On September 19, ALBA’s popular monthly series of online film discussions featured a well-attended session on two well-known newsreel compilations, led by Jordana Mendelson and Ameya Tripathi, both of NYU. (A recording is available on ALBA’s YouTube channel.) On January 8, we’ll discuss Fred Zinneman’s classic Behold a Pale Horse, (with Linda Ehrlich). On...
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ALBA Marks Jarama March and Franco’s Death On November 20, ALBA board member Nancy Wallach, daughter of Lincoln vet Hy Wallach, was joined by a group of IB family members to present a lively online event to mark the fiftieth anniversary of Franco’s death and look back on this year’s Jamara March, which specifically...
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On October 16, as part of the annual Susman Lecture, Joyce Horman, a lifelong human rights activist and current member of ALBA’s Honorary Board, shared her life story in an online conversation with ALBA board member Gina Herrmann. Joyce and her husband Charles were in Chile during the September 1973 military coup that overthrew...
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On November 4, days after a IB conference was held in Barcelona, the cabinet of Pedro Sánchez, Spain’s Prime Minister, voted to grant Spanish passports to some 170 descendants of International Brigade volunteers.
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Read the latest print edition of The Volunteer in pdf.
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Elena Fortún, Celia in the Revolution, translated by Michael Ugarte (Chicago: Swan Isle Press, 2023), 278 pp.
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Emilio Silva, Nébeda (Madrid: Alkibla, 2025), 212 pp.
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To the Editors: An article by Kathryn Everly in the March 2022 Volunteer on Salaria Kea’s life and her experiences in Spain focused on the fairness of comments found in the ALBA Collection at the Tamiment Library. When Fredericka Martin reviewed materials by and about Salaria, she found that some accounts of incidents were...
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To the Editors: As a longtime supporter of VALB and ALBA—and as a 76-year-old “red diaper baby” having been brought up in a “Brigade-adjacent” family—I was excited to see the announcement for the play At the Barricades, brought to us by a younger generation of activist theater makers. The performance was so impressive that I...
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Jay Greenfield died peacefully on June 29, at the age of 92. Having grown up in Rockaway, Queens, Jay was a graduate of Cornell University and Harvard Law School, where he was a Law Review editor. Following service as a lieutenant in Korea, he began his long career at Paul, Weiss, Rifkin, Wharton &...
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Bob Caminiti, who passed away on June 26 at the age of 88, spent much of his life behind the scenes in the television business. Born to Italian immigrants in Brooklyn, NY, he joined NBC in 1956, became Associate Director on Jeopardy in 1967, and worked on the production staff of Saturday Night Live from...
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I. In the Beginning Second child, Bernard, born March 1, 1915 Older brother, my father, Jacob (Jack), born June 3, 1912 Younger sister, Roslyn, born (June 1, 1922) disabled, hospitalized, died February 10, 1942 Their father, Abraham, died March 21,1930 Their mother, Nettie, died April 29, 1953 Bernie Brilliant student, graduated High...
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The title of this new occasional feature of The Volunteer is the Esperanto word for “archive.” In it, we will present, translate, and contextualize iconic non-English language documents related to the anti-fascist struggle in Spain.
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A Spy in the Footnotes: In Search of John Sherman By David Chambers There was his name in the very first footnote of Eric R. Smith’s 2013 book American Relief Aid and the Spanish Civil War: John Sherman, working for the Medical Bureau to Aid Spanish Democracy. A few pages later, the notes...
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In recent years, citizen groups in Leipzig and Madrid have fought to preserve the buildings that were backdrops in two of Robert Capa’s best-known photographs. Their steadfast dedication has created two sites of historical memory whose significance extends far beyond Capa’s original images.
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On November 8, 1937, Salaria Kea, a 26-year-old African American nurse from Ohio, had been in Spain for seven months and one day. The country was in disarray. Half its territory was controlled by fascist rebels. Cities were being bombed, and civilians were killed by the thousands. Thousands more were forcibly displaced. But Kea...
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As the government’s attempts to control and punish US universities and the media are conjuring up memories of McCarthyism, the New York Historical is hosting an exhibit, on view until October 19, that revisits the time when the House Un-American Activities Committee took aim at the entertainment industry.
