Sara Davidovna Rolshut

Katz thanks Plotnik and says goodbye. Katz and Kerler then leave and drive through the town centre with a man who points out sights. Much of the Yiddish here is unclear, mixed with Russian.

The formal interview with Rolshut begins, with Kerler noting the date. She gives her name as Sara and her maiden name (apparently Burman), and says she was born in Soroca in 1917. Her father David came from Tomashpil and worked in a bank; her mother Ite was from Soroca and kept house. Rolshut was one of three children, with a sister Nesye (?) and another; she also had a half-sister Tunye and half-brother Benyamin from her father's first marriage.

Rolshut recalls speaking only Yiddish as a child at home, then learning Romanian at school, and Russian from her parents. She attended a Romanian lyceum, finishing in 1936. Her mother died in 1927 and her father in 1928, and she was raised by other people. She married in 1945 her husband Eynekh Rolshut, a doctor who served in the war; her son was born in Germany and her daughter in Soroca.

Rolshut says she was in the Rybnitsa ghetto during the war. She then recalls prewar Soroca: its many Jews and large Jewish life, community, library and visiting Yiddish theatre. Visiting troupes included the Vilna Troupe and artists from Bucharest, and local amateurs staged shows in the club or cinema. She also mentions a penny library of small Yiddish books, including Sholem Aleichem, and says there was no local newspaper.

The transcript shows the Vilna Troupe and the Bucharest artists, a club and cinema theatre, and the absence of a local newspaper.

Rolshut speaks of prewar rabbis in Soroca, including Rabbi Kalker, shot in the woods at the war's start at about ninety years old. She learned to write and read Yiddish from an old woman tutor hired by her parents and read Sholem Aleichem, but has largely forgotten it. She spoke Yiddish with her husband and his family, but now speaks Russian with her children and has almost nobody to speak Yiddish with.

Rolshut recalls prewar holidays at home with her parents: her father lighting Hanukkah candles, Purim, Yom Kippur at the synagogue and Friday-night Sabbath candles. She mentions Purim baking, potato dumplings and dreidel at Hanukkah, and sending baked gifts. She can describe only the content of the Purim play, about Haman and Esther, and does not remember it being performed in Soroca.

Asked again about the penny library, Rolshut says she borrowed little books there and could still read Yiddish then. After her parents died she became cut off from Jewish tradition, though she remembers her childhood home.

Kerler asks about childhood games, and Rolshut says she had only Jewish girlfriends and played with dolls and ball games in the yard. She does not recall street singers or klezmers before the war. She says there were youth clubs, which she attended, but cannot give details.

Rolshut talks about her mother's cooking: gefilte fish, separate meat and dairy kitchens, and how she koshered meat using a wooden board and salt, timed by the clock. She recalls Friday challah baked in a Russian oven and mentions jam made from rose petals. She does not remember what her mother said while salting.

Rolshut answers questions on cultural terminology: dybbuk (which she knows from seeing the play), golem, local place, and wishes for the dead. She then talks about prewar Passover at home, with separate Passover dishes, kept in the attic. As a child she asked the four questions beside her father, found the afikoman, and opened the door for Elijah. She also describes her mother lighting Sabbath candles and the Yom Kippur eve table.

Rolshut talks about synagogues in Soroca, saying there were ten or fifteen, with the great synagogue by the Dniester. She remembers her father's place by the Torah, his praying with tefillin, and an old woman praying at the new moon in the courtyard. She is asked about her own bedtime prayer and 'modeh ani' but remembers little.

Rolshut recalls her mother reading the siddur and attending the synagogue only on the high holidays. Before Yom Kippur the mother swung a fowl over the head (kapores) while reciting Yiddish words that Rolshut repeated. She also remembers going to the river on Rosh Hashanah and throwing things from the pockets into the water.

Rolshut describes prewar Soroca's Jewish occupations: Jewish shops, butchers, tailors, shoemakers, blacksmiths and food merchants. She mentions three Jewish cafés and a restaurant, where youth gathered, along with the cinema and park concerts by non-Jewish military musicians. She speaks of Zionists, Maccabi, the Yiddish talmud-torah, and the Hebrew Tarbut lyceum, which gave Hebrew and Romanian diplomas. There were Jewish lawyers and doctors, but no Jews in the police, fire brigade or courts.

