Vestal Virgins

By Brian Freeman

The Vestal Virgins of ancient Rome was an unknown cult to me. The keepers of the scared flame of Rome are hardly studied. Many including myself were clueless to the reasonability the Virgins had on Roman history. The article “Vestal Virgins Chaste Keepers of the flame” by Melissa Barden Dowling is an outstanding article that shows the social importance and political power the Virgins had on the Ancient Roman society. To be a Vestal Virgin in ancient times was to be a super powered celebrity. If the virgins existed today they would probably be more popular and more influential than celebrities the likes of Britney Spears, Paris Hiltion and Jennifer Lopez. The origin Numa paid homage to the goddess whose priestess was the unwitting mother of Rome’s founder. The vestal virgin Rhea Silvia gave birth to Romulus after being raped by Mars, the god of war.

Review of the Shoah Foundation

By: Brian Freeman

“The Shoah Foundation.” September 04, 2007. Online: http:// www.vhf.org.

The Holocaust was one of the most central events of the twentieth century. During the time of Nazi Germany, under the rule of Hitler, millions of Jews were murdered. This tragic event affected everyone that lived during that time. Although many died, there were also many people who survived this horrific event. The survivors’ stories of prejudice, intolerance, bigotry and suffering are ones that should never be forgotten. In today’s digital age we now have the power and ability to preserve these historical stories of the survivors of the Holocaust so that future generations will always be able to educate themselves on the Holocaust. There are many foundations that preserve these historical testimonies. One such foundation is the Shoah Foundation, which is partnered with one of the strongest educational institutions in America.

The Shoah Foundation, also known as the Survivors of the Shoah Visual History Foundation, is a non-profit organization. The foundation was originally established by Academy Award winning director Steven Spielberg in 1994, one year after completing the ground breaking Holocaust film Schindler's List. In 1994, the foundation’s original goals were to document the experiences of Holocaust survivors and other witnesses, including those who aided, rescued, and liberated the survivors. In the first six years the foundation collected nearly 52,000 testimonies from fifty-six countries and in thirty two languages. In each testimony, one survivor or witness speaks about his or her life before, during, and after the Holocaust.

The Shoah Foundation partnered with University of Southern California in 2006. Since the partnership the foundation has been slowly making the testimonial videos more accessible to public educators and the general public. The foundation’s website, which is hosted by USC, can be easily accessed by the web address www.vhf.org. On the site there are many pages about the history, future plans, and general frequently asked questions about the foundation. The best part of the website is not text information that it gives but rather the interactive videos and testimonial videos that are displayed. All the available videos are in a QuickTime format which makes them easily accessible to both Windows and Mac users. The videos can be streamed from the website but not downloaded to a computer. The website also allows you to do massive searches on the online archive. The videos the site contains consist of testimonies from survivors of the Nazi death camps. A majority of the videos are accounts from Jewish, handicapped, and homosexual survivors that have been derived from personal interviews with members of The Shoah Foundation. The testimonies have been edited for time purposes and run approximately ten to thirty minutes in length.

In addition to the personal testimonies, the site also contains various interactive videos that include reenactments. One exceptional video, which is produced by Steven Spielberg, is Voices of the Holocaust. It is an interactive web video that can be accessed in the online exhibition portion of the site. Voices of the Holocaust is narrated by a star studded cast featuring Peter Coyote, Elijah Wood, and Natalie Portman. Voices of the Holocaust highlights testimonies from four survivors who were children during the Holocaust. The video allows interaction with the testimonies, while simultaneously exploring historical overviews, archival film footage, a glossary, maps, and survivors’ personal photos.

In conclusion, The Shoah Foundation website is very impressive in its sheer video content and easy to use in design. The promise of more videos and online exhibits in the future gives the site more educational value. The foundation and site has really grown since initial funding from Steven Spielberg in 1994. It now has life beyond the support of a single individual. With the enjoyed partnership of USC, individual donors and corporate donations provide the crucial funding to advance the foundation’s mission and strategic goals. The actions that the foundation are taking will truly be remembered. By digitizing, cataloguing, and indexing those who survived the Holocaust through www.vhf.org ensures that their stories and faces will never be forgotten for years to come.

