There is my grandfather's face,
his smiling
fourteen-year-old face. I would know it like I would know my own face in
the mirror,
but I've never seen
a picture of my grandfather when he was fourteen years old.
I think I was always aware that my family had this film.
It was always referred to as "the Polish film,"
and we always knew
that it had been my grandparents who had taken the film when they were in Poland, but somehow
it had never really sunk in
that this was August of 1938,
and when I realized when the film was taken--there's actually a title at the very
beginning of it that says "Our Film to England, Switzerland, France,
and Poland, 1938"
--for the first time I looked at this film and realized that
all these people were standing in the shadow of what was about to come.
When I found the film I knew immediately that I wanted to try and preserve it.
In the end I chose the Holocaust Museum to deposit it
because the facilities were simply better and the Holocaust Museum would be able
to make the film available.
By making the film available to a larger public,
you never know who might see it
The whole thing began in 2009 when Glenn Kurtz donated the
footage, and he was a delight to work with as a donor.
The one thing that was really missing from his experience
was that he wanted to be able to know who some of these people were in his
family's footage, and that was something he had not succeeded in coming across.
Fast forward a couple of years, Marcy Rosen was looking online and found
this film footage from her grandfather's home town.
My dad and I are on the phone, and we simultaneously clicked on the link, and we're
watching this, and it was fascinating.
It was almost like a time capsule,
and at exactly the same time my father and I see, you know, when the counter
reached 35 seconds, there is my grandfather's face.
We both shouted at the same time, "Oh my God, it's Grandpa!" And I could
hear my dad saying to my mother, "It's your father!"
So I get in touch with this Glenn Kurtz,
and I said, "Glenn,
you turned my world upside down today."
And he said, "Marcy, you've turned my world upside down today,"
which I wasn't expecting because I didn't realize the importance that this would
have for him.
When I watched the family members watching Morry seeing himself,
it was a very bittersweet moment.
They remarked on his wonderful smile,
on how he kept trying to get in the picture
and was running back and forth trying to get the camera on him again. It was just
amazing to watch how absorbed they were
in this moment, in this few
minutes of
time.
Now that I've sat with Morry
and have watched the film with him,
when he can identify people and tell us
anecdotes about
their lives,
it's brought the town into memory again
as a place of life
instead of just a place of death.
I can't believe that I was really yet a kid. My God, I had a mother, and I had a grandmother,
and people were getting married and bringing forth
generation after generation.
It's looking back and saying "Yes, there was a world."