On Tuesday, July 22nd the Farmingdale Public Library is presenting the movie, The Monuments Men, at 1:15pm and again, at 6:30pm. The formal blurb goes as follows, 'An unlikely World War II platoon has been tasked by FDR with going into Germany to rescue artistic masterpieces from Nazi thieves and returning them to their rightful owners.' The movies stars George Clooney and Matt Damon. Seating is on a First Come, First Served basis.
Now....there is much more to the story than just a movie.
Click on this link from Wikipedia for the entry on 'The Monuments Men'. You'll find a fairly extensive summary of the move, and the historical accuracy of the movie. Note that the movie's reception was not all that great - at least by Rotten Tomatoes and Metacritic.
Readers can click on this link to go to the Monuments Men website. At the site readers can find links titled 'Books & Movies', 'For Educators' (which has lesson plans for teachers) , 'The Heros', 'Speaking Engagements', 'About Robert Edsel (the author)'.
For similar, yet different take on 'The Monuments Men', readers can click on this link to the Smithsonian Institution Magazine website. This link goes to an entry entitled, 'The True Story of the Monuments Men'. A quick summary of the entry goes, 'Without the work of these curators and professors, tens of thousands of priceless works of art would have been lost to the world forever'. That is quite a statement - and which is understated, to say the least. With that said, the pictures in the article/website are extraordinary and worth viewing!
Also, did you know that the movie was based on a book entitled, 'The Monuments Men: Allied Heros, Nazi Thieves, and the Greatest Treasure Hunt in History', written by Robert M. Edsel? Well, it was and you can click on this link to see if the Farmingdale Public Library's copy is available for your reading pleasure.
Finally, another book on the same topic is 'The Rape of Europa: The Fate of Europe's Treasures in the Third Reich and the Second World War' by Lynn Nicholas. Click on this link to see if there is a copy that you can inter-library loan from the Nassau Library System. Click on this link to see reviews and a brief summary of the book from Amazon.com. Note that the book was published in 1994 and garnered an average score of 4.3 out of a possible 5.0 by readers who reviewed the book.
Enjoy the movie and the enjoy the books - it is quite possible that you might learn something about American history in the process!
Regards,
Stu