Rolshut talks about the Jewish bathhouse and mikvah in Soroca. As a child she was taken by her mother to the mikvah and was afraid of drowning. In summer people bathed in the Dniester between set hours, in a limited stretch of riverbank watched by a soldier.

Rolshut finishes recounting a group of Jews who tried to cross the frozen Dniester to Russia in the early 1930s and were shot by soldiers on the bank; a friend of her sister was among them. Kerler then asks about Yiddish writers: none lived in Soroca, but many in Bessarabia, and lecturers came to town. She does not remember names, including that of Moyshe Altman. Kerler then hands the vocabulary questions to Lemster.

Kerler asks about Moyshe Altman and hands the questions to a colleague.

Kerler and Lemster explain the Russian-to-Yiddish translation task, and Lemster asks if she remembers poems and whether she had a friend. Rolshut describes prewar leisure in Soroca: walks, the park, cafés, the cinema, Yiddish and Russian theater and visiting concerts. Lemster asks about the phrase "a good Jew" and a tsadik; she says there were none in Soroca and defines a tsadik as a good man who gives blessings. She mentions visits to Chișinău and Bucharest with acquaintances.

Includes questions on the term for a tsadik and her travels.

Rolshut answers Lemster's dialectological questionnaire, translating Russian prompts into Yiddish, with S2, S3 and Kerler helping. Items include greetings and times of day, "please", "excuse me", wedding congratulations, "mouse", sick versus sleeping, honest, pious, cross and apostates. Further items include a sentence about sitting, "before me", the synagogue, "grandmother" and a sentence on three people arriving. She repeatedly says she has forgotten much Yiddish. She also mentions a convert acquaintance and a relative who married a Russian and converted.

Prompted by Lemster to talk about her husband, Rolshut says she met him through a friend from her Romanian school, who was his sister, on a visit to a nearby town (the name is unclear). He studied at an institute in Iași, was mobilized and served at the front, and came back from Germany in 1945. She joined him there, where their son was born. She describes him as a loving husband and good father; he did not read her poetry.

Rolshut says Jewish weddings with a chuppah and a rabbi were held in Soroca until 1940; she attended friends' weddings but cannot recall the songs or dances. She and Lemster discuss whether the town had a madman, klezmers and the water carrier she remembers filling a vat in her parents' kitchen. They touch on handsome young men and women of the town and Jewish communists. She recalls a group of Jewish communists shot on the Dniester bank after a non-Jewish guide betrayed them. Lemster mentions the poet Yasik Baltsan(?).

Rolshut says she has many acquaintances and childhood friends from Soroca in New York and Brooklyn; the name Tendler comes up in connection with a Jewish newspaper. She worked as a laboratory assistant for about thirty years. Lemster asks whether Jews were admitted to hospital at night; she says Jewish doctors worked there but there were no Jewish patients. She notes that many Jews lived in Soroca until 1940, few remained after the war, and many of those emigrated.

Rolshut recounts the war years in the Rîbniţa ghetto under Romanian guards, where Jews could go to the market only for a couple of hours, and gendarmes once took some Jews away. She tells of being sent toward a bridge over the Bug where Germans were, of two brothers hanged for trying to escape, and of the order that Jews over fifty be removed from the ghetto. She was held briefly in a stable and an attic, then sent to the Ulmu sovkhoz, fell ill with typhus and was taken back to Rîbniţa. On Antonescu's order Bessarabian Jews were sent back; she and a companion left the column, stayed with a family in a village and walked home to Soroca.

Details of the Bug bridge group, the hanging of two brothers, the over-fifty order and the walk home.

Rolshut describes finding her house in Soroca empty and full of feathers from torn pillows, and starting to work. She then found her boyfriend, whose family had been evacuated, by letter to the front, and they corresponded in Russian. His parents came to Soroca in 1944 and her own parents, sister and brother in 1945. He visited in autumn 1945 and went back to Germany. Lemster asks about two surnames of writers, which she does not know.

Asked by Lemster how she lives today, Rolshut says she has a pension, including a German pension. Lemster then asks about Yiddish curses and blessings, and she repeats a few formulas she does not know well. Lemster thanks her and closes the interview.

The latter part is a request for curses or blessings; no family photographs are identifiable in the transcript.