Ronald V. Dellums, a tireless advocate for peace, justice, and equality, served his Oakland, California district for 27 years in the House of Representatives. A vigorous supporter of the Veterans of the Abraham Lincoln Brigade, he carried on their example when he stated, at the beginning of his career in Congress, that he was committed...
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The following text is based on Paul Preston’s introduction to the Spanish re-edition of Ramón Sender-Barayón’s A Death in Zamora (Postmetrópolis, 2018), in which the son of Ramón J. Sender and Amparo Barayón investigates the circumstances of his mother’s death three months after the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War.
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The distinction between “illegitimate” migrants fleeing poverty and “legitimate” refugees escaping political persecution originated during the Cold War to bolster the anti-communist aggression of U.S. and Western governments. Today, it’s used to justify some of the greatest atrocities of our times.
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The British historian Paul Preston, who just turned 72, has been knighted—a good moment to look back on his career and assess the latest developments in Spain, where one of his major research subjects, Franco, continues to stir up controversy. “In Spain, there’s a kind of historic notion that the British are polite, gentlemanly,...
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Like many returning U.S. veterans of the Spanish Civil War, Delmer Berg was targeted for surveillance by the FBI. His file, obtained through the Freedom of Information Act, tells us less about Berg than about Hoover’s agency.
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This fall, ALBA's teaching team is back on the road.
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Arts Commission approves repair to the San Francisco national monument that will stand the test of time.
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We are going to press on the 80th anniversary of the Battle of the Ebro, the longest, most extensive, and bloodiest battle of the Spanish Civil War. In spite of Franco’s superiority in manpower and equipment, the Republicans sought to thwart the Fascist offensive on Valencia and to gain time in the hope that...
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From September 21 through 23, “Impugning Impunity” presents 15 short and long documentaries from around the world. Info at www.iiff-docs.com
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Spain’s new Prime Minister, the Socialist Pedro Sánchez, has decided it’s time to remove Franco’s body and redefine his mausoleum, the Valley of the Fallen. Few people know more about the Valley and its possible future than the anthropologist Francisco Ferrándiz. An interview.
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In recent years, investigators of the research group DIDPATRI (Didactics of Heritage) at the University of Barcelona have tried to locate the remains of Robert Hale Merriman, Commander of the Lincoln-Washington Battalion and Chief of Staff of the XV International Brigade during the Spanish Civil War.
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Letter by eight-year-old Luca Kaufman at Kolot Chayeinu (Voices of Our Lives, Park Slope, Brooklyn, NY), written as part of a school project on Heroes of Jewish Resistance.
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Herman Schmidt of Charlotte Court House, Virginia, talks about how he learned about ALBA and how the lessons of the Lincoln Brigade have informed his politics. He is pictured here with his Triumph motorcycle. Herman rides, camps and hikes across Virginia and as far away as Utah.
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Katherine O. Stafford, Narrating War in Peace: The Spanish Civil War in the Transition and Today. New York, NY: Palgrave MacMillan, 2015. 197 pp.
Eunice Lipton, A Distant Heartbeat: A War, a Disappearance, and a Family’s Secrets. University of New Mexico Press 2016, 176pp.
Doug Jolly, a New Zealand-born surgeon who served with the Spanish Republican Army’s medical services during the civil war has been posthumously honored in his home town.
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Since the inauguration of Donald Trump as President, a number of action-based movements in the United States have emerged Can these largely single-issue movements coalesce into a more unified progressive and democratic movement? There are important lessons from the past that can help progressives today build a successful movement for social change.
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Among the dozens of primary source documents in the resource binder distributed to the teachers who participate in ALBA’s teaching institutes are a letter that President Franklin D. Roosevelt wrote to the U.S. ambassador in Madrid in March 1945, and the transcript of a conversation four years later between Milt Wolff, the last commander...
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ALBA’s teaching partner in Massachusetts will be in charge of training the state’s teachers for the new social studies standards—which include a return to civics education and an explicit mention of the Spanish Civil War
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Ten years after launching ALBA’s Teach-the-Teachers professional development program, the number of school districts we partner with continues to multiply. At the same time, the content of our resources has deepened and expanded as secondary school teachers and their students around the country increasingly see connections between historical questions and current events.
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Dear Friends and Comrades: This is no time for pessimism or inaction. The forces of reaction have reemerged out of the shadows in this country as well as elsewhere around the world. We stand in solidarity with the thousands of courageous teenagers who spoke out and organized to stop gun violence following the massacre...
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A photo gallery from the New York event.
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How do you convince a multinational corporate buyer not only to pay a bit more, but to force its suppliers to respect human rights, help fight sexual and labor abuse, and give an autonomous voice to the workers they employ? Florida’s Coalition of Immokalee Workers (CIW) has cracked the code. The key, they found,...
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Editors’ Note: Due to a technical glitch, only a small part of Mr. Murtha’s letter was printed in the December 2017 issue. We apologize for the oversight and print the letter in full here.
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Minchom, Martin. Spain's Martyred Cities: From the Battle of Madrid to Picasso's Guernica: Including the Reconstructed Text of Louis Delaprée's The Martyrdom of Madrid. Sussex Academic Press, 2016.
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The Spanish Civil War, sparked the imagination and allegiance of a small group of pro-Republic American women journalists: Martha Gellhorn, Josephine Herbst, and Frances Davis. These women, displaced in war, are representative of a much larger displacement.
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When the Bremen, a German luxury ship proudly flying the Swastika, was ready to sail from its berth at Pier 46 in New York, two seamen who later volunteered to fight in Spain managed to fool the crew and rip down the Nazi flag. In the archives, Dan Czitrom came across a deserter’s testimony...
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ALBA's teaching teams are looking ahead to a busy spring: We'll be working with teachers in New York, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Massachusetts, and South Carolina.
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When it first came out, The Story of Ferdinand was not greeted as the simple story that Munro Leaf claimed to have written. With the Spanish Civil War raging, the book seemed to be an obvious allegory. But of what?
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We can’t talk about defending the human and labor rights of farm workers without talking about their history of organizing unions—and the efforts by the government to suppress them.
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This past January, hundreds of thousands took to the streets in the Second Women’s March. Their protest underscored that fighting misogyny, xenophobia, and exploitation requires broad alliances. As this issue of the Volunteer illustrates, the Women’s March follows a tradition of activist protest that has deep roots in our nation’s history.
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ALBA has moved offices from one historical location to another one. Our new home is steeped in history and ripe with promise.
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This year’s recipient of the ALBA/Puffin Human Rights Award is the Coalition of Immokalee Workers, a worker-based labor and human rights organization founded in Florida in 1993.
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Three pairs of fathers and sons chose war over peace when they volunteered to be among the 2,800 Americans who served with the International Brigades in Spain. They came from varied pasts and with divergent motivations. One father followed his son to Spain while each of the other fathers volunteered together with their sons....
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To the Volunteer: Reading “Forgotten Fighters: American Anarchist Volunteers in the Spanish Civil War,” I noted that at least one prominent American who volunteered for service in the Anarchist Durruti Column remains forgotten. I mean, of course, Carl Marzani. Herein, I borrow freely from Carl’s memoir, “The Education of a Reluctant Radical,” Vol. 3,...
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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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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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Please find attached photos of my visits to the graves of Lester Rowlson and Tersil Obriot last weekend. I left a brigade flag and a fresh white rose at each. ,,, I was also proud to include aspects of my Clapton CFC scarf; you might have heard of this small football club in London that...
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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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