Sara Solomonovna Shpitalnik

Shpitalnik gives personal information and speaks about her parents and grandparents. Her maternal grandmother was widowed when her husband, from Staro-Konstantinov, fell in the Russo-Japanese War in 1905. Her mother finished a Russian gymnasium and worked as a cashier. Her father, from the Jewish colony Dumbrăveni, near Soroca, was an accountant and a member of the Yiddish Kultur-lige. She was an only child.

Details of the grandfather killed in 1905, the colony run by the Jewish colonization organization (JCA), and the parents' years.

Shpitalnik talks about her childhood and schooling. Yiddish and Russian were spoken at home; she began a Romanian school at six and took private French lessons. The family was evacuated to Bukhara, Uzbekistan, and she began working at fourteen. She studied French at Chernivtsi, married in 1951, taught French and English in a village for five years, then translated medical literature at the Medical Institute library for 34 years. For fifteen years she has worked at the Yiddish library, publishing books and a yearly calendar of Jewish personalities.

Also covers her husband, a ghetto survivor from Balta, and the calendar and books she published.

Answering Kerler's questions, Shpitalnik speaks about her paternal grandparents in Dumbrăveni and her visits there. Her childhood home in Chișinău stood in a courtyard of Jewish families (the transcript reads twenty-six) with a small prayer room. The grandfather, aged 87, was killed in Dumbrăveni; her maternal grandmother ran a household and worked as cashier at a slaughterhouse. Her parents loved reading and Jewishness.

Covers the grandfather's death in 1941 and the maternal grandparents' meeting story.

Shpitalnik recalls childhood visits to Dumbrăveni, where local children gathered and a Rabbi Steinberg was arrested in 1940 and died. She describes prewar Jewish culture in Chișinău and Dumbrăveni: Yiddish and Hebrew reading and girls' professional schools. Her father, who knew Hebrew well, travelled to nearby villages from age twelve as a private teacher, was boarded by families, and later trained as an accountant.

Includes the library and rabbi of Dumbrăveni and the father's early earnings.

Shpitalnik says she learned Hebrew letters in courses about fifteen years ago, with thoughts of going to Israel. She then returns to her paternal grandfather Meir, who refused to leave and was killed, and to her grandmothers: one wore a wig and prayed in the Russian theatre building. Her maternal grandmother died in evacuation. She describes visits to Dumbrăveni as a child, travelling by horse from Bălți.

Starts with her Hebrew studies and learning to read.

Shpitalnik tells of her schooling, starting a Romanian school at six without knowing the language, and of her mother's education at a Russian school and a private girls' gymnasium. She describes prewar celebration of Passover, Purim and Hanukkah at her mother's cousin Sonya Gershteyner's home. She remembers potato varenikes at Hanukkah, Purim gifts and filled pastries, and says Chișinău was a Jewish city. She did not see Purim plays.

Also covers her language difficulties at the Romanian school.

Shpitalnik talks about the prewar sports clubs Maccabi and Hakoah in Chișinău. She was a member of Hakoah but not athletic. She describes Yiddish professional schools for girls, which held evenings of readings from Mendele, Sholem Aleichem and Peretz. She recalls the poet Yakov Shternberg, who visited her parents' home and taught her mother.

Details Shternberg's later imprisonment under Stalin.

Shpitalnik speaks about the prewar Yiddish press in Chișinău, including the daily 'Undzer tsayt', read by both Zionists and Communists. She says her father was somewhat left-leaning. She tells of learning Yiddish poems from a woman friend of her father's and of her father's role as a trusted mediator, and how he was broken under the Soviets.

Adds the father's social role and his fate under the Soviets.

Shpitalnik names the libraries of Chișinău before the war and says she read novels in Russian, later in French and Romanian. Asked about Yiddish theater, she recalls her parents attending the Vilna Troupe and performances by Sidi Tal, Gina Zlotaya (?) and Adolf Tefner (?). She also remembers an evening with Itsik Fefer in 1940.

Also includes a short exchange on a Yiddish poem and on reading languages.

Shpitalnik talks about her grandmother, who was said to have sung beautifully until she learned of her husband's death, and who later received a small pension under tsarist Russia. In answer to Kerler she says her mother did not sing and describes her as a kind woman who never spoke ill of anyone.

Also covers her mother's character and the grandmother's pension.

Shpitalnik answers questions about contact between Jews and non-Jews in Chișinău. She recalls that around 1938 the family moved to a house among Jews, and says that under the Romanians Communists rather than Zionists were persecuted. She recalls that after the Soviets arrived in 1940 Zionists were arrested and sent to Siberia, including Zalmen Rosenthal, editor of the paper Undzer Tsayt, and others; Kerler asks about Rosenthal's first name.

Also names other arrested Zionists and the question whether non-Jews spoke Yiddish.

