Who is the young black International Brigadier in doughboy gear whose portrait the Spanish government hopes to give to Barack Obama? In November the Spanish press put out a worldwide call for help in identifying the man on this stunning photo by Agustí Centelles. It was a challenge we could not pass up....
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On a Sunday evening in January Helen Graham, one of the most prominent English-speaking historians of twentieth-century Spain today, sat down to discuss her life-long fascination with the war, Spain’s attempts at “recovering” its historical memory, and the skewed way in which the war is still viewed by many U.S. scholars and intellectuals.
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After holding successful week-long institutes for high-school teachers in New York City and Tampa, Florida, last year, ALBA is proud to announce its first institute in the Midwest, entitled “Ohio and the Spanish Civil War.” Co-sponsored by the Ohio Humanities Council, Oberlin College, and the Puffin Foundation, this interdisciplinary institute will allow 20 Ohio...
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Matti Mattson received a standing ovation after addressing the graduates of Fitchburg State College in his hometown in Massachusetts on January 29, 2010. College President Robert V. Antonucci presented the President’s Medal to the veteran of the Abraham Lincoln Brigade before more than 200 new graduates, family, and community. The attentive audience heard Mattson recall...
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To the Editor: I was a member of a delegation, headed by former Attorney General Ramsey Clark, that went to Spain early in 1964 to act as observers at the trial of the Carabanchel Ten, who had been arrested and were later convicted for trying to organize unions in Franco Spain.
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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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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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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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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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