Bernard & Emery Klein - May 23, 1984
Pre-War Humenné
Okay, now I'm going to, we'll return to the, what happened after the war because there is considerably more traveling that you did after you reached home. Let's go back for a moment now, to Humenné before the war. What was the town like?
E: Humenné was uh, small town, having approximately six thousand habitants of which one-third, approximately 2,000 were Jewish. Humenné was considered to be a small Jewish uh, center, sort of, and uh, having a lot of Jewish people also living the neighboring area, which did business in Humenné, coming into Humenné. It was uh, for us, a very nice and comfortable place to live in.
B: It was the, actually, the regional center, commercially as well as the regional government for all the outlying smaller towns and villages, was in Humenné. And uh, for a small town, it was quite a, well uh, developed area.
E: Culturally, for the, for those times and for the area, we had a commercial academy in, in, in Humenné, which was an important school. Not only for the inhabitants, but for people from other cities who came to Humenné because of that. And uh, we had... B: ...business school.
E: The commercial academy, right, an important business school in that area.
Was there a Yiddish theater there?
B: Not a permanent one.
E: Not a permanent one, but groups used to come once and a while and give performances.
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