Elizaveta (Leye) Nusinovna Ryzhoy; Moisei (Moyshe) Srulevich Ryzhoy

The Ryzhoys give their names: Moisei's passport name and his father's name Yisroel, and Elizaveta's patronymic from her father Nusn. She gives her maiden name Gurfinkel and mentions relatives in America. Kerler then begins to ask for their address.

Includes Moisei's remark on the patronymic and a mention of relatives abroad.

Kerler states the date and place of the interview. Moisei then gives a long historical account of Bessarabia under Russia and Romania, the Soviet period, and why Moldova and Transnistria split. He touches on Romanian treatment of Jews, pogroms under the tsar, and perestroika and Gorbachev.

Most of the passage is a political-historical excursus on Bessarabia and Moldova, beyond personal information.

Moisei continues on the politics of Moldova: the difficulty wives faced in returning home from Russia after the war, then Moldovan nationalists, the creation of the border at the Dniester and the 1992 fighting for Bender. He talks about Snegur, Yeltsin and the Russian general Lebed, and the continuing disagreement between the two sides. Kerler brings him back to his own childhood memories.

Covers the wife's postwar return, then the 1992 conflict and the Dniester border.

Moisei names his father Srul, his paternal grandfather Avrom and his maternal grandmother Malke. He recalls working in a leather-goods factory, where bags, purses and suitcases were made, after his father's workplace closed. Kerler asks about his mother Sarke, his father the carpenter and the year he started work, probably the 1930s.

Gives the grandparents' names and the factory's products.

Moisei describes the 1941 flight from Chişinău: they walked to Revaca, rode a flatcar to Odessa and then took passenger trains into Russia. His father left the train at a station to fetch water and was never seen again; Moisei says he was shot, aged about fifty-five. He also names a neighbour, Avrom Glozman, who did not want to leave.

Moisei talks about his mother, who took over her mother's trade in offal and cheap cuts of meat sold to butchers and merchants. He mentions the little shops that sold them. He names his older brother Aron, who served in the Romanian cavalry, later studied and became a geography teacher, and his sister.

Asked about childhood in Chişinău, Moisei recalls a courtyard with three synagogues, the street name Shmiter(?), and his father going to synagogue while he did not. He describes Passover under the Romanians, when a Jewish charity gave out matzo, potatoes, eggs and wine, and how dishes were koshered. He answers Kerler's question about Purim, mentioning baked goods and mishloyekh-manes.

Adds Passover charity under the Romanians, koshering dishes and Purim baking.

Moisei compares matzo distribution then and now. Asked about Purim plays, he talks about a second Purim and the Purim story; Lemster asks about masked boys. He recalls Yiddish songs sung by workers in Chişinău, though he says he has forgotten them.

Adds matzo distribution today versus before, and workers' Yiddish singing.

Moisei recalls wartime service in a canning factory in Astrakhan, where he went barefoot in the frost. He was demobilised in 1947 and returned to a ruined Chişinău, where the family lived in a mud barrack. He then worked twenty years for the railway administration as a forwarding agent, got an apartment, and mentions the shooting of Jews.

Moisei explains how he met his wife through a relative of hers, and why they settled in Bender: her friends had moved there after the evacuation, then left for Israel. He says he has lived in Bender for eighty-three years (?), apparently a slip for his age.

Asked about Chimishliye, Elizaveta says her father Nusn was a merchant dealing in dairy products and grain for an employer. Her mother died when she was thirteen and her father did not remarry. She names her siblings: three sisters (Sheyndl, Rayele, Risl) and two brothers, one called Shuke, and Kerler asks about Yiddish names for Grisha. Yiddish was the home language.

Adds the siblings' names and her father's trade.

Elizaveta describes Chimishliye as a small town with a synagogue, where people spoke Yiddish and Moldovan and non-Jewish servants of Jews learned Yiddish. She says she remembers little from before the war, only that she learned sewing at sixteen. After the war she worked as a crane operator in Russia in severe frost and later returned to sewing.

Adds non-Jews speaking Yiddish and her learning sewing at sixteen.

Elizaveta answers Lemster's and Kerler's questions about her schooling: she studied in a Romanian (Moldovan) school and cannot say whether there was a Jewish school. She stresses that the family was poor and that five children shared one textbook. The interviewers argue over how to put the questions.

Adds Romanian-language schooling and sharing one book among five children.

Elizaveta recalls holidays in poverty, including Passover, burning the chametz and Purim baking, and says there were no Purim players in the town. She says her mother did not make gefilte fish; she learned it herself. She describes buying on credit from a wealthy employer, the Sabbath hen and cholent, and how the family kept house after her mother's death.

Includes Purim baking, gefilte fish and cholent, and buying on credit.

Lemster asks Elizaveta about Jewish weddings in her town. She recalls watching as a child, the chuppah, the music from Jewish musicians and the dancing, but not the songs or whether the musicians were Jews or Gypsies. Kerler asks about singing at the Sabbath table, and she answers that she went to synagogue.

Elizaveta says her sisters and brothers are all dead, some having gone to Israel, and that her father and two brothers were killed in the war. She talks about her mother Gitl, who died young, and the grandmothers she cannot name. She says the family speaks Yiddish, Moldovan and Russian, and Lemster asks about Sabbath candles.

Includes the loss of her father and brothers in the war.

Elizaveta describes Jewish dishes she remembers, including fish, kneydlekh, stuffed items, a sweet dish with nuts, honey and lemon, and Passover dishes. She says she learned gefilte fish after her mother's death and talks about tsimes and beans. Lemster asks about the custom of throwing things at Jewish beards and about converts; she says she does not remember them.

Mixes food questions with a question about converts, which she says she does not recall.

Kerler and Lemster put terminology questions to the couple: a cemetery, a holy place, a dybbuk and a golem. Elizaveta says she no longer remembers much Yiddish. Moisei explains the term 'a good Jew' for a rebbe and the custom of travelling to a rebbe, and says there were enough rabbis in Chişinău.

Moisei says he attended cheder, and when his father could not pay he took a private tutor who came to the house. Lemster asks about Yiddish theatre from Iaşi and Bucharest, the tea-house where his father went, and Yiddish songs and storytelling. He says little about the Jews of Arivë (?) and their business.

Adds Yiddish theatre visits, tea-house songs and a question about Jews of another area.

Moisei gives closing good wishes for peace in Israel, America and Moldova, and asks that greetings be passed to Bessarabian Jews around the world. Kerler thanks the couple and the interview ends.