Two months ago, our New York office received a unique gift from David Geltman of Boston. Geltman is the grandson of Israel Perlman, who was a New York City bookseller. In February 1939, the Veterans of the Abraham Lincoln Brigade (VALB) organized a fundraiser auction for anti-Nazi writers and the VALB Rehabilitation Fund. Sponsors...
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ALBA’s website at alba-valb.org has been redesigned from the ground up. The searchable online database of volunteers who left for Spain from the United States will be updated over the summer, along with a broad range of content for teachers and the general public. Check back in regularly! The online edition of The Volunteer...
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Due to the COVID-19 crisis, ALBA’s in-person institutes are being postponed until further notice. Instead, we will be offering a fully online workshop from June 30 through July 28 with our partners at the Collaborative for Educational Services in Northampton, MA. Titled “America and World Fascism: From the Spanish Civil War to Nuremberg and...
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We speak with one of the No More Deaths volunteers who faced trial for helping save migrants’ lives. In August 2017, Madeline Huse and three other volunteers of the Tucson-based organization No More Deaths entered the Cabeza Prieta National Wildlife Refuge in Arizona to deposit jugs of water and cans of beans near various...
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Defying the devastating Covid-19 crisis, this past May 17 ALBA’s annual reunion and ALBA/Puffin Award ceremony—celebrated fully online (Facebook | YouTube)—brought together viewers from around the world. Hosted by ALBA’s María Hernández-Ojeda and Sebastiaan Faber, the celebration featured speeches by Dr. Mona Hanna-Attisha, Neal Rosenstein, ALBA’s executive director Mark Wallem, and ALBA governors...
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Memorial Day is the day traditionally set aside to remember Americans who served in the military. And yet Americans who went to Spain to fight fascism are rarely if ever included in the remembrances on this day. We would like to change this. Over the last two years, Canadian volunteers led by Pamela Vivian,...
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Dr. Mona Hanna-Attisha, the pediatrician who gained national prominence by exposing the Flint, Michigan water crisis in 2015, presented ALBA’s annual Susman Lecture to a packed auditorium on the Wayne State campus in Detroit, Michigan on January 27.
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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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The 2020 ALBA/Puffin Award for Human Rights Activism goes to No More Deaths in support of its humanitarian efforts to alleviate the suffering and end the fatalities of those crossing the southern border of the United States. The award will be presented at ALBA's Live Online Gala on May 17 at 5 pm EDT.
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What you leave to friends and loved ones—and the causes you champion—are ways of expressing your hopes and dreams for the future. As you make your plans, please consider joining the Jarama Society by including ALBA in your will or living trust, or naming us as a beneficiary of your estate. ALBA accepts legacy...
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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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