ALBA’s Human Rights Film Festival shines a light on human rights abuses—and on those who try to stop them—wherever they may happen. The geography covered by this year’s Impugning Impunity is vast.
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For the past ten years, ALBA has been conducting professional development workshops for high school educators all over the country, and to date we have reached over 1,200 teachers in more than nine states.
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The fate of the POUM, among the most controversial episodes of the Spanish Civil War, is shrouded in taboo. Founded by Andreu Nin and Joaquín Maurín, the Partido Obrero de Unificación Marxista (Workers’ Party of Marxist Unification) fought alongside the Republic, defending the workers’ revolution as the road to society’s emancipation. After the so-called...
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Alejandra Soler Gilabert, who died in Valencia, Spain last March, was one of the Spanish teachers who worked with the nearly 3,000 children who were evacuated to the Soviet Union during the Spanish Civil War. Soler is credited with saving the lives of 14 children during the battle at Stalingrad—the turning point of the...
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There are many ways to help support the work ALBA does throughout the country, from planned gifts to monthly donations.
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A great way to get to know the ALBA collection! Includes an instructional program for those who are interested in learning how to conduct research in the archive.
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ALBA presents three days of groundbreaking human rights documentaries! IIFFDOCS NY September 22-24, 2017 @DCTV 87 Lafayette Street, NY From workers in late capitalism to testimonies of resistance worldwide, Impugning Impunity brings social and political struggles to the forefront through the art of nonfction storytelling For more information visit: www.iiff-docs.com
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No Pasarán: Writings from the Spanish Civil War. Edited by Pete Ayrton. London/New York: Pegasus Books, 2016. 393pp.
Gabriel Peri and Lucien Sampaix, two veteran writers of the Parisian pre-war Communist newspaper Humanité, were among the 100 hostages shot in late 1941 at Mont Valerien Fortress just north of Paris as one of the three “punishments” inflicted on the Parisian population by General Otto von Stuelpnagel in reprisal for the repeated bombings....
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Europe is seeing a resurgence of hatred and intolerance. While the direct heirs to the Fascist and Nazi legacies have changed their rhetoric, extreme right-wing organizations formed mainly by young people are gaining ground. But they no longer make overt racist or supremacist claims. Instead, they call themselves identitaires.
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Among the almost 3,000 foreign anarchists who fought in the Spanish Civil War, more than one hundred came from the United States. Their story has been almost entirely overlooked.
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The tens of thousands of volunteers who joined the International Brigades in the Spanish Civil War included a relatively high percentage of men and women of Jewish descent. But can we say that these volunteers were driven by a specifically Jewish motivation to fight fascism in Spain? Or did their presence simply reflect the...
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Ben Barsky had volunteered for Spain in 1937 and never returned. Why and how did he go? Why did the family never receive any notice of his death? And—perhaps most importantly and painfully—why has Ben’s life and sacrifice been such a taboo subject in the family for so many years? Daniel Czitrom explores the...
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We know where and when the ALB vets were born, their political affiliations, which battles they fought in, and when they died. For too many Abraham Lincoln Brigade vets, this is all the information we have. In Samuel Waitzman’s case, that all changed with an email.
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George Snook is an award-winning history teacher at the Packer Collegiate Institute in Brooklyn, New York. For over 25 years he has inspired his students to engage history by doing their own research. The Spanish Civil War and the experiences of the Abraham Lincoln Brigade play a central role in his classes. An alum...
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Almost 80 years after her father Timoteo’s violent death during the Franco dictatorship, Ascensión Mendieta has finally been able to re-bury his remains. In her 90s now, Mendieta last saw Timoteo when she was 13. A labor leader in the tiny village of Sacedón, east of Madrid, he was picked up from the family...
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“America & World Fascism,” ALBA Teaching Institutes program, launches a statewide series at the Ohio Council for the Social Studies (OCSS) Meeting in September, with professional development workshops following month for teachers in Cleveland and Bowling Green. Besides exploring U.S. and World History topics from the Spanish Civil War and World War II, this...
