Sixty people died when the Ciudad de Barcelona was torpedoed by the Italians off the Catalan coast. Rob MacDonald’s interactive Solidarity Park turns their memory into an invitation for activism.
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When 93-year-old Rosa Ruivenkamp died in 2019, in her nightstand her son found a blue notebook that had belonged to her brother Evert, who had been active in the resistance and was murdered by the Nazis in 1943. The notebook—which, fortunately was not thrown out—turned out to contain the diary notes Evert had written...
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Around the turn of the millennium, the association of British veterans of the Spanish Civil War merged with the Friends of the International Brigades to form the International Brigade Memorial Trust (IBMT), ALBA’s sister organization in the UK. Like ALBA, the IBMT is dedicated to keeping alive the memory of the antifascist volunteers who...
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For more than 80 years, historians have ignored the important role played by thousands of women soldiers in the People’s Army of the Spanish Republic. A new dissertation takes a crucial first step to correct the record.
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Eighty-six years after the last soldiers in the Lincoln Brigade left Spain, their legacy continues. As veterans shared their stories with friends and family, they shaped the lives of their children, grandchildren, and great grandchildren. The family of Lincoln veteran Oiva Halonen, a Finnish-American volunteer, is one example.
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Dear Friends, Putting together a quarterly magazine is a surefire way to make time fly. As this issue goes to print, your editors are already thinking about the next one, approaching authors, agreeing on word counts, setting deadlines—before we know it, another three months have passed. Since we last wrote, the US Supreme Court...
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More than 90 percent of the teachers who participate in ALBA’s teaching institutes report that they use ALBA’s materials in their work. Two testimonials from participants in our most recent five-week workshop.
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On October 20 at 3 PM EDT / 12 PM PDT, the Perry Rosenstein Cultural Series will resume with a roundtable presentation on Spain, World War II, and the Holocaust, with ALBA board members Gina Herrmann and Robert Coale, who will be accompanied by Sara Brenneis and Joshua Goode. For updates, check the online...
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The Susman Lecture is back! Join us on Sunday, December 4, at 3PM EST/12PM PST, for a live Zoom presentation with Nora Guthrie, daughter of singer and activist Woody Guthrie (1912-67), whose recording of Jarama Valley is legendary, and who in 1952 wrote a series of songs against Franco. Ms. Guthrie began her career...
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Please join us on October 15 at 1pm PST (4pm EST) for the annual online gala organized by ALBA’s Bay Area Committee. This online event will feature a keynote by Jeff Chang; a presentation on Asian veterans of the International Brigades by experts Nancy and Len Tsou; Patrick Riccards of Life After Hate, the...
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Mark your calendars. ALBA is proud and excited to present a full slate of events for the next three months, with the Bay Area Gala, a Susman Lecture, a workshop, and other gatherings--both online and in-person.
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On April 9, Vero Maynez and Nathan Payne, two Berkeley-trained actors, movingly interpreted excerpts from the Spanish Civil War correspondence between Lincoln volunteer George Watt and his wife Ruth. Stage-directed by ALBA’s Peter Glazer and presented by María Hernández-Ojeda, the event brought the online audience to tears. The performance was based on a script...
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Peter Rutkoff, Before Che: M-26-7. Gambier, OH: XOXOX Press, 2019. 284pp.
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Jim Higgins (with Janette Higgins), Fighting for Democracy: The True Story of Jim Higgins (1907-1982). Victoria, B.C.: Friesen Press, 2020. 196pp.
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Red Tarancón: Spaniards and Internationals in a Tarancón at War. Cuenca: Asociación para la Recuperación de la Memoria Histórica, 2022.
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Dorian L. (Dusty) Nicol. “Miss Spain in Exile”: Isa Reyes’ Escape from the Spanish Civil War. Eastbourne and Chicago: Sussex Academic Press, 2021. 240pp.
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The Catalan government officially inaugurated its plans to exhume, identify, and repatriate the remains of International Brigade volunteers who died in Catalonia.
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At ALBA’s 2022 online gala, I spoke with the Spanish filmmaker Almudena Carracedo, who together with Robert Bahar created The Silence of Others (2018), an award-winning documentary about memory, truth, and justice. Here is the entire conversation.
