Highlights Archives
Wisconsin GIs' World War II Letters to Go Online
The Wisconsin Historical Society is helping Wisconsin Public Television gear up for an extensive outreach campaign this fall around the September 23 debut of Ken Burns' latest film, The War, which examines World War II through experiences of the ordinary soldiers. To make the series more useful for teachers and students, stations around the country will produce local TV shows, interactive Web content, and events that build on Burns' 14-hour documentary series. This summer the Society library and archives' digital collections staff is working with Wisconsin Public Television to select and mount online copies of letters from Wisconsin soldiers and to build classroom tools and activities around them.
Called "Wisconsin War Letters," the project will use letters from Wisconsin GIs to help today's Wisconsin school children go beyond merely watching the film. Students in grades 9-12 will be able to use these valuable primary source narratives to conduct further research while the series is airing. The students will be encouraged to create dramatic readings and videos, museum displays, and multimedia presentations using the content of the letters.
This latest partnership extends work that each of the two organizations has already done. In 2003 Wisconsin Public Television's Wisconsin World War II Stories program was broadcast in five episodes to a cumulative audience of 233,000 viewers. The network also produced a traveling photo exhibit of the featured veterans and a robust Web site with streaming video, lesson plans, and additional veterans' stories. That program is being used around the country this year as a model for stations that want to connect local experiences to the Burns documentary.
In 2005 the Society published a number of World War II primary sources in its Turning Points in Wisconsin History digital collection. These included contemporary newspaper articles, recollections by veterans, photographs by Dickey Chapelle, and the government's official register of the dead and missing from Wisconsin, published in June 1946. The Society is also in the midst of a related project, funded through the generosity of the Bader Foundation, to make available on the Web interviews with 23 Holocaust survivors who settled in Wisconsin.
The original materials digitized this year will be available at Turning Points in Wisconsin History. Links to them will appear with the curricular materials prepared by Wisconsin Public Television staff and on the "Wisconsin War Letters" Web site that will be constructed.
:: Posted May 25, 2007
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