Pablo Macias was born in Carlin, Nevada, a small town 20 miles west of Elko, where the local population of Latinos was small. He has lived in Las Vegas since 1990.
He is the youngest of nine children born to Sofia and Tomas Macias, who met and married while living in Utah. Tomas was born in the United States and worked as a railroad laborer. Sofia was Mexican born and found work as a maid to help provide for their family.
Person
Claude Black describes his family's escape from Germany to Santiago, Chile, and eventually settling in Chicago, Illinois. The essay is illustrated with images of his family and documents from their journey.
Text
Rudy Horst was a prisoner at Auschwitz and was part of the Death March from Warso to Kutno, then transported to Dachau. He was liberated from the camp at Muldorf in 1944. He came to the United States in 1948.
Text
A pamphlet for the Jean Weinberger Museum, presented by The Foundation of the Jewish Federation of Las Vegas.
Text
Della Mae Rostine left Missouri with her husband, Rocco, in 1942, and headed to Las Vegas. Happy to leave behind the hard life and instability the mining industry had to offer, after living in Las Vegas for the first year the couple settled in Henderson, Nevada, known as the townsite at that time. Della Mae’s oral history provides readers with a glimpse of what life was like for the 14,000-plus individuals and families who also moved to southern Nevada during the same period in order to make a living in the growing “war work” industry the area had to offer. Della Mae shares the hardships faced in finding housing, especially for families with children. She discusses challenges ranging from securing home furnishings to purchasing groceries, including the rations on gasoline and butter at that time. Della Mae also discusses her experiences with the Basic Magnesium plant where her husband was hired as a construction worker in the early days of the plant and where she would work briefly as a machinist making shell casings and monitoring the down time on the production line. She also touches briefly on the social opportunities the BMI plant, and later Rheem Manufacturing, offered to the workers and their families. When World War II ended, more than half of residents of the townsite left, leaving fewer than 7,000 people to form what would later become the city of Henderson, Nevada. Della Mae’s oral history is a brief overview of a family life which began when BMI was just getting off the ground and continued through the many changes that took place in the BMI complex and the town site over several decades. The timing of the Rostine family’s arrival and the fact that they stayed and made a permanent home in Henderson led to their designation as one of Henderson’s “founding families.”
Text
Image
Oral history interview with Yeon-Kyung (Mar) Chung conducted by Emilee Caivin on November 10, 2021 for Reflections: The Las Vegas Asian American and Pacific Islander Oral History Project. In this interview, Yeon-Kyung (Mar) Chung talks about her upbringing in Korea and her educational history, studying Spanish abroad in Spain and Italy before earning her graduate degree in Latin American Studies from the University of Texas, Austin. Mar Chung talks about her move to Las Vegas, Nevada in 1999 to enroll at the College of Southern Nevada and the University of Nevada, Las Vegas to pursue pharmaceutical studies like her parents. She talks about her experience as a single mother, her path to citizenship in the United States, and the Las Vegas Asian American community. Mar Chung also reflects on differences between how she was raised compared to the upbringing of her two children.
Text
