Elena (Leyke) Haimovna Akkerman

Kerler opens the interview, giving the date and place; Akkerman, née Fuks, says she was born in 1918 in the house where they sit, in Edineț. She names her father as Haim Fuks, the youngest of three brothers, who kept a shop and dealt in grain. She tells how she was evacuated with her husband, a bookkeeper at a kolkhoz, with the help of the kolkhoz chairman, via Soroca and Andijan to Tashkent, where she worked in a factory.

The transcript also gives her husband's family name, Akkerman, and a Caucasus stay of half a year before further evacuation.

Akkerman describes returning to Edineț after the war and finding a Christian woman with a child living in her house; the neighbours confirmed it was hers. She talks about how the family rebuilt, her two sons who learned Yiddish, and her stepmother Makhle, whom she regarded as her mother. Her birth mother died when Akkerman was about a year old; the mother is said to have been a pious reader of the Pentateuch in the women's section.

The transcript suggests that the step-relation concerns her stepmother, with a rabbi father in Ukraine, and that her father's brothers are named (rich uncle, miller).

Akkerman recalls attending a Romanian school and later learning Russian with her children up to the sixth class. She talks about her stepmother and about hunger, then about Jewish life in Edineț, with several synagogues and study houses. She went to cheder and can still read some Yiddish.

The transcript adds the number of synagogues and study houses along her street.

Akkerman talks about her sons' studies and work and about her husband, a conscientious bookkeeper. Lemster asks about childhood games and Jewish weddings in Edineț; she says her own wedding was with a chuppah, as were her sons'. She answers briefly about wedding customs, musicians and the grandparents she never knew, and Kerler asks when she married. Lemster then asks about food in a Jewish home, including Sabbath baking.

The transcript also covers the wedding customs and the Sabbath food.

Akkerman describes Sabbath at home: her mother's baking, cholent put into the oven, and her mother's generosity. She recalls Passover matzo and kugel, but not Hanukkah customs. She remembers the Purim baked goods (hamantaschen) and says there was a Purim play, though she cannot recall who performed it, and answers Lemster's question about theatre visiting Edineț without remembering details.

The passage also covers Passover, Hanukkah and a visiting theatre.

Akkerman answers questions about the languages of instruction in the Romanian school, where nothing was taught in Yiddish, and about reading Yiddish books. She talks about life after the war: she did not work but helped lodgers, while her husband was a bookkeeper. She kept two pigs for around ten years and describes how she fattened and sold them.

Akkerman recounts that her father's brother, who had been wealthy in Brazil, visited the Ștefănești rebbe and died a few weeks after the visit. Kerler asks about the evil eye, a dybbuk and a golem, and she knows only the golem. She answers questions about prewar clubs and the Jewish library, and talks about the postwar years, her hard work and her sons' education.

The transcript shows the Brazil uncle, a golem question, and the library.

Akkerman mentions that her son's children live in Israel. Kerler asks about non-Jews who spoke Yiddish, Jews who converted, and a prewar Yiddish newspaper; she recalls a newspaper issued in Edineț. She also answers about the cinema, Hasidim, her stepmother's husband being a rabbi, and how her mother made gefilte fish, with sugar.

The passage also treats a Yiddish newspaper, the cinema and gefilte fish.

Akkerman speaks about the war years: she and her husband were evacuated while her mother stayed behind, and her husband worked as an accountant. After the war she lived with a relative whose son took a Jewish wife. Asked about Jewish life after the war, she says those who wished kept Jewish observance, and that the synagogues were closed. She mentions her daughters and their work today.

Adds the closing of synagogues after the war and the new synagogue today (?).

Akkerman answers Kerler's questions from the dialectological questionnaire, translating Russian words and phrases into Yiddish, with Lemster joining in. Items include greetings, thanks, body and animal words, colours, adverbs of place and time, sickness, honesty and piety, church words, and kinship words. She often answers in Russian and says she does not remember or does not know some words. She says that in Edineț one said 'krank' for sick. At about 17:27 she tells how her husband, mobilized in Uzbekistan, became an accountant in a military factory after he impressed the chief accountant with his handwriting. She had worked in the casting shop of the factory. She also remarks on being asked such questions of Jews.

Adds that the questions cover many everyday semantic fields, and that she notes Edineț usage and goes between Yiddish and Russian.

After the formal questions end, Katz asks whether Akkerman sang Yiddish songs; she says she knows songs but cannot sing. Kerler and the others then talk with a second speaker, apparently her son, about the Jewish population of Edineț before and after the war, the loss of Jews in the war, and a possible painter. The exchange ends with contact details and email for keeping in touch. Much of the passage is garbled.

Adds Katz's question about songs and the exchange about email.

Restaurant footage in Edineț with live music. The only speech is Russian toast-like announcements from a man dedicating a song to the table.