I've Got A Secret - witness to Lincoln assassination TV appearance

[cab67]

9. This is why historical documentaries are so important.

In the Maasai language, there are two words for "death." That's because you die twice. The first time, your heart stops beating. The second time, the last person who knew you dies. You're not completely dead as long as you're in living memory.

I think back on the best history documentary series - BBC's The World At War, Ken Burns' series on WW2 and Vietnam, an earlier PBS series on the Vietnam War, a documentary I saw many years ago about the Civil Rights era whose title I've forgotten, and so on. Their greatest impact is when living witnesses are interviewed. This is also why Steven Spielberg's Shoah project was so critical - he was collecting eyewitness accounts of the Holocaust while those eyewitnesses were still able to provide them.

I remain aghast that so few such documentaries were made during the 1950s or 1960s of the First World War, when many veterans were still alive and lucid. A few were made much later with the few remaining centenarian veterans, but imagine how much richer our understanding of the conflict would be with their testimony.

I realize this wasn't a documentary. But, still - it records the memories of an actual eyewitness who is no longer with us. He links us in a very living way to real history.