Iakov Shor

Shor recalls his earliest childhood memory: as a child he fell seriously ill, and his mother's brother took him to a revered Jew in Rîbniţa, who helped after the doctors in Chişinău could not. He then tells a family story about his father's richer younger brother. The brother's wife and Shor's mother quarrelled over a synagogue seat before Rosh Hashanah and drew lots, and the wife later died.

The passage also contains the story of the dispute over a synagogue seat.

Answering Kerler, Shor describes Orhei as a Jewish town, 90 per cent or so Jewish (?), where people traded and lived well in Moldova's good climate. His mother's brother lived in a village with large wine-making holdings. Shor remembers sowing tobacco and wheat there, and says the estate was later dispossessed under Soviet rule.

Gives the town's size, wine-making and the uncle's village estate.

Kerler asks the meaning of the word 'papshoi' (maize/corn), and Shor explains that it is maize, from which mamaliga is made. They discuss mamaliga and the lack of maize flour where they are now.

Shor says he studied with a melamed who came to the house, because there were no Jewish schools; he went to a Moldovan school and learned to pray from the prayer book. He says the synagogue was closed in 1939 and gives the number of synagogues in Orhei as about twenty. Kerler asks about the difference between a shul, a kloyz and a beys-medresh, and Shor says he does not remember. Shor says his wife knows a lot about kashrut and holidays.

Covers private tutoring at home, the number of synagogues and the 1939 closing of the shul.

Kerler asks about Jewish holidays, and Shor and a woman name some, such as Rosh Hashanah and Purim. Shor recalls that the community paid a lot to bring a top cantor from Chişinău or Bucharest for the High Holidays. Kerler asks the Yiddish word for a person with a good voice, and the answer is not clear.

Kerler asks about klezmers and Jewish weddings in Orhei. Shor recalls a wedding of his mother's sister's husband's relative (?) with a huppah and musicians, but cannot recall a badkhn.

Shor says that only one non-Jew lived near them in Orhei and he spoke Yiddish fairly well. Asked about Hanukkah, he remembers Hanukkah money and playing dreidel. He describes Sabbath at home: his mother baked challah, made a meat soup with noodles, and bought fish and stuffed it.

Also covers the one non-Jewish neighbor who spoke Yiddish and the Sabbath fish and soup.

Shor says he spoke good Yiddish at home. Kerler asks a few questionnaire items, such as the Yiddish for the prophet Elijah and the drinking at the seder. Shor cannot recall them, and others in the room chip in.

A man in the room says there is an older Yiddish speaker in the area, over eighty and born in Orhei (?) or nearby. Shor says he was born in 1925 and that man is a year older.

Names a possible surname, Skablitski (?), and gives Shor's birth year.

A man in the room mentions an older Yiddish speaker in the area, over eighty, and Shor gives his own birth year as 1925, a year younger than that man. The transcript is partly garbled.

Kerler puts a long series of dialect questionnaire items, including attic, sun, son, tooth, book, deaf, bluish, 'a lot of Jews' and Purim pastries. Shor answers some and says he has forgotten others. In the middle Shor says that after the war he went to Orhei when his mother's sister died aged 85, and describes the Jewish cemetery, where the dead are laid on boards, not in a coffin. He also gives the meaning of 'golem' and answers questions on Purim food.

Includes the postwar visit to the Orhei cemetery and the burial custom with boards.

Fragmentary, largely unintelligible talk at the end of the Shor session. The transcript shows no clear topic beyond scattered words about a synagogue and a visit, and no footage description.

Kerler chats with the Vaismans before the formal interview begins. He says they are in the Skvyra synagogue, confirms that both come from Berdychiv and that they grew up in the same courtyard, and gives the date as 10 July 2002. He explains how he will take notes and then ask them to talk.

Kerler states the date and the setting (the Skvyra synagogue) and the plan of the interview.

The Vaismans give personal information to Kerler: his name Yitskhok ben Yoysef (Isaak Iosipovich), the surname Vaisman, her name Beyle Mindl, and her maiden name Reinsdorf. Her father came from Warsaw; she says she was born in August 1925, and she praises her husband. She mentions that they grew up in the same courtyard in Berdychiv, and that she travelled to Kharkiv to her grandparents after finishing eighth class.

