In Memoriam

December 22, 2012
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In Memoriam

The past months have been a time of loss for the International Brigade community. Harry Randall, Adolphe Low, Jim Benét, David Lomon, and Albert Hirschman left us, as did Sylvia Thompson, widow of Lincoln Brigade and Second World War veteran Bob Thompson (1915-1965) and Dr. Moisès Broggi, the Catalan physician who headed up the...
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Posted in Memory's Roster

A Spanish Schindler in Budapest

December 22, 2012
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A Spanish Schindler in Budapest

The Franco regime let some 10,000 Spanish Republican exiles die in Nazi concentration camps. But one remarkable and little-told episode of Spanish aid to European Jewry is that of the Franco regime’s foreign minister stationed in Hungary, Ángel Sanz Briz, who managed to save...
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Posted in Features

ALBA’s back in school, hurricane or not

December 22, 2012
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ALBA’s back in school, hurricane or not

After organizing three successful professional development programs for high school teachers this spring—in Seattle, Tampa, and Oberlin, Ohio—ALBA launched three more in the autumn term in Alameda County, California, New York City, and Bergen County, New Jersey. As in the past, teachers are welcoming...
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Posted in News, Education

Two Students Win 2012 George Watt Memorial Essay Award

January 4, 2013
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Two Students Win 2012 George Watt Memorial Essay Award

ALBA’s George Watt Memorial Essay Prizes are awarded each year 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...
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Posted in News

Watt Award: Canadian veterans and the politics of memory

January 4, 2013
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Watt Award: Canadian veterans and the politics of memory

In the latter half of the 1930s, 1,700 Canadians journeyed to Spain to defend the elected republic against General Francisco Franco’s military revolt. Decades later, as these men...
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Posted in News, Essays

Watt Award: U.S. newspapers and the Lincoln Brigade

January 4, 2013
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Watt Award: U.S. newspapers and the Lincoln Brigade

U.S. newspaper coverage of the Abraham Lincoln Brigade reveals the domestic and foreign policy debates that arose in the late 1930s and continued into the late 1950s. I...
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Posted in News, Essays

The Spanish bloodlands: Ángel Viñas, warrior historian

January 4, 2013
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The Spanish bloodlands: Ángel Viñas, warrior historian

“There is not a single one among the conservative or neo-Francoist historians who does not manipulate or skew the historical evidence. They sell bold-faced lies. This sounds harsh, I know. But I have proven it time and again. In Spain, the myths propagated by Francoism have survived, conveniently freshened up, and are mobilized in...
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Posted in Features

New York remembers Guernica

January 4, 2013
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New York remembers Guernica

For forty-some years, until 1981, New York City was home to Picasso’s Guernica—painted in response to the destruction of the Basque city by the German Luftwaffe in April 1937. This past October, Guernica returned to New York symbolically as the city commemorated the 75th...
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Posted in News

Jack Hirschman: The Gernika Arcane

January 4, 2013
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Jack Hirschman: The Gernika Arcane

You’re all feet waiting / to do the saranda / tonight / hair-free and shoulders / swaying, laughing / because tomorrow you’ll / have to carry a column / of trays / of sardines on your head
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Posted in Features

Eight ways to read the Spanish crisis (part 1)

January 4, 2013
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Eight ways to read the Spanish crisis (part 1)

The economic crisis in Spain, which many thought short-lived, appears to have no end in sight. Everyone has a story—a narrative of the crisis that points to some responsible...
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Posted in Essays

A Chinese volunteer in the Lincoln Brigade

January 4, 2013
By and
A Chinese volunteer in the Lincoln Brigade

Among the nearly 3,000 U.S. volunteers who joined the International Brigades in Spain, there were two Chinese: Chi Chang (张纪) from Minnesota and Dong Hong Yick (his Chinese name:...
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Posted in Features

Remembering Bethune in Málaga and Montréal

January 4, 2013
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Remembering Bethune in Málaga and Montréal

The recent popularity of public commemorations of violent events from the Spanish Civil War and the Franco dictatorship has rubbed some academic historians the wrong way. “We’ve known about...
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Posted in Essays

Lavapiés and the anarchist roots of 15-M

January 4, 2013
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Lavapiés and the anarchist roots of 15-M

How much does Spain’s 15-M movement owe to past political struggles? The protests that broke out on May 15, 2011 reveal an interesting convergence of the old and the...
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Posted in Essays

Veterans Day at UW: The ALB and the “military family”

November 26, 2012
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Veterans Day at UW: The ALB and the “military family”

Is there a military family of the Spanish Civil War, and of the International Brigades in particular?  Until November 11, 2012, I had never asked myself, or anyone else,...
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Posted in Blog

What did Hemingway do to save the Republic?

November 22, 2012
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What did Hemingway do to save the Republic?

We know, of course, that he gave his talent as a writer to support the Republican side. But there are at least two additional things Hemingway did that have attracted...
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Posted in Blog

Book review: Toxic myths

January 4, 2013
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Book review: Toxic myths

The War and its Shadow: Spain’s Civil War in Europe’s Long Twentieth Century, by Helen Graham, Portland, OR: Sussex Academic Press, 2012. 250 pp. Many subjects thread through the pages...
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Posted in Reviews

Book review: Sam Levinger

January 4, 2013
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Book review: Sam Levinger

Love and Revolutionary Greetings: An Ohio Boy in the Spanish Civil War (Eugene, Ore.: Resource Publications, 2012), by Laurie E. Levinger. The story of a young Jewish-American Socialist from...
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Posted in Reviews

Book review: The English captain

January 4, 2013
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Book review: The English captain

The Last English Revolutionary: Tom Wintringham, 1898-1949 (Brighton, Portland, Toronto: Sussex Academic Press, 2012), by Hugh Purcell with Phyll Smith. A very welcome “enlarged, revised and updated edition” of the...
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Posted in Reviews

David Lomon (1918-2012)

December 21, 2012
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David Lomon (1918-2012)

Our friends from the UK write: We are sad to report the sudden death of David Lomon, the last known survivor in Britain of the more than 2,500 volunteers...
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Posted in Blog

James Walker Benét (1914-2012)

December 17, 2012
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James Walker Benét (1914-2012)

We just received the sad news that Jim Benét, journalist and veteran of the Abraham Lincoln Brigade, passed away this weekend in Santa Rosa, California. This past August he...
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Posted in Blog

Harry W. Randall (1915-2012)

January 4, 2013
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Harry W. Randall (1915-2012)

Harry W. Randall, Jr., once the chief photographer of the special photographic unit of the Fifteenth Brigade during the Spanish Civil War, died at a care facility in Snowflake,...
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Posted in Memory's Roster

Albert Hirschman (1915–2012)

December 12, 2012
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Albert Hirschman (1915–2012)

Sad news from Princeton’s Institute of Advanced Study: Albert Hirschman, German-born brilliant scholar and veteran of the Spanish Civil War, passed away at the age of 97. From the...
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Posted in Blog

Adolphe Low (1915-2012)

December 2, 2012
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Adolphe Low (1915-2012)

Victor Grossman in Berlin writes to report sad news:  the death, earlier this month, of German IB veteran Adolphe Low, who was granted French citizenship in 1945 and remained...
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Posted in Blog, Memory's Roster

Moisès Broggi i Vallès (1908-2012)

January 4, 2013
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Moisès Broggi i Vallès (1908-2012)

Dr. Moisès Broggi i Vallès, who passed away at age 104 on the last day of the year, was a renowned Catalan surgeon who during the Civil War headed up...
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Posted in Blog