Band of Brothers episode summary of "Why We Fight"

By: Brian Freeman

Steven Spielberg and his movies have forever changed the movie industry. Spielberg has dedicated his life to making great movies that not only entertain us but give us insight to the reality of human nature. Among all of Steven Spielberg’s amazing and award winning movies, his dramatization of World War II seems to have the most effect on people. Spielberg’s movies Saving Private Ryan and Schindler’s List are the highest grossing World War II based movies ever. Spielberg has dominated the movie industry and knew there were more World War II stories to be told. When Spielberg and lead man Tom Hanks from Saving Private Ryan approached HBO to do a television show about a group of American paratroopers in World War II, no one knew the impact of interest that would ignite.

Band of Brothers is a ten-part video series of the dramatic history of E Company, 506th Regiment, 101st Airborne, known as “Easy Company.” Although the company’s first experience in real combat did not come until June 1944 (D-Day), this exemplary group fought in some of the war’s most harrowing battles and saw the worst of Nazi Germany. Band of Brothers depicts not only the heroism of their exploits but also the extraordinary bond among men formed in the crucible of war. Based on the book Band of Brothers, written by historian and biographer Stephen Ambrose the series has became a huge success. The series has won six Emmys and a Golden Globe for Best Miniseries or Motion Picture Made for Television.

One of the most compelling episodes of Band of Brothers is Why We Fight. In the Episode we find the battle harden men of Easy Company in Germany where they find no enemy resistance. In fact, they find warm beds and hot meals in the houses they commandeer. Many of the men go about looting the German homes and farms for food and valuables. They find the "enemy" to be industrious and not much different from them. Many of the soldiers wonder why they are even at war with the Germans. Major Winters is concerned about his friend Captain Nixon who returns from a disastrous combat jump with another unit cynical about the war and drinking heavily. Nixon goes on search for a specific alcoholic drink. Nixon breaks into a German home looking for his booze, and he finds he has broken into a highly decorated German Soldiers home. The soldier is not there, but his wife finds Nixon. They say nothing to each other, only blank stares. Nixon walks out, slamming the door on his exit. Half way through the episode a patrol makes a gruesome discovery of a small concentration camp in the woods of Landsberg. The camp was a part of the sub camps of the Dachau concentration camp. The men are horrified at what they find. They find starving and dying men lying everywhere. Those still alive were living in horrible conditions and begging for food and water. The dead bodies are piled so high that they steam of gases. Several of the combat-hardened veterans break down when they see the condition of the prisoners. They immediately begin passing out rations and water. They go to a nearby town and steal food from the local people to feed the prisoners. The locals pretend to know nothing of the camp much to the anger of the soldiers. The soldiers were thinking that the prisoners were criminals. They were shocked to learn that the men who have been starved and murdered at the camp are not criminals but Jews, Poles, and Gypsies.

The men struggle on deciding what they should do with the survivors. Finally the chief medical officer arrives and in a tragic twist of irony and to the dismay of the soldiers they are ordered to relock the gates and ordered to stop giving food to the prisoners. The chief medical officer’s reason for his decision was because giving the starving prisoners too much food would kill them. He also wanted to keep them contained so they could monitor their recovery. The division commander forces the local population to do mandatory cleanup of the camp. The local men and women are dismayed and horrified at the sight. They are forced to move the dead bodies to mass graves. Many of the local men cry as they dig graves and move the skeleton corpses. In one scene a group of women grab a corpse to be moved and the rotted flesh peels off in their hands. Captain Nixon monitors the progress and is no longer drinking. He walks through the camp staring at the burning bodies and the mass graves. Nixon stares out and then sees a lone woman dragging a dead body. While she is struggling with the body, Nixon instantly recognizes the woman. She was the wife of the German Soldier whose house he had broken into. They both stare at each other and Nixon realizes what he is fighting for.

Why They Fight had some of the most visually outstanding scenes of all the series. The episode captured the humanity of the American soldiers and gave the characters back their heart. Band of Brothers is truly one of Steven Spielberg’s greatest works. Not just for this episode but for the entire series. Band of Brothers ranks among one of the great television shows and Why We Fight will be remembered as one of the best episodes among the series.

Hanks, Tom and Spielberg, Stevens. Band of Brothers Special Edition Box Set, Dreamworks Picture,2002.