Mikhail Aronovich Kupershmidt

The team goes by car to the next visit. After a short exchange about a deceased wife, Kerler and Kupershmidt greet each other. They recall their earlier meeting in Bratslav and the cemetery, and Kupershmidt asks where they come from. They explain how many travelled and that the car came from Kyiv.

The transcript shows greetings and reminiscence of an earlier visit as well as the drive.

Kupershmidt begins the interview by describing prewar Jewish Bratslav, including its prayer houses and the synagogue and the Hasidim there. He lists the trades (smiths, carpenters, shoemakers, tailors, hatmakers), says the Jews were poor and helped each other, and mentions the town's charity. Kerler also asks him about the Yiddish word for the pack frames used for carrying loads.

Kupershmidt's birth year is given, and Kerler asks for a Yiddish term for a carrying tool.

Kupershmidt speaks about his parents and siblings: his father Aharon, a Bratslav native with a horse and cart who carried loads to the mill, and his mother, from a village about twelve kilometers away. He says his mother's father, a miller there, and the grandparents were observant. The family later bought a cow, and he tells how the milk was kosher.

The names of the grandfather and parents are given in the transcript, along with the kosher milk.

Kupershmidt describes the melamed, called rebbe in Bratslav, and recalls a rabbi named Chaim and the Hasidim, perhaps eight, who were poor tinsmiths and shoemakers. He tells of the Sukkot gathering with dancing, of the honesty of the poor, and of his father selling a horse and how the sale was done. He also mentions his mother's home practices.

Kupershmidt talks about Sabbath preparations before the war, including how food was kept warm in the oven (the shunt, and pechor), and the poverty alongside honesty. In answer to Kerler he names the Sabbath fish as chopped fish. The passage ends with a comment on the Soviet Union and an exchange about where the team has come from.

The transcript includes the exchange about the team's origins in Moscow, Israel and America.

Kupershmidt talks about his wartime experiences. He trained as a driver and worked for a Soviet official, and says he was exempted from army service when the war started. He describes his plan to flee with his wife and child, and the false name he took under the Germans. He mentions earlier service in Finland and time in Zhytomyr (?) and Rivne ghetto, though many details are garbled.

The transcript shows Kupershmidt's earlier army service in Finland and a name change, but the catalogue's order of imprisonments is not clear.

Kupershmidt recalls working as a driver for a German in Nemyriv for about a year, and travelling on a pass between the ghettos of Nemyriv and Bratslav to see his wife and child. He found houses emptied and learned that people had been taken to the camp at Pechora. A benevolent German officer helped him, and he explains Russian and German terms for the permit. The passage ends with local families, including Dardik (?).

The transcript includes the pass terminology and a mention of the Pechora camp.

Kupershmidt recalls local families who perished and continues with his driving work for Germans and Romanians. He tells how he wore a Star of David, of a German officer living with a Jewish woman, and of a letter about him that he offers to show. He also recounts a trip to Mohyliv-Podilskyy, where he made a delivery, and the car trouble on the road.

The transcript names the German officer's circle and the road trip, and mentions a letter.

Kupershmidt continues the war narrative with his brother in Mohyliv-Podilskyy, where the family lived in the ghetto, and a labor levy of three hundred people for building a bridge. Kerler asks how the brother was called, and about seeing Jews drowned in the Bug.

Kupershmidt relays what a former neighbour told him about the children of a prewar Jewish orphanage in Bratslav. The Germans threw the younger ones, about two hundred (?), into the river, and the neighbour wept when she told it. He adds that he cannot understand how he himself survived the Germans.

Also his remark that he cannot understand how he survived.

Kupershmidt tells how he was denounced as a Jew and how he was taken in a column of prisoners near Zhytomyr. German soldiers stopped them and asked who was a driver, and he was picked for a lorry. A German soldier told him to say nothing, but another man pointed him out. Details of the order of events are unclear in the transcript.

The transcript shows the capture on the road and the driver selection more than a ghetto.

Kupershmidt describes being held in a column near Zhytomyr, being stripped, a night alarm and how he hid in an attic. He says Jews were shot and carried off on carts. He then recounts signing up for a work gang, a former acquaintance who knew him, getting passes, and walking to Nemyriv and home. A woman he met there gave a harrowing account of the ghetto, and he mentions a Volksdeutsche family and a policeman.

Adds the attic hiding, the work gang, the return trip and the Volksdeutsche family.

Asked about prewar life in Bratslav, Kupershmidt says it was already bad by 1933, with bandits killing Jews, and the famine hit non-Jews harder. In 1933 he went to Odesa to earn money and was given bread rations. In 1935 he trained as a driver and in 1936 came to Vossatov (?) and became an instructor. He was already married and had a child in 1940.

Adds work as an instructor and the family details.

Kupershmidt recounts being called up in Khmelnytskyi and learning to repair military vehicles. He then drove a lorry through Poland to the Finnish war, and later the Germans came. He says it would take two weeks to tell it all.

Kerler asks about Kupershmidt's birth year and what he remembers of prayers, and he recalls only the start of the Shema. He tells of a family dispute: his wife worked at a newspaper editorial office and he refused to have their son circumcised in 1953 (?). A circumcision took place later, in wartime, and the child was raised in Mohyliv (?). Kerler asks about the night-before-circumcision custom.

Includes his prayer recall and birth-year question.

Kerler asks about the circumcision custom in prewar Bratslav. Kupershmidt says it was done by a shoykhet, and Kerler corrects this to mohel. He describes the evening reading of Shema with sweet cakes handed out to neighbours' children, nothing special for a girl but a name given in the synagogue, and mentions that he has two children.

Kupershmidt says there were four synagogues in Bratslav before the war, including the big one with two floors. His father believed in a rebbe whose name sounds like Proyke (?). He says the late 1930s were better. Kerler then asks Hebrew-derived words such as bread, water, meat and apples, and Kupershmidt supplies a few. He closes on the dwindling Jewish community and intermarriage in America.

The catalogue's 'life today' is also shown by remarks on intermarriage in America.

Kupershmidt recalls Passover at home, including how as the youngest child he asked his father the Four Questions. He gives his parents' names and a grandfather's, and then they discuss relatives in Canada and Brooklyn.

Asked about songs, Kupershmidt recalls fragments of a camp song about children. He returns to the ghetto period and the German 'Judenaktion', and to anti-Jewish propaganda posters. He tells of a Polish Jewish officer who was mistreated by the police, and of a boy he rescued. The officer's later fate is unclear.

Adds the roundups, propaganda and a Polish officer.

Kupershmidt shows photographs, mainly of his son Naftali (Tolya), newspaper clippings and letters from abroad, and a self-published book about the Pechera camp. Kerler and he discuss its title and how to find it. Russian and garbled stretches mean much of the detail is unclear.