Steven Spielberg Film and Video Archive

Schermeister Family Life -- Bernhard Schermeister -- home movies

Schermeister Family Collection

1928

Denmark

US Holocaust Memorial Museum

00:00:43

Lis (the donor's mother, age 6) and her sister Jeanne (age 5) take off their shoes and wade in the water at the beach. Their parents (Bernhard and Edith Cohen Schermeister) are also in the scene. Nice CUs of the two girls.

The title on the DVD transfer indicates "Yedbaek Strandvej" [Yedbaek Beach Road] "1928". The family may have stopped in the village of Yedbaek, a few kilometers south of Snekkersten, while traveling on the Strandvej [Beach Road] from Copenhagen.

Mute

Amateur

No

Good

The films show Lis Kischinovsky (nee Schermeister, b. August 11, 1922) and her family in Denmark during the 1920s and 1930s. On the morning of Rosh Hashana in October 1943, the Schermeister family was warned of the impending round-up. Lis and her boyfriend left Copenhagen for Snekkersten, where the family had spent many vacations. They were then smuggled to Sweden by a fisherman and landed at Landskrona, where they met up with the rest of the Schermeister family who arrived on another shipping vessel. The next day Lis's father Bernhard, a milliner who is seen frequently in this film footage, committed suicide. The Schermeister family remained in Stockholm until 1945, when they returned to Copenhagen. They found their apartment inhabited by other people but a neighbor had stored all of their possessions for them. The donor, Dov (Bjorn) Kischinovksy, was born in Copenhagen in 1950 to Lis and Avraham Kischinovsky. Dov has an older brother, Mogens, born in 1947.

2009.9.1 Dov Kischinovsky loaned his grandmother's family films in 9.5mm to the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in November 2008. The Museum created a 16mm black and white film print for the Archive and returned to original to the donor in February 2009.

BEACH
CHILDREN (JEWISH)
DENMARK
FAMILY
JEWISH LIFE (PRE-WAR)
JEWS
VACATIONS/RESORTS

Dov Kischinovsky

9.5mm blow-up dupe neg

16mm; DigiBeta; Betacam SP; VHS

01:02:42 - 01:03:26

US Holocaust Memorial Museum, courtesy of Dov Kischinovsky