The second part of the tape is a formal interview with Rakhila Shmulevna Klimenko, born in Pervomayskiy in 1928. The team enters her apartment and sets up the formal interview.
The team goes into Klimenko's apartment and greets her. She says she is a Jewish woman who speaks only Yiddish, and they exchange names. She says she has forgotten much because she is old, and the interviewers reassure her.
Klimenko briefly talks about life during the war. She was imprisoned in the Balta ghetto. She provides personal information and talks about her family. Her sister Frume emigrated to America in the 1970s.
Klimenko says she spent four years in the Balta ghetto, where people were beaten. A second woman, a neighbour, joins in. Klimenko gives her patronymic and says her sister lives in America. Kerler asks about her family name, her parents, her street and her birth, but the answers are partly garbled. The women explain that she is hard of hearing and that few Jews remain to talk to.
The transcript also shows that this is an introduction scene with a neighbour and the interviewers asking for her personal details.
Klimenko discusses her childhood memories and talks about her family. Her father worked at the sewing factory in Balta. Klimenko, who did not go through formal schooling, worked as a cleaner for twenty-eight years. She then talks about prewar Jewish life, when she attended the synagogue with her parents regularly. Klimenko raised a son, who lives in the Odesa region.
Klimenko says she was brought to Balta as a small child. Her father worked at the pig-processing plant (?) and her mother was a housewife; their names are given. She cannot read or write and worked for twenty-eight years as a cleaner who heated stoves. Questions turn to the Jewish school and synagogue in town, and she mentions her sister in America and a son in the Odesa region.
The transcript adds her sister in America and her life today, and questions about the Jewish school.
Klimenko talks about her life during the war, when she was imprisoned in the Balta ghetto. Klimenko explains how the community was sent from the ghetto to a barn. She describes how she escaped from the village and walked to Bershad, before she returned to Balta. In Bershad, Klimenko entered the ghetto and hid in a bed in the basement. Her father was drafted in 1941 and died at the front.
Klimenko tells of the Balta ghetto and of being sent out to a village, where she was kept in a barn. She escaped at night and walked to Bershad, where people hid them in a basement bed, then went back to Balta in snow and frost. Her father was taken to the front in 1941 and never came back.
Klimenko briefly addresses her life after the war and talks about her family. She remembers how her father, born in Pervomayskiy, wanted to retain Yiddishkayt. Klimenko talks about food customs. After the war, Klimenko explains that her sister lived in an orphanage in Odesa.
Klimenko speaks of the end of the war and recalls that her parents spoke Yiddish at home. Her mother's parents were from Pervomaysk, and her father also wished to keep Yiddishkeit. Lemster asks about her mother's cooking and she gives little. She names her older sister Frume, who was sent to Odesa and later emigrated. She shows postcards from her sister's family.
The transcript adds that the interviewers ask about her parents' cooking and songs and the Yiddish spoken at home; the sister's orphanage stay is not clear.
Klimenko talks about holiday celebration, in particular Passover. She then talks about life today and during the war. She remembers how she begged for food and got beaten. Klimenko describes how since she had no passport after the war, she had to work in a school as a cleaner in the poor part of town. She worked there for ten years.
Klimenko answers questions about Passover, saying she does not remember it from before the war. She says she begged for bread from non-Jews in the ghetto and was beaten. After the war she had no passport and worked for ten years as a cleaner in the ninth school. She also talks about how neighbours help her today.
The transcript adds that she talks about how she is helped by others today.
Klimenko recalls Jewish life before the war, in particular Purim celebrations.
Klimenko says that Jews used to dance and sing in the street in the center of town before the war. Lemster and Kerler ask when they danced and what was done on Purim, but her answers drift to Passover baking. She says she has trouble standing and walking. The interviewers then decide to let the neighbour tell her own story.
The transcript shows that she does not really answer the Purim question and that the interviewers turn to the neighbour.