The team travels to the next interview with Chara Yakovlevna Bublitskaia. The camera collects town footage.
The team drives to the next interview. The people in the car speak Russian and Yiddish, looking for the right street (Vokzalna) and house number. At the end Kerler records the date, place and interviewee, Chara Yakovlevna Bublitskaia, and starts to ask for her address.
This is the beginning of the formal interview with Bublitskaia, born in Chişinău. She provides personal information, before talking about her family. She remembers religious activities among her family, especially with her grandparents. Her father Yankl worked as an accountant. She grew up with her brother Moyshe.
The interview with Bublitskaia begins with her address and telephone number. She says she was called Chara at home and was born in Chisinau, then in Romania, and she left for the Urals when the war began. She remembers her grandparents Motl and Itl praying and keeping Passover and the New Year. Her father Yankl was a bookkeeper, her mother Sara was a housewife, and she had a brother Moyshe.
She discusses childhood memories, in particular her recollections of prewar religious life. She describes how visiting rabbis would come from neighboring countries and pray. She lived in Chişinău for fifty years.
Bublitskaia remembers a large choral synagogue in Chisinau, where cantors came from America and Paris to lead the prayers. She says she lived in Chisinau for many years and names the street where the family lived, a street whose name is only approximately heard (Kharlampovskaya (?)).
Adds the street name and the cantors from abroad.
Bublitskaia talks about postwar life. She moved to Kyiv and studied an institute, before moving to Bila Tserkva, where she worked in a shoe factory for forty years.
Bublitskaia talks about her life after the war. She studied at an institute in Kyiv and married a man from Kyiv. They then came to Bila Tserkva, where she worked for forty years at a shoe factory.
Bublitskaia discusses her education at a Yiddish school and lists different subjects.
Bublitskaia answers Kerler's questions about her schooling in Chisinau. She attended a four-class Yiddish primary school and then a Yiddish gymnasium. Teaching was in Romanian and Yiddish: Yiddish reading, writing and Jewish history were taught in Yiddish, geography, literature and French in Romanian. Hebrew was not taught, although her father knew it.
Bublitskaia discusses prewar religious life, in particular holiday celebrations and food customs for Shabbat, and prayers.
Bublitskaia describes how her mother prepared for the Sabbath on Friday. She cooked chicken, beans, noodles, sweet carrot dishes, kugel and gefilte fish, not too sweet. Her mother blessed two candles and the children were not taught the blessing. She mentions her brother's bar mitzvah at thirteen with tefillin, and says she was not taught morning prayers.
Bubilitskaia briefly talks about the local Zionist organization, which her brother frequently attended, before she continues to discuss religious holidays, such as Passover. She played with her childhood friends in Romanian, although they attended a Yiddish school. Her mother was born in Calara?i and Bublitskaia remembers holiday celebrations with many relatives. Her mother would prepare plenty of pastry for Hanukkah for her brother’s birthday celebration as well. She remembers learning about Jewish holidays at the Yiddish school. She then talks about Yom Kippur when the adults fasted. The children left the house of her uncle and ate outside during that time.
Bublitskaia briefly mentions a Zionist organization her brother attended. She then answers Kerler's questions about the holidays: Passover seder and the four questions, Purim pastries with poppy seed and jam, Hanukkah dreidel, latkes, doughnuts and gelt, and the Yom Kippur fast, when the children left her great-uncle's house to eat. She says she played with her friends in Romanian, and recalls big family gatherings on holidays; her mother was from Calarasi. She says she learned about the holidays at school.
Adds the Zionist organization, the food of each holiday and the children's games.
She talks about elderly Romanians who spoke Yiddish before the war before she returns to her education at the Yiddish school and childhood memories in general.
Bublitskaia says old Romanians in Chisinau could speak Yiddish and that there was no antisemitism in her street, where many Jews lived. She recalls reading in Romanian at school. Her brother was interested in Zionism, and a rebbe's son from Calarasi lived with the family and studied with him. Her friends, both Jewish and Romanian girls, spoke Romanian with her.
Bublitskaia discusses itinerant Yiddish theater groups from Chernivtsi before and after the war. During her childhood, she was friends with the son of the Hasidic rebbe Averbukh. Her grandfather lived in Zhytomyr. She then mentions her husband Ilya, who had Hasidic relatives.
