Voice/Vision Holocaust Survivor Oral History Archive

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Bernard & Emery Klein - May 23, 1984

Home movies.

B: Home movies, yes. We, of course, were totally unaware of those movies being still available or of their existence. But, my uncle's daughter, our cousin, Bea Sommer, who still lives in Omaha uh, a few years back, found them in the house and she decided to give it to us. These were seven-inch reels and then, of course, they were almost 50 years then, 50 years old then.

E: Old, yeah. B: So we were afraid that the films were very fragile and probably will not preserve much longer, so Emery had enough foresight to take to them a studio and had an eight track video tape made up of whatever was salvageable from those movies. And, in fact, we have it and it's a....

E: To us, they are priceless, naturally. B: Today, these movies are 52, 52 years old, going back to Humenné and our family in those days.

We have some selections from that, maybe you could tell us a little bit about it.

B: Sure.

While we're...Why don't we roll the film.

B: This caption was made by my uncle. There's the railroad station. Unfortunately, it's not very clear. But you can see the smoke from the train.

E: This is a marketplace, which was right in front of our home. We lived on ??? Street, which was a main street, and uh, every Monday... B: And Friday.

E: ...and Friday, there was, eh... B: Market days.

E: Market days in town when all the peasants and farmers came from the villages offering their wares. And this marketplace, which I mentioned before, took place on the main street, right in front of our home. B: These are some of the stores that you see on the main street and, of course, in the back of each store, the front was the store, and, of course, in the back of each store were the residences of the people who owned the stores.