Esfir (Fire) Borisovna Diner

Kerler opens the interview with the date and the interviewee's name. Diner gives her Yiddish name, birthplace Fălești and birth year (1925). She names her parents: her father Berl (Boris) was a bookkeeper, her mother Fesye came from Edineț. She names her sister Sarah and her brother Yosef, mentions that the siblings studied at a conservatory in Bucharest, and begins to say what happened to the family under the Soviets.

names her sister and brother and the conservatory in Bucharest

Diner recounts that the family was sent away in June 1941 and her father was taken two days later. They were told afterwards that he had been shot, in the first days of the new year. She explains that he was a Zionist who had worked to set up a Jewish party in the Romanian parliament because of the rise of fascism.

Diner talks about her childhood in Fălești. Her maternal grandfather Yosef Moldover took in her mother from Edineț as a child, and she names her grandmothers and says whom she was named after. She describes her father as a respected man whom people consulted to settle disputes instead of going to court. She says she attended a Romanian primary school and then a Romanian gymnasium, four years each.

In answer to questions Diner describes Fălești as a town with many Jews, two synagogues, a beis-medresh and a kloyz, and many Jewish children in her class. She describes a childhood game of playing mother and father, and says that the gymnasium had much reading. She recites part of a Romanian poem by Coșbuc and says there were libraries, but no Yiddish books in them, though her parents read the Yiddish newspaper Undzer Tsayt.

Diner says young people met in houses and sang songs. She says her father read Sholem Aleichem but had little time, and that she herself read Romanian books, including Eminescu and translations of world literature such as Tolstoy. She is asked whether she was taught prayers and which Jewish holidays she remembers.

Diner recalls Simchat Torah with an apple and a candle, and the interviewers ask about other holiday customs. She sings two Yiddish songs she learned from her mother, one telling the listener to stay cheerful and hide pain, the other about not having listened to one's wife. She says her mother also sang Russian romances and that her mother's family name was Gutman, from Edineț.

Diner talks about her mother's cooking, including gefilte fish on Sabbath, kugel, tarts and bagels, and says she moved to Chișinău in 1965. She recalls her sister and brother coming home in the summers from the conservatory in Bucharest with their friends to play and sing operetta and opera. Her father wanted her to become a doctor, which is why she later could not study in Siberia.

Diner describes working very hard with her mother in a factory in Siberia and escaping after three years to Novosibirsk without a passport. There she met a Jewish couple by chance. The man was a director of the Minsk Yiddish theater, evacuated to Novosibirsk, and he helped her get papers by making copies of a birth certificate until she obtained a passport. She says he could have been given ten years for it.

Minsk director's help with a forged passport

Asked about Yiddish theater in Fălești, Diner says visiting artists came, including Sidi Tal. She says that in Novosibirsk someone told her to look up Sidi Tal in Chernivtsi, and that she did meet her there after escaping. She also mentions concerts and operettas, some in Romanian and some in Yiddish, which came to the town.

Sidi Tal's meeting in Chernivtsi and visiting concerts and operettas

Diner sings a few lines of Yiddish theater songs she remembers from Sidi Tal's performances. She then answers questions about prewar Jewish weddings, saying a wedding was held with a chuppah outdoors and the couple circled seven times. Jewish musicians played the violin at weddings.

wedding customs and klezmer questions

Diner answers questions about Purim masks and about Passover, saying her father led the seder and was an honest man, which is why he was shot. She describes her grandfather, who prayed daily in a tallit and was her confidant. She tells how a teacher dressed another girl in her national costume for a school holiday, how her grandfather taught her to value learning and to give charity from her Hanukkah money, and which languages were used at home and school.

grandfather's advice and charity, and languages of home and school

Diner says which languages her books are in and names Tolstoy works she loves. She describes how in the Soviet camp she refused to smoke or to speak coarsely, how she found a book by Eminescu in the library and swore not to take part. She says she read Russian poetry to a fellow prisoner, Natalia Sats, for eleven months, and describes the few Jews among the inmates and what each had done.

Natalia Sats and the Jews in the camp

Diner is asked about Yiddish songs, films and her own Yiddish. She sings fragments of Yiddish songs she remembers: "A brivele der mamen", "Lomir zikh iberbetn", "Ikh hob dikh tsufil lib" and "Ikh bin farlibt in mayn eygenem man". She says she speaks no Yiddish with anyone now. The interviewers then ask about amateur theater in the town.

the interviewers' questions about theater and Yiddish films

Diner is asked about Fălești and says Jews travelled to Chișinău, Bucharest and Iași. Kerler and Lemster ask about customs of going to a healer, quenching coals against the evil eye and similar practices. She says that when the Soviets came her mother went to a Jewish woman healer who told her she would not see her son and daughter again.

questions about quenching coals and the healer

Diner describes being arrested and held in a prison in Mykolaiv after the war, in cell 39. She says she met a German woman, Marta, who told the story of the operetta Silva, which Diner copied down in the camp. She recounts Marta's story of a Russian officer who fell in love with her in Germany and how she was arrested.

