Voice/Vision Holocaust Survivor Oral History Archive

• Contents
• Map

Bernard & Emery Klein - May 23, 1984

As long as you mention your family, we have some photographs of your parents?

E: Yes, we were fortunate to find some of the pictures either at home, or some of them which our family in United States gave us, which they received from our parents over the years. Um...from the early days, this happens to be a picture of our mother and father visiting Budapest during 1937. I don't know; can you see that? This happens to be a picture of our mother. Uh, these are pictures of uh, Bernie and myself in a...As you can see, there, here we always.. B: The year, 1934.

E: 1934, which means Bernie was five years old, and I was six years old. Our parents were fortunate and quite well-to-do, and they always wanted to make sure that our clothing is of, not only of fine quality, but we always had uniform, uniform dress. As you can see from this picture, or for this matter, for this one, which was made in 1933, we're a year younger. Always both our, all our outfits were custom made by, and always the same uh, Bernie and I wore the same, same clothing during all the years, all custom made for us. B: This is our sister here and this was made in 1934, she was barely a year old.

E: She was a year old, just about a year old, yes. B: She was born in March and this is May, so she was 14 months old.

E: She was 14 months old, right. B: This is another picture of our sister, unfortunately, this one does not have a year on it, but looks like she is about two years old here.

E: Right, here is, oh sorry. B: Unfortunately, you don't have, we didn't, whatever pictures we were lucky enough to preserve, not the entire family is represented, but this happens to be part of the family on my mother's side and that is her mother, our grandmother.

E: Who lived with us. B: She lived with us all the time until she died in 1943 of natural causes. This is our mother and this is the aunt that lived with us. These are, of course, brothers and sisters. That's the mother with six children, they were actually a total of eleven children, but this picture happens to have six. This is the aunt that lived with us. And that being referred to as the second set of parents. This uncle and this uncle were actually...this uncle...

E: You are correct; they both went to the United States. B: All three of them went to the United States, but these two came back. They went to the United States in early 1900, but these two uncles came back very early, two, three years later because they found America not enough religious for them. Okay, so, and this, of course, is an aunt that also lived in Humenné. This uncle stayed in Omaha.

E: Stayed and lived in Omaha.

In Omaha.

B: And he died, in fact, only about 10 years ago.

E: Together with another uncle of ours, Lou Sommer, who also lived in Omaha, for quite a few years and also deceased since then.

Now that uncle, what's--wait for a minute--the pictures that you have, you have something of some value from that uncle about the town.

B: Well, this uncle and also another uncle who is not pictured on this family picture, came to visit Humenné because they came to visit their mother, our grandmother. Came in 1932 and in 1933. One came in 1932 and the other came in 1933 and while they were there they were making movies.