its Digital Jewish Studies online collection in 2018. Butwin noted that “initiative” for the project came the “Vets themselves.” The web pages discuss the project’s history and offers individual pages on five veterans: George Watt,...
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Originally published in The Volunteer, V. 1, No. 1 1978. September 21, 1938, Hill 281, Sierra de Caballs. “The men of the Botwin and Shevchenko companies distinguished themselves in particular by their heroic defense of every inch of ground. They resisted to the last grenade when the enemy broke into their trenches. Nearly all...
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Edward Muscala’s hastily scrawled graffiti on the wall of the Hermitage of San Gregoria de Aguaviva during the battle of Teruel was preserved by the town. Ann Marti first reported on the inscription in her article In the Footsteps of the Lincoln-Battalion. This relic of the war was recently spray painted by vandals. Town...
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The Volunteer, Volume 1, No. 1, 1978. I cried when I heard you died, Larry. The tears flowed while rage racked my insides How could you die Larry not you not yet we are almost there! ...
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Originally published in The Volunteer, Volume1, No. 1, 1978. In view of the importance of the ‘Yates Project’ – refer to letter, national mailing of March ’78 – we called James Yates with some last minute questions. He very kindly sent us some last minute answers. Without a doubt his is a ‘work’ that...
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A long-time ALBA supporter contacted the office to inquire about a possible volunteer Herbert Rathman. In the mid-1960s, Rathman was the Science Chairman at Rhodes Preparatory School, a private school located at 11 West 54th Street in Manhattan. Rathman had told his students that he was a veteran of the Spanish Civil War and served...
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ALBA wholeheartedly rejects white supremacy and racial inequality. We condemn the murder of George Floyd in Minneapolis, and the systemic police brutality in black communities throughout the United States.
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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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