Maynard Goldstein, the last Spanish Civil War veteran residing in New York City, died on January 12. Just three months earlier, Goldstein—the last surviving veteran of the Abraham Lincoln Brigade who fought at Jarama (February 1937)—spoke at a benefit event for ALBA. He spoke passionately, bringing to life the streets of New York in...
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By the time Mark Thornton and his 18-year old son Nate took a leaflet on a street corner in San Francisco in 1933, their family was down to two. They had left Utah after Mark had been beaten by Pinkertons at a miners’ strike, and the family arrived in Fresno in 1924. Nate’s mother...
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The Spanish Civil War Memory Project, an initiative of the University of California at San Diego in collaboration with several Spanish civic associations, seeks to build a digital Archive of the Spanish Civil War and the Francoist repression. Since the summer of 2007 several teams of graduate students have been recording audiovisual testimonies of...
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Miguel Domínguez Soler was a talented man of humble origin who lived during tumultuous times, survived many brushes with death, and left a memoir based on the diaries he kept his entire life. He was born on March 1, 1910, in Ayamonte, Spain, across the River Guadiana from Portugal. In 1930, one year before...
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Although Picasso experts agree that the painter’s interest in the war as a subject was sparked some time in late 1936 or early 1937, the precise circumstances of the “conversion” that made the Guernica possible were never fully made clear—until now, that is. Last year, while preparing an edition of the Spanish Civil War...
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Angel Viñas's trilogy on the Republic constitutes, without a doubt, the most detailed and fully documented archival studies of the international diplomatic and military reactions to the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War; and also of the efforts of the successive Republican governments to overcome the politico-economic hostility of the major democratic powers—England, France,...
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Juan Negrín y López, the “enigmatic” leader of the Spanish Republic from May 1937 until its defeat in March 1939, has not been treated kindly in many histories of the Civil War. Some attacks have been personal, with critics scoffing at his “lavish spending…his delight in pretty women and his gargantuan eating and drinking.”...
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ALBA is getting ready for two major annual celebrations in New York and the Bay Area. The New York program--on May 14th, at the Eisner/Lubin auditorium on Washington Square, New York City (tickets here)--will feature Judge Baltasar Garzón, who will receive the first ALBA-Puffin Award for Human Rights Activism, alongside Michael Ratner, director...
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On February 16, twenty-four new sophomores from Bergen County Academies High School in Hackensack, NJ participated in a day-long program of study at the King Juan Carlos Center and the Tamiment Library.  The students, who are enrolled in a project we direct, entitled Political Activism Then and Now: Lessons of the Abraham Lincoln Brigade ,...
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Baltasar Garzón, the Spanish magistrate who has headed the effort to identify human rights violations during the Spanish Civil War and the Franco dictatorship, will receive the first ALBA-Puffin International Award for Human Rights Activism at the ALBA annual reunion in New York City on May 14. (Press release; tickets; Facebook.)...
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We Spanish people will never be able to express with words the gratitude we feel for the likes of Mr. Samuel Lesser. Just one small note that I think is important to clarify: The expression “presente!” was (and is still) an expression USED BY FASCISTS to glorify their dead “heroes” … I think is...
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San Francisco, February 25, 2011, ALBA-Bill Susman Lecture: Marjorie Cohn; NYC, May 14, 2011: Annual Reunion and Human Rights Award; Berkeley, May 29, 2011 Freight and Salvage Bay Area Annual Reunion.
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While hiking in the Glass Mountains of Mono County, California, last year, Betty Brown of Kensington, California, came upon some carvings made on aspen trees, referring to the Spanish Civil War--and apparently cut by a Basque sheepherder with anti-fascist opinions.
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When he volunteered in 1937 to fight against fascism during the Spanish Civil War, 20-year old Samuel Levinger was an undergraduate at Ohio State University in Columbus, a Socialist, and the son of a rabbi. This recently recovered letter is self-explanatory as to its purpose and intention and, fair warning, will touch most readers...
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Joined by guests from Spain, France, Austria, Denmark, and the Netherlands, the German Fighters and Friends of the Spanish Republic 1936-1939 held their 13th annual get-together in Berlin last September. Major themes at the meeting concerned plans for next October’s 75th commemoration of the founding of the International Brigades and how to coordinate activities...
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Looking Back at the Spanish Civil War is a collection of the first 10 Len Crome annual lectures sponsored by the IBMT. Antifascistas is more of a picture book designed to accompany a traveling exhibition honoring the role of British and Irish volunteers in Spain. 
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On September 17, over 150 people attended the opening of “La colonia: a photo album of Spanish immigrants in New York, 1898–1945” at NYU’s King Juan Carlos I of Spain Center. Curated by ALBA board member James D. Fernández, “La colonia” uses the family archives of seven descendants of Spanish immigrants to explore and display the history of Spaniards in New York.  (Video...
