Hurricane Sandy swamped the schools of Bergen County, New Jersey last November, forcing postponement of ALBA’s teaching institute, but the spring term brought an exciting revival as 22 Spanish language and social studies high school educators attended a lively one-day session at the Bergen County Academies, organized by administrator Tim Casperson, in Hackensack.
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Jim Benét, lifelong journalist and veteran of the American Regiment de Tren (Transport) in the International Brigades, died in December near his home in northern California of a blood infection. He was 98. Born in New York to a literary family on both sides—his father was William Rose Benét, a poet; his uncle, Stephen...
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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, Arizona on November 11. His vast collection of photographs—which included not only his own camera work but a large array of negatives, albums of prints,...
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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 the presentation of fresh historical source material from the ALBA...
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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 little attention.
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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 his son Ricardo. Born in rural Wisconsin, Bown went to Spain in 1937 and saw action with the MacKenzie-Papineau battalion until the volunteers were repatriated...
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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 more are expected in the fall. Last March, ALBA board...
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As we begin the fifth year of ALBA’s teaching programs for high school instructors, we are detecting positive patterns in the anonymous evaluations each teacher is asked to complete at the end of the program. Last December in Chicago, for example, a male world history teacher indicated that he had begun the session with...
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Focusing a wide lens on the human rights agenda, ALBA hosted “Impugning Impunity: A Human Rights Documentary Film Series” at the Museum of the City of New York in November. The festival kicked off with Hollman Morris’ Impunity, a film about the victims of state-sponsored terrorism in Colombia and the truth commission that was...
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A new spirit of human rights activism ignited tremendous enthusiasm as 300-plus friends of the Abraham Lincoln Brigade commemorated the 75th anniversary of the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War at a reunion in New York on May 14. The day’s highlight was the presentation of the first annual ALBA-Puffin Award for Human Rights...
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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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Notre Combat, Journal de la 15ème Brigade Internationale, No. 32, August 19, 1937, p. 7. Dimitrov Heroes by Ivan Gosnjak The First Section of the Matija Gubec Company of the Dimitrov Battalion is almost wholly composed of comrades coming from Canada. These comrades are, in the main, Croats who were compelled by economic...
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The 80th anniversary Ebro commemorative tour organised this May by FIBI – Friends of the International Brigades in Ireland – coincided with Memorial Weekend in the USA. At the grave of Lincoln Battalion Ebro casualty John Cookson (killed in action, September 1938), located near Marçà in Catalunya, Nancy Wallach, ALBA Board member and daughter...
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Bennett Jeffries Doty, Soldier of Fortune, attorney and author died April 4, 1938 in an unidentified hospital near Gandesa, Spain. Doty was born to Lemuel Humphries Doty (1866-1962) and Margaret “Mell” Jeffries Doty on August 16, 1900 in Faunsdale, Hale County, Alabama. Doty, who had an adventurous streak, joined the Tennessee Army National...
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From the third minute of this video, Friends of the International Brigades in Ireland are shown on their May 26 visit to the battlefield outside Corbera d’Ebre, where Kerry born Lincoln Battalion volunteer Thomas O’Flaherty had been among those brigadistas killed in action in September 1938, and whose nephew, Kerry Flaherty, carries an Abraham...
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THE VOLUNTEER Volume 2, January 15, 1938 No other International volunteer in Spain has been in so unique a position as Dr. Jack Klein, the American dentist with a roving commission. Ever-busy, ever smiling he has covered all the fronts, travelling over 10,000 miles in his dental truck, and treated about 3,000 persons, including...
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After seven years of work, a new PBS documentary on the international quest to bring Francoist officials to justice is making the festival rounds. An interview with the filmmakers. When I visited Almudena Carracedo and Robert Bahar in their Madrid apartment last November, they seemed prey to a peculiar mix of exhaustion, expectation, and...
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Alexander Sauermilch was one of more than seventy American volunteers who boarded the Ciudad de Barcelona (City of Barcelona) docked in port of Marseille, France on the night of May 30, 1937. The following afternoon as the Ciudad de Barcelona, hugged the coast approaching Malaga she was sighted by a Nationalist submarine. The General...
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Fred Williams in Spain Twenty-one-year old Fred Williams was living in St. Louis Missouri when he volunteered to serve in the International Brigades. He sailed for France on October 23, 1937 aboard the SS Champlain and crossed into Spain arriving in Figueres on November 5, 1937. Williams arrived in Tarazona the American training base...
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MARY AND I ARE GLAD OUR SON WENT TO SPAIN Southern Father and Mother Tell How the Spanish People’s Fight for Democracy Belongs to Them By Pat Barr Southern Worker, Magazine of the Common People of the South, Vol. V, No. 16, July 1937. It was a happy group that gathered at the railroad...
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Keep ‘Em Rolling By Hy Chesler Originally published in The Volunteer for Liberty, Vol. II, No. 5, February 12, 1938. The work of the Transport units of the Republican Army is apt to be taken for granted, especially by volunteers who come from highly mechanized countries. It is hardly necessary, however, to point out...
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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