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 On Nov. 22, 1963, Abraham Zapruder, a devoted supporter of
Kennedy and his vision for America, shot a home movie on 8 mm
film that became the best-known moving image of the Kennedy
assassination.
"Growing up, my parents didn’t talk about this because it was
grandfather’s wish that we approach it with discretion and
respect for Kennedy," Alexandra Zapruder, 46, said in an
interview.
An immigrant Russian Jew who became a successful clothing
manufacturer in Dallas, Abraham Zapruder went to Dealey Plaza to
film Kennedy's motorcade, his granddaughter said.
He ended up capturing one of the most indelible moments in
American history.
Growing up in Washington, D.C., where her father, Henry Zapruder,
worked as a government attorney, Alexandra Zapruder, an author
and member of the founding staff of the U.S. Holocaust Memorial
Museum in Washington, knew little of the film’s back story.
She decided the family’s complicated relationship with the film,
which has been used in government probes, fueled conspiracy
theories and been viewed by billions of people, may make for an
interesting book.
Zapruder, who came to Dallas for the anniversary of the
assassination to discuss her book on the film, "Twenty-Six
Seconds," said her family had always been guided by her
grandfather’s wishes to maintain the integrity of its deeply
disturbing contents.
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Abraham Zapruder sold an original copy and the rights to Life
magazine for $150,000 to help tell the story of that fateful day in
Dallas.
The magazine published several frames of the film days after the
assassination. It did not surface again publicly until a version
appeared on Geraldo Rivera’s ABC-TV show, "Good Night America" in
1975.
Abraham Zapruder testified before the U.S government's Warren
Commission investigating the assassination. The commission concluded
that a lone gunman, Lee Harvey Oswald, killed the president and
wounded Texas Governor John Connally. Zapruder died in 1970.
Film rights returned to the family in 1978 and Zapruder said she
watched her father juggle the demands for public disclosure with her
grandfather’s wishes “to do good with it,” she said.
In 1999, the government paid the family $16 million plus interest
for the original version of the film.
“He said he would have been happy to have never seen it again,"
Alexandra Zapruder said of her grandfather.
(Writing by Jon Herskovitz; Editing by Peter Cooney)
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