Gives the maiden name Reinsdorf and her husband's patronymic.

Vaisman recalls that the war caught her away from home, so she could not return; her parents stayed in Berdychiv with her older and younger sisters. After the war she studied in Kharkiv, and her husband took her away a year later to marry. She speaks warmly of her husband and mentions that their children and grandchildren are in America.

Adds her statements about her husband and the family in America.

Isaak Vaisman says he was in Berdychiv before the war. His father, a tailor born in Berdychiv, died in 1928. Beyle Vaisman describes her father, born in Warsaw, who came to Russia as a child and graduated from two institutes. He knew many languages, played the violin, worked as chief accountant and was killed in the war. She kept some of his documents.

Adds her father's languages, his institutes and his killing.

Isaak Vaisman recalls his religious mother, who took him to synagogue on holidays; he says Kaddish for his father on the yortsayt. Asked about Berdychiv's synagogues, they name several. He attended a Yiddish school until the Yiddish schools were closed in 1938, after which pupils were moved to a Russian school, and the couple note that schools now teach in Ukrainian.

Gives the state's role in closing the Yiddish schools and the later Ukrainian language of teaching.

Isaak Vaisman recalls Yiddish school lessons, including Hebrew, and the family's poverty; his mother worked at a factory. Beyle Vaisman says her father foresaw the closing of Yiddish schools and sent her to a Russian school. She describes a trip to Kharkiv with her uncle just before the war, his evacuation, and her father's last month in Berdychiv under the Germans.

The Vaismans briefly discuss the early war, when people believed the Germans would not touch them and many stayed. Beyle Vaisman names her two sisters, Esther and Zisl, and describes her father's observance, Yom Kippur and violin playing at brisn in the courtyard. Kerler asks about Vasily Grossman, a Berdychiv writer; they know the name and say he was Jewish.

Adds the Grossman question and the sisters' names.

The Vaismans say that Party members were not allowed into the synagogue and that her father refused to join the Party. Kerler asks about the Sabbath at home before the war. Beyle Vaisman recalls baking in the kitchen oven, with latkes, challah and cholent, and Passover seder, a shoykhet, and her father's stories of Jewish history.

Adds Party exclusion from synagogue, the shoykhet, and the oven and cooking details.

Beyle Vaisman starts to answer how her mother made fish for the Sabbath. She says her father worked on Sabbaths but not on Yom Kippur, when the whole town knew. They discuss synagogues in Berdychiv, including craftsmen's shuls, and circumcision, which was done in secret and was very strict. They then say they had a traditional chuppah wedding with klezmer.

Adds synagogues, secret circumcision and the wedding with klezmer.

Beyle Vaisman describes her father's daily prayer with tallis, his learning, and a university degree finished the year the war began. Isaak Vaisman says Passover was kept without bread, and Kerler asks whether a mezuzah was allowed. They say they lived in the same courtyard on a street whose name is garbled in the transcript (Makhnovka(?)), and that his mother often borrowed money from her family.

Adds the street name, mezuzah question and the borrowing of money.

The Vaismans discuss the 1930s, including the Great Hunger of 1933, which Isaak was too young to remember well; there was little bread, and many Jews and non-Jews died of hunger. They then describe the arrests of the later 1930s, when people were taken at night. Beyle Vaisman says her father kept a rucksack ready, and others in their courtyard were taken.

Adds the arrests and the family's fear in the courtyard.

The Vaismans talk about prewar Berdychiv as a Jewish town, saying there were around 60,000 Jews among 80,000 inhabitants, that Yiddish was spoken openly on the street and that some non-Jews spoke it. They discuss the Yiddish newspaper Shtern (?), Yiddish reading, Sholem Aleichem and a street named for him. Beyle Vaisman mentions letters in Yiddish from her parents in Kharkiv.

Adds the non-Jewish Yiddish speaker, the Yiddish newspaper Shtern (?) and the street named for Sholem Aleichem.

The Vaismans talk about antisemitism in Soviet times, when Jews were not taken for work, and about how few Jews are left in the town. Beyle Vaisman says that after the war, when away, she gave Kiev or other places as her home rather than Berdychiv, because she was afraid to say where she was from.