The Russian invasion of Ukraine—which ALBA forcefully condemned—has unleashed a fascinating debate about historical parallels with the Spanish Civil War. A sampling.
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Founded by the Veterans of the Abraham Lincoln Brigade
The Russian invasion of Ukraine—which ALBA forcefully condemned—has unleashed a fascinating debate about historical parallels with the Spanish Civil War. A sampling.
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"His Knee" and "The Spectrum"
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Tributes by Daniel Czitrom, Gladys and Neal Rosenstein, Helen Graham, Paul Preston, James D. Fernández, Ellyn Polshek, and Anthony Geist.
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Peter N. Carroll—renowned historian, poet, and (co-)editor of this magazine for more than twenty years—has been involved with ALBA for four decades. Time for a tribute.
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Dear friends, As this issue goes to press, ALBA is wrapping up a busy, program-filled spring. A highlight, no doubt, was our online gala on April 30, which included the ALBA/Puffin Award for Life After Hate, along with stirring music and thought-provoking conversations about the relevance today of the legacy embodied by the International...
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In March and April, ALBA offered a five-week online workshop to close to 30 teachers from the United States and elsewhere, working with the Collaborative for Educational Services of Massachusetts.
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A new educational law in Massachusetts encourages teachers to teach about genocide—including cases in US history—the in the context of human rights. The connection with ALBA’s teaching institutes is clear.
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ALBA is thrilled to announce two new additions to its Board of Governors: Dr. Mona Hanna-Attisha of Flint, Michigan, and Prof. Cristina Pérez Jiménez of New York City. Meanwhile, the ALBA office welcomes Cole Stallone as Communications Associate.
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On June 8, as a kick-off to Pride Month, ALBA will offer an online screening of Bones of Contention. Coming up on June 23: a workshop on Poetry and the Spanish Civil War, with Anthony Geist.
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At a moving, content-filled annual gala on April 30 (video), Life After Hate received this year’s ALBA/Puffin Award for Human Rights Activism (press release).
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To the Editors: I am writing to congratulate ALBA for the terrific workshop on Hemingway and the Lincoln Brigade, in the Perry Rosenstein Cultural Series. The many names of Lincolns rang many bells for me and reminded me of the time I worked with Marion Wachtel to write our book on Robert Merriman, American Commander in...
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To the Editors: While there have been many recent tributes to my late partner Manus O’Riordan in the Irish media, including President D. Michael Higgins’ own website, and from the many organizations in which he was involved, such as the IBMT and his union, SIPTU, The Volunteer’s article on Manus held very special significance...
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Exhuming Franco: Spain’s Second Transition, by Sebastiaan Faber. Nashville, TN: Vanderbilt University Press, 2021.
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Spanish author Almudena Grandes, who died in November, aged 61, was famed for her novels portraying ordinary Spaniards’ experience of civil war and dictatorship. Against attempts to veil the past in silence, she insisted that unearthing historical memory was fundamental to building a democratic Spain.
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The regional government of Catalonia has instituted a new program as part of its ongoing efforts to locate and exhume mass graves from the Spanish Civil War and use DNA technology to identify the remains. The new program, which will be named after Lincoln Brigade veteran Alvah Bessie, will focus specifically on exhuming and...
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Director Guillermo del Toro’s new film Nightmare Alley is bringing renewed attention to the author of the classic novel by the same name: William L. Gresham, who served in the International Brigades during the Spanish Civil War. Yet Gresham’s service in Spain is typically mentioned only because his first and most successful novel was...
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In the late 1990s and early 2000s, the Spanish Association of Friends of the International Brigades (AABI) worked to collect the oral histories of brigadistas and to inventory the IB’s archival legacy, which was not only geographically dispersed but often under threat. The Spanish archivist Julia Cela spent eight unforgettable years of her life...
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Mayday, the earth warms, greens, a trumpet on the car radio
bleeds, Miles Davis, Sketches of Spain, the drama of rebirth,
a staccato horn chases the bull in an arena, cycles of disorder.
