Arkadii L'vivich Burshtein

Opens with chat in Russian and Yiddish about a visiting group and a local Jewish community figure. Kerler then asks for personal data: the parents' birth years (the mother born 1901 (?) and the father in the 1890s, with some confusion), the mother as a housewife, and the siblings. Burshtein had an older sister, born 1922 (?), and a younger brother named after the grandfather, who now lives abroad (?). Kerler then moves on to ask about Sobolivka.

Opens with chat about visitors and a community figure, and Kerler's question on Yiddishkayt, before the family questions.

Burshtein describes Sobolivka: about a thousand Jews in the middle with non-Jews in the villages around. He names the Jewish occupations (sugar factory workers, tailors, shoemakers, carpenters, glaziers, traders) and the women's cooking. He recalls helping to bake matzo at thirteen, carrying the dough to the oven at his grandfather's house. He says young people were discouraged from going to the one synagogue, which was closed in the mid-1930s.

The grandfather's daily prayer and the continued private minyan after the closure are also covered.

Burshtein names his grandfather Mendel, who served eight years in the army under Nicholas, partly in the Caucasus. There he met a fellow townsman, later the local priest, and the two stayed friends all their lives although the grandfather refused non-kosher food. Kerler asks about the grandfather's death before the war (in the 1940s (?)), whether the town had a Jewish bathhouse or monastery, and the Yiddish name for the Christian church.

Adds the grandfather's army service and Kerler's questions on Yiddish terms for church and monastery.

Burshtein recalls going with his grandfather to the synagogue on Sabbath and staying with him during Passover so that he would eat no bread. Kerler asks about the Yiddish for 'interesting'; Burshtein attended a Yiddish school for four years with a Yiddish club and council whose papers were in Yiddish, though the village council used Ukrainian. He cannot recall the songs or literature from the school.

Adds a Yiddish word question and the school's songs and literature.

Burshtein recalls a Yiddish song line about travelling to Odesa to an aunt, and with Kerler's prompting tries to sing it. He says people in town spoke Yiddish with friends, Ukrainian mainly with villagers, and he had both Jewish and Christian friends. He studied in Ukrainian before the war and in night school after it while working, received a certificate with distinction, and studied at a technical college in Lviv.

Burshtein talks about Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur at his grandfather's house, and his father not praying. Questions from a second voice and Kerler cover the Passover seder and its foods, gefilte fish and how it was made, and Hanukkah money and food. Also covered are tashlikh on Yom Kippur and the Ninth of Av.

Adds Tisha b'Av and tashlikh, and questions from a second voice.

Kerler puts questionnaire items for Burshtein to translate from Russian into Yiddish: greetings and times of day, requests and thanks, crying, weather, kinship and everyday words, and late. Burshtein also explains what is baked for Passover, and what a Jewish or non-Jewish head or luck means. The passage ends with some sayings and rhymes.

Includes Passover foods and sayings on luck and a Jewish head.

Burshtein answers dialectological questions, including the meaning of a word for a young non-Jewish man. He recalls Yiddish-speaking Polish Jewish refugees who came to Sobolivka around 1939 and sold small tails (?) from a barrel. He then tells of a man from Sobolivka who was sentenced to four years and was allowed by the militiaman to say goodbye to his wife at home.

The prewar story ends with the wife's calm farewell.

Burshtein answers Kerler's questions about prewar entertainment in Sobolivka: songs, weddings with klezmer musicians brought from Bershad'. He says Bershad' was a ghetto in the war, and that Jews who escaped the killing went there. He also recalls a local violinist named Siame (?), his family, and a house connected to him.

Also covers Bershad' as a wartime ghetto and its Jews today.

Burshtein answers further questionnaire items: words for a stone-built house, what children threw at Hanukkah, expressions for a mistake and for luck, and terms such as tsadik and the face. He explains the difference between a rov and a rebbe. Kerler tells a joke about a pious child and the rabbi, and asks him to tell about Jewish weddings.

Burshtein answers Kerler's questions on childhood in Sobolivka. He recalls swimming in the river through the whole summer with boys and girls. He does not remember holiday songs or wedding jesters.

Burshtein says his war story would take many days and then summarizes it. After the Germans entered Sobolivka, Jews were taken to forced labor, later driven by the Ukrainian police. He was held in the Raygorod camp, working on road building and stone breaking, and survived the shooting of about six hundred women and children there. He was moved to Bratslav and Mykhailivka, where he got one meal a day and worked full days, and he was in Haysyn at the pogrom of the ghetto in 1943.

Gives a figure of six hundred killed at Raygorod; the catalogue does not.

Burshtein says his mother, sister, brother and grandmother were killed in Sobolivka, where a mass grave holds several hundred Jews. He says life now is good. He worked many years at a factory in Haysyn, thirty-seven years as chief engineer, and received a house; his children now live in it.

Burshtein speaks about life today and the couple's pension, and Kerler thanks him and wishes him well. Burshtein says in Russian that he regrets losing Yiddish and never learned to read it; he read Sholem Aleichem and others in Russian. He recalls amateur Yiddish theater in Sobolivka and a visiting actress after the war, and Kerler mentions the visiting singer Horovits (?).

The transcript includes a reflection on losing Yiddish and his reading of Yiddish writers in Russian.

Burshtein briefly discusses theater, and the conversation turns to chat about English, Russian and Yiddish. Veidlinger asks whether Burshtein's companion understands Yiddish, and they talk about America and economic conditions. Kerler remarks that even Hasidic Jews now speak Russian.

The scene moves outdoors in Haysyn, where Burshtein points out the old Jewish houses, a former synagogue replaced by a sewing factory, and how few Jews remain. The team thanks him and takes leave. A local man discusses in Russian how the children of Yiddish speakers lost the language, and the team talks about a Lithuanian-Yiddish speaker.

Includes a Russian conversation with a local man about the loss of Yiddish across generations.

The team walks through Teplyk while a local man in Russian points out old Jewish houses and the former market square. They then meet the town mayor, who tells in Russian that he took office two months earlier and that only about forty Jews are in the community. He sends the team to a local man who knows the old residents.