Bublitskaia recalls that Yiddish theater came only as a touring group, with some mention of Chernivtsi. She says she cannot remember the names of the visiting cantors. The rebbe's family that lived with her family were called Averbukh. Her husband Ilya came from Zhytomyr, and his grandfather was a Lithuanian-type (Litvak) rabbi buried in Latvia. She says she knew little about Hasidim in Chisinau and learned of those in Zhytomyr and Uman later.
Adds Averbukh as the name of the Calarasi rebbe's family, her husband's Zhytomyr grandfather and Hasidim in Zhytomyr and Uman.
Bublitskaia answers questions about religious terminology.
Bublitskaia answers Kerler's questions about the difference between a rav and a rebbe, the plural forms of both, and the expression a good Jew (a person who shares what he has).
She talks about weddings before the war, as well as food customs and recipes. According to Bubilitskaia, the local custom used to be to drink wine, but when the Soviets occupied Romania in 1940, they introduced vodka as the drink of choice.
Bublitskaia describes Jewish weddings in Chisinau, with a chuppah, dancing and a fiddle and drum. She answers questions about food terms (gefilte fish, corn mush, cornmeal dishes, tsimes, meat dishes) and about drink: wine was drunk locally, and vodka came with the Soviets. She does not recognize several of the terms Kerler asks about.
Adds the wedding music, food terminology and the drink-habit remark about the Soviets.
She answers questions about cultural and food terminology.
Bublitskaia answers questions about words for a possessing spirit, a golem or fool, the cemetery, potatoes, and food items such as corn mush, tomatoes and peppers. She often says she does not know the Yiddish word, and some terms she calls Ukrainian or Belarusian. Kerler then begins a series of Russian prompts to be rendered into Yiddish.
The team asks Bublitskaia a number of dialectological questions from the AHEYM Yiddish questionnaire.
Kerler works through a questionnaire of Russian prompts with Bublitskaia, who gives the Yiddish she remembers or says she does not know it. The items include a greeting, give me the book, thank you, a mouse, a woman, quiet, gray, the sky and other everyday words.
She talks about life during the war. In 1940 she evacuated to Siberia with her parents and brother. They worked hard for years and she remembers how ten people had to share one bucket of potatoes. Her brother married the daughter of the chief engineer of the factory her family worked at. They left Siberia for Kyiv in 1943. In 1945 her brother wrote Bublitskaia a letter to invite her to study at an institute in Kyiv. It was there that Bublitskaia met her husband in 1948.
Bublitskaia talks about the war years. The Soviets arrived in 1940, and with the German advance her family fled to Siberia, leaving behind relatives who were shot. They worked, got a piece of bread a day, and shared one bucket of potatoes among ten. Her brother married the chief engineer's daughter, and they went to Kyiv in 1943. In 1945 they wrote inviting her to study there, and at the institute she met her husband in 1948.
Adds the relatives who were shot and the brother's marriage to the engineer's daughter.
She talks about the immediate postwar years, when she studied at an institute in Kyiv and met her husband there in 1948. They were sent on a work assignment to Bila Tserkva. Bublitskaia then talks about her family. She was married for 55 years. Her daughter is a surgeon at the hospital in Bila Tserkva. Her son lives in Russia. His daughter works as an endocrinologist.
Bublitskaia says she and her husband were sent in 1948 on a work assignment to Bila Tserkva and that she was married for 55 years. She speaks about her children: a daughter who is a surgeon in the local hospital and a son who stayed in Russia near Moscow, and a granddaughter who is a doctor. She mentions the son's yearly visits.
The transcript confirms the details of the daughter and son and mentions a granddaughter's wedding in August.
Bublitskaia talks about life today, making ends meet.
Bublitskaia talks about her housing, exchanging a large apartment for a smaller one, and says she lives alone. She says she turns eighty in August, on the 24th, and mentions that her husband died. Kerler then asks about the Yiddish theater.
The transcript shows talk of her birthday, the house exchange and her husband's death; the catalogue's phrase on making ends meet is not clearly heard.
She discusses the local Yiddish theater with director Anatolii Efimovich Klorfeld after World War II. It put on a mixture of Yiddish and Russian plays with local actors.
Bublitskaia describes the Yiddish theater in Bila Tserkva led by the director Klorfeld (Anatolii Efimovich), who had studied theater in Kyiv before the war, organized a collective and later left for America. Local Jewish amateurs performed, partly in Yiddish and partly in Russian, including Tevye the Dairyman and Sholem Aleichem pieces. Her husband, a tenor, sang in the company.
The transcript indicates that Klorfeld later emigrated to America to a brother, and that her husband was a tenor in the troupe.