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Like many participants in the 1936 Popular Olympics in Barcelona, Alfred Chakin was a talented athlete. He was also a committed antifascist.
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The Spanish Civil War is often viewed as the first in which radio was used as a political and military weapon and an important instrument of propaganda. The radio provided a welcome means of entertainment and distraction amid the devastation and hardship. But what role did radio music play in the conflict and what...
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The Russian invasion of Ukraine—which ALBA forcefully condemned—has unleashed a fascinating debate about historical parallels with the Spanish Civil War. A sampling.
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"His Knee" and "The Spectrum"
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Tributes by Daniel Czitrom, Gladys and Neal Rosenstein, Helen Graham, Paul Preston, James D. Fernández, Ellyn Polshek, and Anthony Geist.
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Peter N. Carroll—renowned historian, poet, and (co-)editor of this magazine for more than twenty years—has been involved with ALBA for four decades. Time for a tribute.
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Dear friends, As this issue goes to press, ALBA is wrapping up a busy, program-filled spring. A highlight, no doubt, was our online gala on April 30, which included the ALBA/Puffin Award for Life After Hate, along with stirring music and thought-provoking conversations about the relevance today of the legacy embodied by the International...
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In March and April, ALBA offered a five-week online workshop to close to 30 teachers from the United States and elsewhere, working with the Collaborative for Educational Services of Massachusetts.
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A new educational law in Massachusetts encourages teachers to teach about genocide—including cases in US history—the in the context of human rights. The connection with ALBA’s teaching institutes is clear.
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ALBA is thrilled to announce two new additions to its Board of Governors: Dr. Mona Hanna-Attisha of Flint, Michigan, and Prof. Cristina Pérez Jiménez of New York City. Meanwhile, the ALBA office welcomes Cole Stallone as Communications Associate.
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On June 8, as a kick-off to Pride Month, ALBA will offer an online screening of Bones of Contention. Coming up on June 23: a workshop on Poetry and the Spanish Civil War, with Anthony Geist.
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At a moving, content-filled annual gala on April 30 (video), Life After Hate received this year’s ALBA/Puffin Award for Human Rights Activism (press release).
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To the Editors: I am writing to congratulate ALBA for the terrific workshop on Hemingway and the Lincoln Brigade, in the Perry Rosenstein Cultural Series. The many names of Lincolns rang many bells for me and reminded me of the time I worked with Marion Wachtel to write our book on Robert Merriman, American Commander in...
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To the Editors: While there have been many recent tributes to my late partner Manus O’Riordan in the Irish media, including President D. Michael Higgins’ own website, and from the many organizations in which he was involved, such as the IBMT and his union, SIPTU, The Volunteer’s article on Manus held very special significance...
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Exhuming Franco: Spain’s Second Transition, by Sebastiaan Faber. Nashville, TN: Vanderbilt University Press, 2021.
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Spanish author Almudena Grandes, who died in November, aged 61, was famed for her novels portraying ordinary Spaniards’ experience of civil war and dictatorship. Against attempts to veil the past in silence, she insisted that unearthing historical memory was fundamental to building a democratic Spain.
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The regional government of Catalonia has instituted a new program as part of its ongoing efforts to locate and exhume mass graves from the Spanish Civil War and use DNA technology to identify the remains. The new program, which will be named after Lincoln Brigade veteran Alvah Bessie, will focus specifically on exhuming and...
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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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After attending the AABI event honoring the Abraham Lincoln Battalion in Madrid, in February 2025, Anita Caref, a retired adult literacy educator, started an antifascist children’s book club.
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Ca-Vostra, a bar-hotel in the historic center of Ibiza Town that the Austrian painter Lene Schneider-Kainer opened in 1933, served for years as a refuge for artists and intellectuals fleeing Nazism—until she herself was forced into exile. Sol Izquierdo reconstructs a remarkable life.
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The Abraham Lincoln Brigade, New York’s Volunteers In the spring semester of 2020, the first thirty-three students completed biographical sketches that were published to a student-built website. Stuyvesant High School teacher David Hanna declared his goal for students to compile biographical entries for each of the approximately 800 volunteers who went to Spain from...
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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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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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