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Articles on History Matters:

The Historical Archives Releases The NAZI Concentration & Death Camps Film Collection on DVD

"With all the mythology around the holocaust a dose of unedited reality is sometimes necessary," reports Steven Chabotte, president of The Historical Archive. "The Nazi Concentration & Death Camps Film Collection delivers raw unedited footage taken by liberators as they freed detainees at the end of World War II. It shows how it really was for these people living in horror and makes it very clear why we as a world civilization never want to head in that direction again."

Hate crimes and violence are endemic in our society. With the recurring outbreaks of violence in the Middle East and the thread of anti-Semitism showing up in many European countries and elsewhere, there is great danger. The motto "Never Forget" has never been more true than today.

"With all the mythology around the holocaust a dose of unedited reality is sometimes necessary" reports Steven Chabotte, president of The Historical Archive. "The Nazi Concentration & Death Camps Film Collection delivers raw unedited footage taken by liberators as they freed detainees at the end of World War II. It shows how it really was for these people living in horror and makes it very clear why we as a world civilization never want to head in that direction again."

The Nazi Concentration & Death Camps Film Collection was created in its raw unedited format to allow people 60 years disconnected from these events to see firsthand the horrors that people were subjected to under the brutal dictatorship of Hitler and the Nazis.

It was built from a compilation of two collections.

The first collection, "Nazi Concentration Camps" is raw footage of Nazi concentration camps in the immediate aftermath of World War II. The footage was gathered by the US Department of Defense as part of the effort to conduct war crimes trials. Footage was taken by the liberators as they went from camp to camp freeing detainees. The film can be quite raw and graphic in some parts.

Included in this collection is footage of the following concentration camps: Ohrdruf. Breendonck, Nordhausen, Buchenwald, Bergen-Belsen, Penig, Leipsig, Arnstadt, Mauthausen and Hadamar.

The second film, "Nazi Murder Mills" represents the first actual newsreel pictures of atrocities in Nazi murder camps that were released to the public in a newsreel format. If offers real-life horror pictures revealing the unbelievable atrocities committed by the Nazis in their murder camps

According to Steven Chabotte, "Nazi Germany is no longer with us. But there are similar prejudicial attitudes that still prevail today. This collection of films starkly demonstrates what happened and can happen again in the future if the civilized world allows these attitudes to go unchecked and fester and grow as dark undercurrents to our society."

For more information on this DVD and its contents, please visit http://www.thehistoricalarchive.com/deathcamp.html or our main site http://www.thehistoricalarchive.com
08 Dec 2006

History of the Spanish Language in Spain

Spanish is, after Mandarin Chinese and English, the third most spoken language in the world, with an estimated 400.000.000 of native speakers throughout the planet. Its origins, however, are much more reduced, both geographically and numerically.

Together with other initially European languages such as Portuguese, French or Italian, the linguistic roots of Spanish make it a Romance language. This means that Latin, or more specifically, Vulgar Latin, constitutes its most important linguistic base.

The constant contact and mutual influence of the Latin basis with other linguistic traditions and cultures has led to the formation of the different Romance languages as we know them today. In the case of Spanish, there are, for example, characteristics that come from the Iberian and Celtic traditions.

There is also a great amount of Greek vocabulary that was first adopted by Latin speakers and then brought into Spanish. Words such as "escuela" (school) or "huerfano" (orphan) all belong to this tradition. And we should not forget the seven centuries of Arab domination of the peninsula. This has left, among other things, an important legacy of lexical elements that have been incorporated into the Spanish language. A surname you probably know which exemplifies this is "Almodovar".

Spanish is, especially in the bilingual territories of Spain, also known as castellano (Castilian), because of its origins in the region of Castilla. Castilla is situated in the north-central part of Spain, and it was once the neuralgic center of the Spanish empire that would take the Spanish language to more than twenty other countries.

The establishment of a linguistic unity of Spanish as a common language for the state of Spain was parallel to its territorial unity. This union was only possible after the Reconquest of the peninsula from the Arab settlers, at the end of the 15th century. The kingdom of Castilla, and also its linguistic variety, expanded to the practical totality of the Iberian Peninsula. After the marriage of Isabel I of Castilla and Fernando II of Aragon, the Spanish state was born, and Castilian language and culture became its most dominant identity. During the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, through a series of linguistic evolutions and normalizing changes, the language of the Spanish state became what is nowadays known as Modern Spanish.