Shpitalnik tells of a Moldovan family from whom her family rented rooms, whose parents had sheltered Jews during the pogroms, hiding them near a monastery on Astapovskaya (?) street. She speaks about rare intermarriage, her Jewish kindergarten and friends (one now in Los Angeles, another killed in the war). She says that before the war she only understood Yiddish and learned to speak it from her grandmother during the war, and explains why Russian was spoken at home.

Also covers her kindergarten, childhood friends and language use at home.

Shpitalnik says there were no Yiddish shop signs in prewar Chișinău, only Romanian. Asked about Rabbi Tsirelson, she recalls her grandfather knowing him and describes him as a small man with a white beard, a member of the Romanian senate who tore up his mandate when the fascists came. She also mentions the slaughterhouse where her mother grew up, a street named after Tsirelson, excursions she led, and religious instruction in the Romanian gymnasium.

Also covers shop signs, the slaughterhouse, Shpitalnik's own excursions and the religion lesson at school.

Shpitalnik describes how Jewish pupils in the Romanian gymnasium were taught religion in the corridor by a rabbi (Epelbaum or Yampolski). Asked about Hasidim, she says she knew of none before the war but knew of a good Jew in Bender and of the Ribnitser rebbe Chaim Zalbul(?), who died in Queens. Kerler then asks what 'a good Jew' and 'a good place' (cemetery) mean, which she answers briefly.

Also covers the religion lessons, tsadikim in Bender and Rybnitsa, and questions on 'a good Jew' and 'a good place'.

Shpitalnik recalls that in 1940 Jewish refugees from elsewhere in Romania came to Chișinău, among them a Hungarian-speaking family from Transylvania whom her family took in and another from Bucharest. She says she was then in the sixth class and switched easily to Russian. She answers Kerler's questions on differences in Yiddish: Bucharest speakers, Baltic Jews who think theirs is the true Yiddish, and her own Bessarabian speech compared with Lithuanian Jews.

Also covers Yiddish dialect differences and her husband's reaction to Lithuanian Yiddish.

Shpitalnik says Chișinău was a Yiddish-speaking city with street vendors calling out in Yiddish, though she saw no street singers or klezmorim playing for money. She describes prewar Jewish weddings with canopies, glass-breaking, an entertainer and klezmer, and says she married in 1951 without a canopy, considering it old-fashioned, although her husband's parents wanted one.

Also covers street vendors, wedding customs and the entertainer.

Shpitalnik answers Kerler's questions on cultural terminology: the word dybbuk and its local meaning, a convert to Christianity (meshumed), the golem, formulas said after a dead person is mentioned, and a blessing that the deceased may plead for the living. She also recalls a known convert (Rovinovitsh (?)) from before her time.

Shpitalnik describes the districts of prewar Chișinău, including the poor lower town and the Old Bridge area, and the richer upper parts. She talks about the Teater Ekspres, the Auerbach family and two Jewish dancers named Seltser, who performed Yiddish theater and European dances.

Shpitalnik speaks about the prewar Yiddish Kultur-Lige: its meetings, members who wanted Yiddish at home, Lipe Altman (brother of the writer Moyshe Altman), the librarian Gitl Shvidkaya (?), and literary evenings. She says Rosenthal was a Zionist while the league leaned left, and reflects on peaceful relations among differing camps. She then describes her work as the only librarian handling Yiddish books today and the few remaining readers.

Also covers her library work today and the Zionist-communist relations.

Shpitalnik recalls that life in Chișinău after the war was very hard, with houses destroyed and the family home gone, so she left to study in Chernivtsi; she mentions the ration system. She then tells how her husband, a well-known agronomist who lacked a medal, was denied an award, and that he worked with tobacco and died of liver illness.

Shpitalnik says that after the war there was one synagogue, which was closed in the 1960s, and that Yom Kippur crowds could not fit in. She discusses Jewish singers hired for weddings, why Odessan Jews had more education than Bessarabians, and the many prewar Jewish doctors, lawyers, pharmacists and the Jewish cooperative bank, with few Jewish teachers.

Also covers prewar Jewish doctors, lawyers, bankers and teachers.

Shpitalnik says the 1903 pogrom is overemphasized and that prewar Jewish Chișinău was poor, with good tailors, shoemakers and craftsmen but no rich people; she mentions about seventy synagogues. She recalls the short-lived Yiddish folk theater of the late 1960s, performances she saw, and a story involving an Ukrainian doctor friend. The passage ends with talk among the interviewers about Moyshe and arrangements.

Shpitalnik speaks about her current work in the Yiddish library, where she is the only Yiddish specialist. She has set up a Yiddish study room and published a booklet on Bessarabian writers, and mentions a new literature museum. The passage ends with arrangements for the next day, her remarks on being helped during her husband's illness, and thanks.