Features

Setting the Record Straight: The Liberation of Paris, August 25, 1944

August 26, 2019
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Setting the Record Straight: The Liberation of Paris, August 25, 1944

The half-tracks of the French Second Armored Division that entered Paris in August 1944 were baptized “Brunete,” “Guadalajara,” “Teruel,” or “L’Ebre,” and manned by Spanish exiles. Some 500 Spanish Loyalists served in the Leclerc Division. Yet the official story of the Liberation of Paris has always presented the battle as a purely French affair.
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Giles Tremlett: “The International Brigades Were Not an Outfit of the Communist International—They Were Antifascists.”

August 26, 2019
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Giles Tremlett: “The International Brigades Were Not an Outfit of the Communist International—They Were Antifascists.”

Giles Tremlett, long-time correspondent in Madrid, is finishing a major new book on the 35,000 volunteers from all over the world who flocked to Spain to help defend the Second Spanish Republic against fascism.
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Poetry Feature: Sanctuary

August 5, 2019
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<em>Poetry Feature:</em> Sanctuary

Sanctuary   The village creek serpentines to open seas where I stand all day at the ocean shore, feeling the Earth’s core tremble.   Sailor Melville got it right, picturing landlubbers lined at water’s edge looking outward on holidays chary of wet feet.   I’m of the coastal breed, fear-fed by tsunamis, yellow signs...
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Dreaming Wide Awake in the Archives

August 5, 2019
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Dreaming Wide Awake in the Archives

The ALBA collection at NYU’s Tamiment Library is an extraordinary trove of documents, images, and artifacts chronicling the lives of the almost 3,000 American men and women who joined the Spanish Civil War. It collection represents about ten percent of these volunteers—a respectable sampling. But is it representative?
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Human Rights Column: Reflections from the Border: Advocating for Migrant Children’s Rights

August 5, 2019
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<em>Human Rights Column:</em> Reflections from the Border: Advocating for Migrant Children’s Rights

What prompted the migrant caravan? A first-hand look at two epicenters of the immigration story.
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The Spanish Civil War (1936-1952): A Reinterpretation

August 5, 2019
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The Spanish Civil War (1936-1952): A Reinterpretation

The notion that the Spanish Civil War ended on April 1, 1939 is a convention that is as taken for granted—in textbooks, scholarship and the media—as, say, the date of Franco’s death, November 20, 1975. Yet the death of Franco is a fact, while the establishment of the end of the war in 1939...
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Alvah Bessie’s Men in Battle Published in Spain

August 5, 2019
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Alvah Bessie’s <em>Men in Battle</em> Published in Spain

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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Iraqi Volunteers in Spain

August 5, 2019
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Iraqi Volunteers in Spain

Among the 35,000 volunteers who traveled to Spain to support the Loyalist cause during the Spanish Civil War were two Iraqis. This is what we know about them.
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The Painful Past of Spanish Civil War Refugees in France, 80 Years On

March 9, 2019
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The Painful Past of Spanish Civil War Refugees in France, 80 Years On

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 Early Casualty of the War: Arthur Witt

March 9, 2019
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An Early Casualty of the War: Arthur Witt

New Yorker Arthur Witt was among the many Lincoln volunteers to be killed at Jarama, in February 1937. Although he was only 29, he’d lived a full life. The back story of a Lincoln Volunteer. Arthur Witt (originally Witkowsky) was born on October 4, 1907, in Brooklyn, New York in a modest Jewish family....
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