Friday, May 6, 2016

Syria's 'Monument Men' Are Working To Save Its History



CBS: Syria's "monument men" save thousands of historic artifacts

DAMASCUS, Syria -- In five years of Syrian civil war, 320,000 have been killed. But another cost has been the lost of irreplaceable history, the inheritance of all humanity. Inside Syria, we met the heroes in that fight.

The music filled the ancient Roman amphitheater, that only three months ago was under ISIS control.

It -- like most of the ruins -- only survived that occupation by luck.

But a trove of Palmyra's smaller treasures were saved by dedicated archaeologists -- Syria's very own Monument men and women, led by Chief of Antiquities Maamoun Abdulkarim.

His mission is to protect Syria's heritage from all sides in the civil war.

We met him among the empty display cases of the Damascus Archaeological Museum.

Right at the start of the fighting, Abdulkarim emptied and closed all of Syria's antiquities museums.

Read more ....

WNU Editor: Maamoun Abdulkarim did the right thing to close the museums when the war erupted .... unlike what happened in Iraq during the 2003 invasion.

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