The Volunteer, V. 5, N. 3 Editor’s note: Here are more excerpts from the log which Sid Kaufman kept in the last days of the war. You will remember, from the transcript of his tape which we printed in our last issue, that Sid got out of Spain much later than most of us....
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The Albuquerque Museum hosted ALBA’s Shouts from the Wall: Posters and Photographs Brought Back from the Spanish Civil War from September 8, 1996 to October 27, 1996. Four biographical sketches were prepared to highlight volunteers from New Mexico. Ralph Lawrence Neafus Passport address: 110...
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A seasoned New York City reporter’s search for her family history leads her back to Civil War Spain.
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With the viral specter of right-wing nationalism, militarism, fascism, and xenophobia on the rise once again, the lessons from the Abraham Lincoln Brigade Archives are timely and critical. For Dr. Mona Hanna-Attisha and her family, they are also personal and foundational.
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Edward Lewis, best known as the producer of Stanley Kubrik’s Spartacus (1960), passed away this week; he was 99. His life and work had several important connections to the Spanish Civil War. For Spartacus, Lewis hired screenwriter Dalton Trumbo who, along with Lincoln vet Alvah Bessie, was one of the “Hollywood Ten.” When Lewis demanded that Trumbo be credited publicly...
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On April 13, 2019 in the Catalonian village of Els Guiamets in the famed Priorat wine region, the anti-fascist activist and Nazi camp survivor Neus Català died in an assisted living facility only a few hundred yards from the house where she had been born 103 years earlier. Català is one of the last...
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Alvah Bessie’s 1939 memoir still reads like a compelling lesson in twentieth-century history—as does the rest of Bessie’s activist life.
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Arthur Witt lived an interesting and full, but all too short, life. The first child of Herman and Ida Witkowsky, he was born on October 4, 1907, in Brooklyn, New York. The family changed its name to Witt in late 1916. He died February 27, 1937, fighting the Fascists on the battlefield at...
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Editor’s Note: This article first appeared on France24 and is reprinted here with the author’s permission. Nearly half a million Spaniards crossed the border into France after Barcelona fell to General Francisco Franco 80 years ago. Many were detained in makeshift internment camps during a dark chapter of French history that has been all but forgotten....
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An old snapshot of three smiling teenagers leads a researcher to one of the Spanish survivors of the Buchenwald concentration camp.
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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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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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Please find attached photos of my visits to the graves of Lester Rowlson and Tersil Obriot last weekend. I left a brigade flag and a fresh white rose at each. ,,, I was also proud to include aspects of my Clapton CFC scarf; you might have heard of this small football club in London that...
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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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