ALBA/Puffin Award supports struggle for victims’ rights in Latin America

June 13, 2012
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ALBA/Puffin Award supports struggle for victims’ rights in Latin America

ALBA’s annual celebrations in New York City and Berkeley, California (video; photos), commemorated the 75th anniversary of the bombing of Guernica and honored the groundbreaking work of two tireless defenders of human rights in Latin America: Fredy Peccerelli, Executive Director of the Guatemalan Forensic Anthropology Foundation, and Kate Doyle, Senior Analyst of U.S. policy in Latin...
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Posted in News

Media spotlight on Doyle and Peccerelli

June 13, 2012
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Media spotlight on Doyle and Peccerelli

The New Yorker, CNN, ProPublica, PRI, NPR, and EFE were among the media featuring this year's ALBA/Puffin Award winners. “How do you bring tolerance and democracy to a country in which a murderous military, which over the years...
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Posted in News, Video

For truth, justice, and dignity

June 13, 2012
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For truth, justice, and dignity

Edited speeches by the recipients of the 2012 ALBA/Puffin Award for Human Rights Activism and the ALBA/Puffin Student Activist Award, presented at the Museum of the City of New York.
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Posted in News

Greetings from Garzón, Amigos

June 13, 2012
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Greetings from Garzón, Amigos

Judge Baltasar Garzón, winner of the 2011 ALBA/Puffin Award for Human Rights Activism, sent a video message to congratulate this year's winners, while the Asociación de Amigos de las...
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Posted in News, Video

Justice for the Disappeared

June 13, 2012
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Justice for the Disappeared

My interest in Guatemala began when I was a student, when I learned that in 1954, the United States had engineered a coup against Guatemala’s elected president, Jacobo Árbenz,...
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Posted in Features

Award winners on This American Life

June 10, 2012
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Award winners on This American Life

Joining forces with ProPublica, Ira Glass's This American Life recently featured Fredy Peccerelli and Kate Doyle, winners of the 2012 ALBA/Puffin Award for Human Rights Activism, in an...
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Posted in Blog

The Spanish Holocaust: Reframing the Civil War

June 13, 2012
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The Spanish Holocaust: Reframing the Civil War

Names matter. Paul Preston’s choice of The Spanish Holocaust, his latest and most ambitious account of the massive violence unleashed in the wake of the 1936 coup, is as polemical as it is well-pondered. It reflects a conscious attempt on Preston’s part to reframe how we think about the war in Spain and its...
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Posted in Features, Reviews

Teaching programs continue to grow: Seattle, Ohio, Florida

July 1, 2012
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Teaching programs continue to grow: Seattle, Ohio, Florida

Now in its fifth year, ALBA’s educational program aims to reach high school teachers of social studies and Spanish who will use archival sources related to the Spanish Civil War in their classrooms. Three separate programs filled the calendar during the spring term; three...
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Posted in News, Education

Unfinished journey: U.S. Spaniards face the Civil War

July 2, 2012
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Unfinished journey: U.S. Spaniards face the Civil War

On March 27, 1938, Avelino González Mallada, former mayor of the Asturian city of Gijón, died in a car crash on a country road in Woodstock, Virginia. The next day, The New York Times explained that “Señor Mallada was in this country on a sixty-day...
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Posted in Essays

In the footsteps of the Lincoln-Washington Battalion

July 1, 2012
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In the footsteps of the Lincoln-Washington Battalion

(Versión en castellano aquí.) At the end of 2004 a good friend  of mine found, by chance, a piece of graffiti on a wall in the chapel of...
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Posted in Features, Essays, Uncategorized

An English nurse in Spain

July 2, 2012
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An English nurse in Spain

Patience Darton must be one of the few people ever to describe Ernest Hemingway as ‘charming and humble.’ She recorded her impression of him in a letter written from...
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Posted in Essays

Mauthausen: A Spaniard’s tale

July 2, 2012
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Mauthausen: A Spaniard’s tale

A Spaniard named Carlos Rodríguez del Risco was imprisoned in the Nazi concentration camp of Mauthausen from 1940 to 1945. Although he was sympathetic to the Spanish Republic when...
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Posted in Essays

Could WWII have been avoided?

July 2, 2012
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Could WWII have been avoided?