It is important to remember, however, that spoken Spanish is not identical in the different regions of the Spanish state. In fact, its pronunciation and lexical characteristics can vary to a very significant extent from one place to another. However, the maintenance of a unified, standard, version of the Spanish language and of its written form is guaranteed by the Real Academia de la Lengua Espanola. The Academia sets the rules to follow in order to speak and write in a way that is accepted by all the different Spanish speakers.

Steven Muller
20 Dec 2006

Steven Muller is director of Babylon Idiomas, a Spanish language institute with schools in Spain, Argentina and Costa Rica. Visit the website to learn more about Spanish courses

Xerxes I of Persia

Xerxes the Great Persian, was a Persian Emperor of the Achaemenid dynasty. "Xérxes" is the Greek transliteration of the Persian throne name Khashayarsha or Khashayar-shah, meaning "Ruler of heroes".

Xerxes, son of Darius the Great and Atossa, the daughter of Cyrus the Great, was appointed King of Persia by his father because his elder half-brothers, who were born before Darius had become king, died. After his accession in October 485 BC he suppressed the revolts in Egypt and Babylon that had broken out in 486 BC and appointed his brother Achaemenes as governor or satrap over Egypt (Old Persian: khshathrapavan), bringing Egypt under very strict rule. His predecessors, especially Darius, had not been successful in their attempts to conciliate the ancient civilizations. This probably was the reason why Xerxes in 484 BC took away from Babylon the golden statue of Bel (Marduk, Merodach), the hands of which the legitimate king of Babylon had to seize on the first day of each year, and killed the priest who tried to hinder him. Therefore Xerxes does not bear the title of King in the Babylonian documents dated from his reign, but King of Persia and Media or simply King of countries (i.e., of the world). This proceeding led to two rebellions, probably in 484 BC and 479 BC .

Invasion of the Greek mainland
Main article: Greco-Persian Wars
Darius left to his son the task of punishing the Athenians , Naxians, and Eretrians for their interference in the Ionian revolt and the victory of Marathon. From 483 BC Xerxes prepared his expedition with great care: a channel was dug through the isthmus of the peninsula of Mount Athos, provisions were stored in the stations on the road through Thrace, two bridges were thrown across the Hellespont. Xerxes concluded an alliance with Carthage, and thus deprived Greece of the support of the powerful monarchs of Syracuse and Agrigentum. Many smaller Greek states, moreover, took the side of the Persians, especially Thessaly, Thebes, and Argos. Xerxes, with a large fleet and army (Herodotus the Greek historian had claimed that there were over 2,000,000 soldiers), set out in the spring of 480 BC from Sardis. At first Xerxes was victorious everywhere. The Greeks were defeated at Thermopylae (Battle of Thermopylae), although at a great cost to the Persians, and a morale victory to the Greeks. Athens conquered, the Athenians and Spartans were driven back to their last line of defense at the Isthmus of Corinth and in the Saronic Gulf. At Artemisium the battle was indecisive as large storms destroyed ships from both sides. The battle was also stopped prematurely as the Greeks caught news of the defeat at Thermopylae and retreated. But Xerxes was induced by the astute message of Themistocles (against the advice of Artemisia of Halicarnassus) to attack the Greek fleet under unfavourable conditions, instead of sending a part of his ships to the Peloponnesus and awaiting the dissolution of the Greek armament. The Battle of Salamis (September 28, 480 BC) was won by the Athenians. Having lost his communication by sea with Asia, Xerxes was forced to retire to Sardis; the army he left in Greece under Mardonius was beaten in 479 BC at Plataea. The defeat of the Persians at Mycale roused the Greek cities of Asia.

Missing later years
Of the later years of Xerxes, little is known. He sent out Sataspes to attempt the circumnavigation of Africa, but the victory of the Greeks threw the empire into a state of slow atrophy, from which it could not rise again. The king himself became involved in intrigues of the harem and was much dependent upon courtiers and eunuchs. He left inscriptions at Persepolis, where he added a new palace to that of Darius, at Van in Turkey, and on Mount Elvend near Ecbatana. In these texts he merely copies the words of his father. In 465 he was murdered by his vizier, Artabanus, who raised Artaxerxes I to the throne.

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
15 Mar 2007
www.wikipedia.com