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Salaria Kea, the only African American woman to serve in Spain, sailed from New York City with the second American Medical Unit on March 27, 1937, and returned to the United States in May 1938. To understand what her experience was like, we must rely on documents scattered through various archives. But archives are...
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Like most veterans of the Lincoln Brigade, the experience of fighting in Spain shaped the rest of the lives of Stanley Junas and his family.
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In December 2021 and January 2022, the South Florida Chamber Ensemble (SFCE) performed Extranjeros, a program about the Spanish Civil War and the Abraham Lincoln Brigade. Written by Myrna Meeroff and produced in partnership with ALBA, the program featured music and texts from Manuel de Falla, María Rodrigo, Joaquín Rodrigo, Federico García Lorca, Joaquín...
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The ever-expanding ALBA collection, which has been housed at NYU’s Tamiment-Wagner Library since its transfer from Brandeis University in 2000, is now increasingly available online. The slow but steady efforts to digitize materials—archival-quality preservation and transfer is a time-intensive, painstaking process—have focused primarily on graphic and audiovisual objects: not only photographs, posters, and postcards...
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A growing number of dedicated living historians are choosing to portray the Spanish Civil War at public history events. Although they are as diverse as the Brigadistas they portray, they are united in their passion for history and desire to inspire people to learn more about the conflict.
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Dear Friends, When Bryan Stevenson received the ALBA/Puffin Award in 2014, he spoke about the message he likes to deliver to white audiences: “I often say: ‘Many of you were raised in households where your parents and your teachers—the people you loved and trusted—taught you that you’re better than everybody else because you are...
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In partnership with the Collaborative for Educational Services, ALBA will offer a new iteration of its successful five-week online workshop for K-12 teachers anywhere in the world. The course will meet weekly on Thursday evenings between March 10 and April 7. Registration deadline: February 24. For more details, go to www.collaborative.org/events-and-courses/america-and-world-fascism
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This spring, stay tuned for a special online presentation featuring a performance and discussion of the fascinating letters that Lincoln volunteer George Watt exchanged with his wife Ruth when George was serving in Spain. The letters, curated by Dan and Molly Watt, will be read by professional actors with musical accompaniment. Saturday, April 9...
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A new slate of “workshops for everyone” offered as part of the new Perry Rosenstein Cultural Series (PRCS) has drawn broad interest from the ALBA community. Modeled on ALBA’s institutes for teachers but open to the general public, the 1.5-hour PRCS workshops are led by two experts who provide participants with reading and viewing...
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ALBA’s annual gala, including the ALBA/Puffin Award ceremony, will once again be online this year, in light of the ongoing pandemic. Tune in through YouTube or Facebook on April 30 at 4 PM (EDT) for an inspiring slate of speakers and musical guests. For more details, keep an eye on our website and your...
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On January 6, the one-year anniversary of the assault on the Capitol, ALBA announced that the 2022 ALBA/Puffin Award for Human Rights Activism will go to the organization Life After Hate (LAH) (Press Release). Founded in 2011, LAH helps people leave violent far-right and white supremacist groups to connect with humanity...
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Willy de Lathouder was the first Dutchman to join the defense of the Spanish Republic. He died in 1938 shortly after the birth of his child. More than 80 years later, his granddaughter discovers her family’s history.
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We do not know at this point what access will look like in the fall, and are awaiting further information from the University administration, who have set policies on access throughout the pandemic based on safety concerns for the community. In the meantime, we can offer some remote reference and research opportunities, as well as reproduction...
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It’s always sad when someone dies prematurely, but there is some consolation that Manus’s final hours were spent doing what he loved and dedicated to what he did much of his life.
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The actor Ed Asner, who passed away in August, was a tireless activist and a faithful friend of the Veterans of the Lincoln Brigade.
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A People Betrayed: A History of Corruption, Political Incompetence, and Social Division in Modern Spain, by Paul Preston. London: Liveright Press, 2020.
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On September 23, the Camp de Rivesaltes Memorial in southern France celebrated the opening night of “The colors of exile,” an exhibit honoring the life and work of Josep Bartolí, the Catalan artist and anti-fascist activist.
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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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