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What follows is not the laying of charges. It is a recording secretary’s deposition. I catalogue the ruins, count the dead, weigh up the spilled blood. I have seen all these images of the martyred city of Madrid that I will try to show you, although mostly they defy description. I do not care for propaganda tracts or...
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Although Picasso experts agree that the painter’s interest in the war as a subject was sparked some time in late 1936 or early 1937, the precise circumstances of the “conversion” that made the Guernica possible were never fully made clear—until now, that is. Last year, while preparing an edition of the Spanish Civil War...
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Buenaventura Durruti was a hero to the anarchist movement, and his death on the Madrid front on November 20, 1936, saw a mass outpouring of grief from Spain’s anarchists. The paper details the development of the posthumous cult of personality of Durruti between his death and the Barcelona May Days of 1937 and their...
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Between World Wars I and II, the contentious issue of nationalism—how it can be shaped in radical or conservative ways by racially oppressed people; whether it must be embraced or superseded by Black social movements worldwide—was a complex terrain on which members of the African Diasporagalvanized their extended communities. Contradictions abounded in the ideological...
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ALBA’s George Watt Memorial Essay Prizes are awarded annually to a graduate student and an undergraduate student who have written an outstanding essay or thesis chapter about any aspect of the Spanish Civil War, the global political or cultural struggles against fascism in the 1920s and 1930s, or the lifetime histories and contributions of the Americans who fought in support of the Spanish Republic from...
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Viewing Taro’s negatives of the Battle of Brunete, preserved for seventy years in the Mexican Suitcase, is like seeing a ghost. They constitute a visual record of the last days of her life. Indeed, many of them have a ghostly quality. Whether the negatives have deteriorated over the years or were originally overexposed, many of them have a phantom look to them:...
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On Tuesday, November 2, over 40 New York City public high school teachers of social studies attended the second annual ALBA/Puffin Professional Development Day at NYU’s King Juan Carlos I of Spain Center. The teachers were selected from a pool of almost 100 applicants. In the morning session, James D. Fernández and Peter N. Carroll introduced the teachers...
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There’s an extra beat here, I think.” Pete Seeger’s banjo tentatively picks the chords to “Viva la Quince Brigada,” the classic Spanish Civil War song that he first recorded in 1943. While Seeger, who is turning 92 this year, half-hums the staccato Spanish lyrics, blues singer Guy Davis hesitantly follows along on his guitar. (Event video here.) The tiny green...
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Ken Loach is making his films available for free online. See his Spanish Civil War film Land and Freedom (1995) here.
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Some videos of interviews made by El País at the opening La Colonia: Spanish Immigrants in New York, 1898-1945, the stunning photography exhibit curated by ALBA Board member James D. Fernández and co-sponsored by ALBA, on display till the end of 2010 at the King Juan Carlos I of Spain Center in New York....
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Gabriel Jackson spoke with Sebastiaan Faber in April 2010. See here for the written interview.
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Lincoln vet Peter Schemrock died on June 24 in southern California, a few weeks before his 100th birthday. Peter was born on August 17, l910, in Dunbar, Pennsylvania. His family went back to Croatia (former Yugoslavia) when he was about four years old. Peter returned to the United States as a young man during...
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My father, Norman (Nathan) Berkowitz, died peacefully at the age of 96 on July 30, 2010. After not being able to speak for 36 hours, Norman rallied and spoke continuously for 30 minutes. His final words were directed to his grandson and they were, surprisingly, entirely in Spanish. Not surpisingly, they were about his...
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As Judge Baltasar Garzón faces a backlash that may cost him his position in Spain’s judiciary, ALBA invited María Blanco to give the keynote talk at the annual reunion of the Bay Area veterans and friends of the Abraham Lincoln Brigade in Berkeley, California, on May 30, 2010. What follows is the full text...
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After regular classes ended for 20 Ohio high school teachers last June, they spent another six days on the Oberlin College campus attending the first ALBA Institute in the Midwest. Consisting of nine social studies, nine Spanish, and two English teachers, covering all high school grade levels, the group worked on lesson plans and...
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For the last two years, ALBA’s Teachers Institute in Tampa, Florida, has focused on the needs of social studies professionals (generally history teachers), helping them to imagine and develop classroom approaches to the study of the Spanish Civil War and its global significance. This summer’s week-long institute encouraged teachers to write their own assignments...
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“My great aunt told me that she was married as a young girl but because she and her husband were both employed by the Writer’s Project they had to keep their union a secret. When her husband went to Spain he had to leave without telling her. She gave me her wedding band which...
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War is not all shot and shell and go to hell. Infrequently, it’s play. It was on this occasion, when the Lincoln and Washington Brigades got together after Brunete for R and R—and a baseball game. I was the unofficial athletic director of the ALB, the proud guardian of all the bats and balls...
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