Diner talks about her arrest and imprisonment: three years in a camp, then exile or banishment, with a long sentence given to her and to her mother after her father, described as a Zionist, was shot. She says she escaped, was caught in Mykolayiv (?), and was held in a camp in the Perm region, and that she was released after Stalin's death. She describes camp life, including the shirts and sacks they sewed from, and shows her handwritten booklet of poems and songs from the camp, including an operetta text. She recalls a fellow prisoner, a talented thief from Kyiv, and a Kyiv political prisoner who wrote.

Also tells of a female thief and a political prisoner from Kyiv, and shows her handicraft or sewing; the dates are garbled.

Diner sings a few lines of a song about Itsik's wedding. Asked what she wants remembered about her shtetl, she describes the people of Fălești as fine, with many doctors and engineers, and tells of a young man who fell in love with a Jewish girl whose uncle liked a drink. She answers questions about drinking at Purim and Passover, wine, and non-Jews who understood Yiddish. She names a Russian doctor, Putsyata (?), who treated poor patients without payment.

Also covers a family named Braverman, drinking customs, and matzo baking.

Kerler and Lemster put questionnaire items to Diner. They ask about a rare word of Polish Yiddish origin, Lithuanian Jews and the word for a Lithuanian Jew, and the meanings of 'dybbuk' and of a simpleton or fool. They also ask about the term 'a good Jew', Hanukkah food such as latkes and doughnuts, and the golem. She often does not know the word or answers in Russian.

Diner recalls a Jewish schoolmate from the third year of gymnasium who volunteered for the Soviet army in 1941 and died near Smolensk, and says many boys perished. Asked for another song, she says she has forgotten the Yiddish ones. She answers questions about her mother's preparations in winter, such as meat salting and preserves, and says Yiddish is hardly spoken today. Kerler asks about expressions and the discussion moves to local customs and eccentrics.

Also covers a schoolmate killed at Smolensk in 1941 and the decline of Yiddish speaking today.

Diner speaks about the shtetl's madman, a character called Khantse (?), who shouted in the streets. She names well-off local Jews, among them Sara Fuks's family with a mill, and a dealer in karakul and furs, and says Fălești had three Jewish pharmacies and many doctors. She says Jewish boys went to the cheder and had bar mitzvahs, and discusses circumcision at home. The interviewers ask about girls' observances and other customs.

Also names pharmacies and shop-owners, and covers bar mitzvah and circumcision customs.

Diner describes her mother's cooking at home, including baking and mamaliga with various toppings such as sour cream and cheese. Kerler and Lemster discuss the Yiddish word for cheese curd. She then talks about her older sister, who lived in Bucharest, met a man there and married him; the sister was later in a ghetto in Transnistria with her husband and his parents. She also says her father, a Zionist, worked all day and had little time for the children.

Also covers the sister's marriage and Transnistria, and her father's lack of time and his Zionism.

Diner speaks about her life after her release from prison. She met a non-Jewish man from the Urals (?) and lived with him for three years until he died; she had no children, saying she did not want any and that doctors had told her she could not. She worked in construction as an engineer on labour and wages and received an apartment through work. The interviewers then praise a very old acquaintance with an excellent memory, and Lemster asks if she can read Yiddish poetry; she says she knows Russian poems.

Also covers a non-Jewish husband, her work as engineer and the apartment, and a mention of Sherman.

Diner recites a Russian poem on Jewish fate, which she says she assembled from three quatrains by Gubermann. She then talks about her life today: she helps neighbours with injections and is afraid to go to the polyclinic. Kerler asks her about God, and she says there is one God and hopes for peace. She comments on contemporary politics, including Russia's relations with Iran compared with its earlier friendship with Hitler.

Also covers her helping neighbours medically and a view on God and politics.

The formal part of the interview ends and the interviewers ask whether Diner remembers any songs her mother sang, but she has forgotten the Yiddish ones; Kerler recalls lines of a song about in-laws (makhetunim). She says her sister taught her to read in Romanian from the age of four so that she would not have to learn from religious texts. Lemster tells of a very old acquaintance who remembers everything. Kerler thanks her warmly.

Camera footage of pictures from Diner's book, with Kerler and Diner speaking briefly about a television and some foreign currency.