In June, Iago Macknik-Conde, the New York high school senior featured in our last issue, performed his play about the Lincoln Brigade at the National History Day competition for Senior Individual Performance in Maryland, winning an Outstanding Entry medal. Together with his mother, Dr. Susana Martínez-Conde, Iago wrote ALBA’s summer fundraising appeal and recorded...
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Labor Activist Karen Nussbaum to be Featured in Susman Lecture November 14 This year’s Susman Lecture will feature longtime labor activist Karen Nussbaum, co-founder in 1972 of 9to5: Organization of Women Office Workers and founding director of Working America. Born in Chicago Illinois into an activist family, Nussbaum joined the anti-war movement as a...
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Sacco and Vanzetti: Film Screening and Discussion Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti—two Italian immigrant anarchists who were accused of a murder in 1920 and executed in Boston in 1927 after a notoriously prejudiced trial—are the subject of Sacco and Vanzetti, a documentary by ALBA board member Peter Miller that was screened and discussed at...
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As the labor movement occupied the front pages, in other words, so did news about fascism spreading across Europe. It was no coincidence that many union members saw their struggle as part of a united front against fascism and volunteered to fight in Spain.
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At its annual board meeting in early May, ALBA welcomed its newest member, Steve Birnbaum, a Bay Area labor attorney specializing in workers’ compensation under the Longshore and Harbor Workers’ Act. Steve has long been fascinated with the history of the Abraham Lincoln Brigade and will be a welcome addition to the board. For...
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This photograph of Lincoln brigaders Bill Aalto, Alex Kunslich and Irv Goff, with a Spanish comrade, depicts something rare, possibly unique. But unfortunately, all physical copies of it are lost—or, at least, their whereabouts are unknown.
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The present is confusing because we don’t know what the future will look like. Still, some things are crystal clear.
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Eighty-five years ago, a dozen volunteers, part of the Mackenzie-Papineau Battalion of the International Brigades, lost their lives while providing cover for their retreating comrades in the town of Azuara. On March 11, 2023, Azuara hosted a tribute to these long-forgotten anti-Fascist fighters,
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Iago Macknik-Conde, a high school student from New York City, performed his new one-man play, The Abraham Lincoln Brigade: The First Desegregated American Fighting Force for the National History Day competition this spring. He won 1st place for Senior Individual Performance at the New York City Regional and New York State Contests, moving to...
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As this issue is going to print, the ALBA office is busy preparing a series of events for the summer and fall.
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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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