The great majority of books on 20th-century history treat the period from 1917 to 1991 as one of unremitting rivalry between Soviet communism and Western capitalist democracy, a rivalry...
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Posted in Essays

Los voluntarios cubanos en la GCE

July 2, 2012
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Los voluntarios cubanos en la GCE

La originalidad de la participación cubana en la Guerra de España reside en su importancia numérica en relación con la de los países hispanoamericanos, especialmente las islas antillanas de...
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Posted in Essays

Vernon Wilbert Bown (1917-2012)

July 2, 2012
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Vernon Wilbert Bown (1917-2012)

One of the last surviving veterans of the Abraham Lincoln Brigade, Vernon Bown, died of pneumonia at a VA hospital in Martinez, California, on March 23, as reported by...
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Posted in Memory's Roster

Bard College Students in the Archive

July 2, 2012
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Bard College Students in the Archive

“I felt I was not reading history, I was helping to write it,” said one of the Bard College students who visited the Abraham Lincoln Brigade Archives (ALBA) on...
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Posted in News

Review: Julian Bell from Bloomsbury to the SCW

July 2, 2012
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Review: Julian Bell from Bloomsbury to the SCW

Julian Bell: From Bloomsbury to the Spanish Civil War. By Peter Stansky and William Abrahams. Stanford University Press, 2012. (Buy at Powells and support ALBA.) In 1966, Peter Stansky...
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Posted in Reviews

Review: Frank Tinker, Mercenary Ace in the SCW

July 2, 2012
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Review: Frank Tinker, Mercenary Ace in the SCW

Smith, Richard K. and R. Cargill Hall.  Five Down, No Glory:  Frank G. Tinker, Mercenary Ace in the Spanish Civil War.  Naval Institute Press.  Oct. 2011.  377 pp.  illus. ...
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Posted in Reviews

Honoring my uncle Phil Schachter

July 2, 2012
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Honoring my uncle Phil Schachter

I have always known about the Abraham Lincoln Brigade. It was part of my family's proud heritage. My Aunt Toby Jensky was a nurse and administrator in the American...
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Posted in Memory's Roster

California Vets: Del Berg and Jim Benét

July 2, 2012
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California Vets: Del Berg and Jim Benét

Northern California is the fortunate home to two of the remaining Lincoln Brigade veterans: former newspaperman James Benét, now 98, and Delmer Berg, a very lively 96.  Two of...
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Posted in Essays

The future of ALBA: Your legacy

July 2, 2012
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The future of ALBA: Your legacy

Planning for your will and your legacy? The Veterans of the Abraham Lincoln Brigade established their legacy with the Abraham Lincoln Brigade Archives. Now you can continue their “good...
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Posted in News

Treasures in the Archives: Shapiro SCW Scrapboook

June 22, 2012
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Treasures in the Archives:  Shapiro SCW Scrapboook

I had the pleasure of visiting the ALBA archives a couple of weeks ago with Alan Levine, a New York-based civil rights attorney with a longstanding interest in the...
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Posted in Blog

Removal of Franco statue sparks legal controversy

June 18, 2012
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Removal of Franco statue sparks legal controversy

The Supreme Court in Madrid has denied an appeal from the Fundación Francisco Franco to relocate a statue of Franco on horseback to its original location in the La...
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Posted in Blog

Letter: Inspired by the Brigade

July 2, 2012
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Letter: Inspired by the Brigade

I have always been intrigued by the men and women of the Abraham Lincoln Brigade. They fought for the right reasons- stopping tyranny, and supporting a legally elected government...
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Posted in Letters

On “The Outsiders: Martha Gellhorn”

June 8, 2012
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On “The Outsiders: Martha Gellhorn”

In this 1983 interview with Martha Gellhorn, the renowned journalist, novelist, and war correspondent discusses in great length her views regarding the Great Depression, the Spanish Civil War,...
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Posted in Blog

BBC interviews Basque refugees

May 25, 2012
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BBC interviews Basque refugees

BBC Mundo released a short video interviewing three of the Basque children who were sent to England 75 years ago.
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Posted in Blog

New children’s book on SCW

May 22, 2012
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New children’s book on SCW

Lydia Syson, author of the forthcoming A World Between Us, which tells the story of the Spanish Civil War to children, was interviewed about her work last week...
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Posted in Blog

Spanish Civil War at Kinderland

May 4, 2012
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Spanish Civil War at Kinderland

In this video just uploaded by the Yiddish Book Center as part of the Wexler Oral History Project, Pauline Katz retells her grandfather's story about how Read more »

Posted in Blog

BBC remembers Guernica

May 4, 2012
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"Witness," the BBC World Service radio show, commemorated the bombing of Guernica last week. Listen to the 9-minute program here. In Germany, Der Spiegel did the same.
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Posted in Blog

Remembering the People’s Olympiad 76 years later

June 14, 2012
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Remembering the People’s Olympiad 76 years later

Documents from the planned 1936 'Spanish Olympiad' have now been digitized and published by the University of Warwick.
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Posted in Blog