International Brigade Memorial Trust
A message from the Rien Dijkstra, Secretary of the Dutch Stichting Spanje 1936-1939 International Brigade memorial association…
Dear friends, lieber Freunden, cher amis, queridos amigos,
The participants of the International Brigades came from many countries. But different country numbers are mentioned in different books about the Spanish Civil War. Usually it is mentioned that the participants came from some 50 countries.
However an inventory of the country lists of participants in the Comintern archives gives a different number. Based on the Kominternarchief RGASPI 545 OP6 the participants came from 63 different countries. We made a map of it. The map of these countries can be found at:
Posted on 12 November 2016.
A comment from Allan Christiansen in Denmark:
I can look at the list of countries from which men and women travelled to Spain to participate in the war against Franco's fascist troops that here mentions Iceland, but Iceland was part of Denmark until 1944;
12 to 15 Icelanders took part in the fighting. From Faroe Islands attended two men, but the Faroes are still part of Denmark.
The conclusion must be that they are all considered as Danes in the context. But it sounds interesting to find out the number of countries from which men and women came to Spain during the war of 1936-39.
Posted on 13 November 2016.
Rien Dijkstra comments:
Allan made some valid remarks that are very understandable and similar remarks were made by other people about participants from Algeria, India and Vietnam. And what to think about Indonesia, Morocco and Tunisia?
The current map shows the countries as named in this specific part of the Komintern archives (RGASPI 545 OP 6). So the interesting thing about this feedback is that even more countries were involved.
If there are references with proven volunteers that went to Spain from other countries as well as those currently listed we can add them to the map and also add these references. You can send this to us at: spanje3639@gmail.com
Posted on 14 November 2016.
