Tag Archives: oral history

New Mini-Documentary

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Brooklyn College has posted a mini-documentary featuring me and two women who served in Vietnam. (Gotta say, I ain’t a TV natural!)

This was shot over a year ago, and it highlights two amazing women. Sue O’Neil was a nurse at the 27th Surgical Hospital in Vietnam, and Dr. Jeannie Christie served as a Red Cross volunteer in Vietnam – a ‘Donut Dolly.’

We did this because it is my opinion that the Ken Burns epic documentary on Vietnam that airs in fall 2017 severely slighted the stories of American women in Vietnam. As Dianne Carlson Evans, the founder of the Vietnam Women’s Memorial frequently points out, perhaps 260,000 American women lived worked and served in Vietnam during the war years.

Veterans and Memory

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Brooklyn College student Elizabeth Jefimova interviewed World War II veteran Seymour Kaplan on February 24, 2017, at Kaplan’s home in Brooklyn.

In this clip, Kaplan recalls how his willingness to tell his story of service was shut down. He did not speak of the war for fifty years. In my experience as an interviewer, I have often found that veterans are encouraged to be silent about what they have seen and done in war — often by their very own families.