Lola Taubman - December 22, 2009
Sharing Family Photos
You have pictures.
Daughter: Yeah, this is the--my mother's father's side of the family. So this is the, um...
That's my grandmother.
Daughter: ...this is the fourteen children here and then each person's--each individual then has their own page with their families.
Can I use the bathroom?
Daughter: Sure.
Sure.
Daughter: Let's go find where it is. This that, uh...
That's amazing this--everybody's family tree.
Daughter: Yeah, this was before, before the uh, there were sophisticated programs. This was one of the first I--old, old IBM programs that had uh, that allowed you to be able to build a family tree. [pause]
My father was of a twin that um, both my husband and my father were of twins that the, the twin didn't survive.
Uh, my daughter just had twins.
Show the pictures.
Daughter: Oh, yeah, these were the--so these were the original grandparents. This was the town Izvor that they lived in. These were the three brothers that came to the United States at the turn of the century. And this was Louis XIV, the youngest one. And these were uh, these same brothers here and every year this uncle hosted the whole family getting together for, for Rosh Hashanah. They still do it. All the cousins get together so sometimes there's fifty cousins, sometimes there's forty cousins. And this is my mother's engagement picture--her parent's engagement picture.
This is your grandparents.
Daughter: Right. It's funny; I never call them my grandparents.
But this, this is the patriarch.
Daughter: These are the original, yeah.
Who are these people?
Daughter: This is the only girl, right mom? This is the only girl out of the fourteen children?
The, the--she is the only girl. She...
Daughter: Out of the fourteen children.
This is, this is the one that was killed by a hold up...
Daughter: Right.
...in--by--my uncle was in the lumber business and when he brought the money home the, the workers tried to, to get the money and she stood in front of him and said, "Don't kill him," so they killed her. ??? children.
Daughter: She was the only one of fou...one girl in fourteen children.
Yeah.
Daughter: And then this girl's uh, child survived the war and his false name is Goldstein because his name wasn't actually Goldstein but he took that name.
It was ???
Daughter: It was ??? so. At, at a gathering we were at--here's some other pictures--at a gathering we were at after this whole revelation about my mother's, you know, birthday and her actual year being announced and all of that--thanks...
So many things ???
Daughter: Here, let me pull your chair around like this. And then uh, so out of the six relatives that were together, five of them had different names and all of them had different birthdays, you know, so. So these were my mother's parents.
???
Daughter: These photos were found after someone back to the town and found all these photos in a garbage dump.
Do you know where--the gypsies were lining outside of the town and when they cleared the Jewish homes they dumped all the pictures on a heap outside.
And, and they were found.
Daughter: Right.
They were found.
Daughter: Although my mother never went to the town, somebody else...
These are copies. These are, these are all my brothers.
Daughter: So this is my mother as--when she was about twelve and these are the brothers.
I was eleven.
Daughter: Eleven?
It was in '36.
Daughter: Mm-hm.
My, my mother made these curtains. She crocheted them.
Daughter: And then here--I don't know what's in all of these. She brought--I guess you brought lots of pictures, mom, wow. You were up all night.
I brought a lot. I didn't know which ones. Oh, this one in the green envelope, I found it at the last minute.
Daughter: What are these? Oh these were just--oh, temporary photos.
Of the reunion. [pause] Try to open it up.
Daughter: This sticker got stuck to the print.
These were the, the people in Munkacs that established the Hebrew gymnasium.
Daughter: So this was--there--she went to reunions of her school. They held reunions in various--some in L.A., some in Israel.
These were graduation. Not in my class because um, do you know when my graduation would have come up? We were in a uh, um, what is it called? Uh, where they, they take care of the, the dea...dead people.
Morgue?
Daughter: A morgue?
What?
Daughter: In a morgue?
In a morgue?
Daughter: Yeah.
Yeah. When they, they took a morgue and put mattresses to separate it and so we had the classes and we could hear what went on in the other class. [long pause] We met...
© Board of Regents University of Michigan-Dearborn