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The graphic novelist Paco Roca was honored this summer with an exhibit at the Instituto Cervantes. His latest book tells the true story of a woman who goes in search of the remains of her father who was executed by the Franco regime and buried in a mass grave.
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The Jewish Museum in New York City is presenting the first U.S. retrospective in nearly half a century dedicated to social realist artist and activist Ben Shahn (1898-1969). Curator Laura Katzman reflects on Shahn’s social justice work as it relates to the antifascist struggles of his day.
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The African American veterans of the Lincoln Brigade who joined the US armed forces during World War II were demoralized and embittered by the gross inequalities and color lines they experienced daily. The purported stakes of World War II—crushing fascism and saving democracy—intensified their outrage, which turned into militancy.
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Dear Friends, “There will be Brigades forming again,” John Garfield’s character says at the end of The Fallen Sparrow, the 1943 spy thriller in which he plays Kit McKittrick, a traumatized Lincoln vet who singlehandedly foils a Nazi plot. Although the phrase is easy to miss, it is key to understanding the story’s political...
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ALBA Chair Aaron Retish sent a letter to Provincetown officials to protest a threat to the resting place of Douglas Roach, one of the 90 African Americans in the Lincoln Brigade. A proposed new housing development would disturb the graves of Roach and his extended family, whose burial plot falls slightly outside the town...
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On August 3 in San Francisco, the Abraham Lincoln Brigade Archives, in collaboration with Veterans for Peace, hosted a powerful event featuring the documentary The Truth Be Told: Irving Norman and the Human Predicament. Produced and directed by Ray Day, the film explores the haunting social surrealist paintings of Lincoln Brigade veteran Irving Norman...
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ALBA’s popular series of Spanish Civil War movie discussions continued with sessions covering For Whom the Bell Tolls and The Fallen Sparrow, both from 1943, led by Prof. Alex Vernon (Hendrix College) and Prof. Sebastiaan Faber (Oberlin College), respectively. On August 21, Prof. Gina Herrmann (University of Oregon) will lead a conversation on Alain...
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Save the Date: ALBA’s End-Of-Year Gathering On December 7, in the afternoon, ALBA will hold its annual end-of-year gathering at La Nacional on West 14th Street. More details to follow! ALBA at Socialism 2025 In July, ALBA Executive Assistant Dennis Meaney attended the Socialism 2025 conference in Chicago to connect ALBA’s work with the...
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A quarter century after being commissioned, a plaque dedicated to the New Hampshire Volunteers of the Lincoln Brigade was finally unveiled in a joyous celebration on Sunday, July 13 in Albany, NH. Initially commissioned in 2000 to be displayed in the New Hampshire statehouse, its unveiling was blocked by backlash from rightwing legislators. Thanks to...
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This year the commemoration of the Battle at Jarama--a key battle in the development of the Spanish War--was dedicated to the volunteers of the Lincoln Battalion of the XV International Brigade. They took place during four days, between February 20 and 23.
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I'm hoping the Volunteer's readers can help me with a research project.
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Eddie Barsky was a close friend of my father, Dr. Benjamin Segal, an OB-GYN who delivered many of the “red diaper babies” in New York City and worked with Dr. Barsky on various medical and political projects.
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Finding Ruby: The Bright and Dark Sides of a Family’s Fervent Idealism, by Richard Rothman London: Whitefox Publishing, 2024, 297pp.
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From June 12 to 29, Brooklyn’s MITU580 will premiere At the Barricades, a new play by James Clements and Sam Hood Adrain set among the international Brigades during the Spanish Civil War. Directed by Federica Borlenghi and supported by script supervisor Skye Pallo Ross, the project was developed through a residency at NYU's Espacio...
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In the spring of 2024, while cleaning up an old family home, Kate Fogarty came across the typescript of a play about the Lincoln Brigade written by her grandfather, Charlie Nusser, who served in Spain from February to October 1937 and fought in the US Army during the Second World War. Ten months after...
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The February, AABI’s annual Jarama march followed in the footsteps of the Lincoln Battalion. Nancy Wallach was part of the extensive US delegation. “One of the most inspiring aspects of the trip is the opportunity to make connections with our counterparts from other countries.”
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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
sign up to receive email updates from ALBA. Support ALBA through a tax-deductible gift! To inquire about a donation, please contact the ALBA office at info@alba-valb.org or 212-674-5398.
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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