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Almost eighty years after he disappeared, Ascención Mendieta could finally give a proper burial to her father, murdered by the Franco regime.
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Photography is a powerful teaching tool. Last April, a group of American students and I met Ricard Martínez in front of a pharmacy on Barcelona’s Carrer de Diputació to follow the steps that Agustí Centelles, one of the most important photographers of the Spanish Civil War, had taken on July 19, 1936, the first...
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Julius Ruiz. Paracuellos: The Elimination of the ‘Fifth Column’ in Republican Madrid during the Spanish Civil War Brighton, UK; Chicago; Toronto: Sussex Academic Press, 2017.
After the 1936 outbreak of the war in Spain, students at the University of Michigan rallied in support of the Republic. A symposium on March 23-25 featuring Peter Carroll and Robert Cohen commemorated this history of political commitment.
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Do refugees have rights? If so, who is responsible to protect them? These contemporary questions are not new. Indeed, they were raised eloquently by the American journalist Jay Allen in November 1939 in Survey Graphic, a monthly magazine edited by Paul Kellogg, illustrated with images by Ione Robinson (1910-1989), an American photographer and artist....
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In April 1937, Ernest Hemingway filed a series of dispatches from Madrid on the atrocious Nationalist bombing campaigns. Curiously, he failed to mention the attack on Guernica. The legion of international observers – journalists, photographers, writers and “celebrities” of all kinds – passing through Spain during the Spanish Civil War undoubtedly shaped how that...
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Karen Pleasant, History Department Chair at Stoneleigh Burnham School in Greenfield, Massachusetts, participated in ALBA’s two-day institute this spring. A 17-year veteran in the classroom, she teaches U.S. History and several history classes in the International Baccalaureate curriculum.
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Reflecting a growing interest among Americans about the history of fascism and anti-fascism, and resulting struggles for the rights of citizens and civilians in wartime, ALBA launched a three-day symposium for high school teachers of New York City to explore these themes using primary sources that remain accessible and challenging for their students.
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ALBA has expanded the scope of its teaching institutes, moving from the Spanish Civil War to a broader and more ambitious focus on the role of the United States in the world, as well as the moral, political, and judicial aspects of the struggle for human rights. The time is right: “Fascism” was among...
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Every day we are inspired by the millions in this country and around the world who engage in acts of resistance against racists and oppressors. Like many of you, we worried about the recent elections in France and the Netherlands and were relatively relieved by the outcome. We were also thrilled to see the...
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Amy Rao, a member of the Board of Directors of Human Rights Watch, gave the introductory address at the presentation of the seventh ALBA/Puffin Award for Human Rights Activism to Òscar Camps and Gerard Canals, the founders of Proactiva Open Arms, at the award ceremony held at the Museum of the City of New...
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On April 16, Òscar Camps, Gerard Canals, and Laura Lanuza of Proactiva Open Arms joined ALBA’s annual celebration at the Museum of the City of New York to receive the 2017 ALBA/Puffin Award for Human Rights Activism. Before the main award ceremony, they were interviewed by Emma Daly of Human Rights Watch. The main...
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Former ALBA Board Member and longtime emcee at the annual reunions of the Veterans of the Abraham Lincoln Brigade, Henry Foner, died in New York on January 11. He was 97.
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A longtime ALBA friend, Herb was also a member of The Jarama Society, generously leaving ALBA in his plans to help continue our commitment to social activism.
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ALBA notes with sadness the death of former executive director Marvin E. Gettleman. He was 83. A historian of the American left, he taught for many years at Polytechnic University, well-known as editor of Vietnam: History, Documents, Opinions. He is survived by former Board member, historian Ellen Schrecker.
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In 1937 volunteers on their way to Spain through Paris were taken in groups to see the Spanish Pavilion at the International Exposition of Art and Technology of Modern Life. The Mayoral Gallery (London and Barcelona) has brought together artwork and archive materials relating to the Spanish Pavilion: ‘an exhibition whose main protagonists are...
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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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