“The courage and fortitude the Lincoln Brigade exemplified is desperately needed today. They saw the writing on the wall and didn't wait until the powers that be caught up with them to take what J. Edgar Hoover preposterously described as premature anti-fascist action.” Audrey Sasson, the Executive Director of Jews for Racial and Economic...
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Thank you to all those involved in the preparation of the Barsky issue, including Nancy Phillips for her financial support. I always read the magazine with interest, but this issue was of personal importance to me.
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Dear Friends, We know that many of you are working hard to transform your indignation and disbelief at political developments in our country into the mobilizing energy needed to build a new Popular Front against fascism. At ALBA we are well aware of the small but significant role we play as an educational organization...
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Dear Friends, The past couple of months have been marked by losses. As we were still reeling from the sudden passing of Peter Carroll, longtime ALBA chair and editor of The Volunteer, we had to find a way to process the outcome of the elections—in the runup to which we partnered with 18by Vote...
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I am very grateful to all the members of the Abraham Lincoln Brigade for their selfless participation in the Spanish Civil War. I am the proud grandson of a Republican soldier from the Aragon front, who gave his future (and almost his life) in the defense of freedom. I know that the Lincoln Brigade...
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Dear Friends: I was honored to be elected as chair of ALBA’s Board of Governors in May of this year. ALBA has had a series of dedicated chairs who have advanced the organization’s mission through both good and bad times. I follow Sebastiaan Faber, who served as chair for more than ten years and...
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I found the article by Raanan Rein in the March, 2024 issue of The Volunteer to be interesting and insightful. But there was just this one phrase that raised the hackles on this Palestinian Jew’s head: “Jewish Palestine.” No such place existed. Rather, there was a place called Palestine, a multicultural home to Jews,...
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Dear Friends, As human rights and academic freedom are under threat throughout the world, it was gratifying to hear former winners of the ALBA/Puffin Award speak to each other and to the attentive audience gathered in New York City this past May 4 for this year’s award ceremony. Kate Doyle, the investigative journalist who...
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If we have learned one thing from political and judicial developments over the past couple of years, it’s that we cannot trust that the basic rights that past generations fought so hard to conquer are, and will remain, secure.
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Dear Friends, ALBA connects generations. We see this in our Watt essay contest, which showcases the passionate fascination with which high schoolers, undergrads, and graduate students engage with the legacy of the International Brigades. We see it in the touching video testimonies that grandchildren of vets have been sending us in response to our...
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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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A new episode of the podcast “Family Secrets of the Spanish Civil War” is now available. In the podcast, which premiered in October 2024, historians Patricia Schechter and Dan Czitrom discuss the impact of the Spanish war on their and others’ families. This episode features the children of Anna and Alvin Warren. Below is a...
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In 2025 the fourth stage of ALBA’s Passport Project wrapped up. The fourth stage focused on volunteers on whom we have very little information to enable a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) search. Most of the volunteers submitted had at least a year of birth to reference. Expectations...
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On the fiftieth anniversary of Franco’s death, the New York Times published an article by Jason Horowitz about the “nostalgia” for Francisco Franco being expressed by a growing number of younger Spaniards, most of whom have no direct experience of the dictator. As is common these days in the Times’ coverage of any number...
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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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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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