Efim Aronovich Vertman

Vertman gives his address and personal data and says he speaks Yiddish. He talks about his family: his father Aren, born in Polonne, worked as a drayman for a householder; his mother Lite was born in Izyaslav and baked bread at home for sale. He names his two brothers and two sisters and their years of birth.

Gives details of the parents' origin and work and of each sibling's name and birth year.

Vertman says he worked as a typesetter at the printing house from 1932, and that after the war he worked again in the printing trade as a manager or engineer until retiring at 55. Kerler then asks him about his earliest childhood memories.

Vertman recalls his cheder education with the teacher Meir-Leib (the name is partly unclear) up to about age eight, studying the prayer book, Chumash and Rashi, then a four-year and a seven-year Yiddish school. He names the subjects, taught in Yiddish, and the writers read (Sholem Aleichem, Peretz, Markish, Kvitko), and mentions Ukrainian and Russian literature and the school director.

Gives the content of the cheder and school curriculum, the Yiddish authors read and the school staff.

Vertman says his mother was very pious and that his father went along with her. He describes the Sabbath meal kept warm in the closed, sealed oven, and discusses with Kerler the word for the Sabbath stew and the difference between chopped and stuffed fish. Despite the catalogue, the passage does not deal with typesetting.

The transcript shows Sabbath food and terminology rather than typesetting history.

Vertman describes how his religious mother ran the home, and how the Sabbath food was cooked on Friday and kept in the oven. He and Kerler discuss the stew term and the sweet, unsalted fish, and the difference between chopped and stuffed fish.

The passage is Sabbath practice and food terms at home, not the festival cycle as a whole.

Vertman recites parts of the Four Questions of the Passover seder in Yiddish. He says he had a bar mitzvah in the synagogue where the rabbi read and he kissed the Torah, but that the poor family held no party, only a drink. He also talks about the drinks and the schnaps and liqueurs that Jews drank.

Includes the recitation of the Four Questions and the bar mitzvah without celebration.

Vertman answers questions on holiday customs and food: kiddush on Sabbath, Passover dishes, Sukkot with the opened roof of the building, Hanukkah candles and potato latkes, Purim gifts and hamantashn, and Simchat Torah. He also describes Shavuot, when greenery was brought from the river to cover the floor, and what was eaten then (meat, fish, blintzes).

Vertman names the Jewish professions of prewar Izyaslav (tailor, hairdresser, teacher, doctor, typesetter, carter, baker) and says there were no Jews in the fire brigade. He says there was no antireligious agitation in his school, and counts seven synagogues, all wooden, in the old town and the new town, plus the Maidan district. He says the synagogues were broken up around 1930 and Jews prayed at home, and he mentions the Komsomol, a public library and Yiddish books.

Covers the Jewish occupations, the number and type of the synagogues, and the town districts.

Vertman answers Kerler's dialectological questionnaire in Yiddish: words (dybbuk, golem), greetings, adverbs of time and comparison, translations of Russian phrases and sentences, and the pronunciation of plurals. Other voices help with the answers. It also covers food and household words such as potato, dove, pigeon, groats, a window pane, and the question of where Lithuanian Jews and their speech were found.

Vertman answers Kerler's final dialectological questions: words for a deaf person, the cantor's stand, Yiddish equivalents of Russian items, singular and plural of 'rich man', 'river', 'suddenly', 'various', 'each thing', and 'a lot'. Kerler also asks about the difference between rov and rebbe and whether there were Hasidim or an old-age home in Zaslav. Kerler then thanks him and ends the session.

Lys gives population figures for Zaslav, saying there were many thousands of Jews, with the exact numbers uncertain in the transcript.

Lys says the town had a large Jewish majority and a Jewish street where people sat and talked. His father prayed well, and synagogues were closed in the 1930s, with four or five remaining. His mother, also from Kornitsa, prayed and women came to her at the high holidays. He gives his age as 70, born in Kornitsa and registered in Izyaslav, and says his father told of a village club play after the revolution, which leads into a song.

Lys sings a humorous Yiddish song, about a woman asking a rabbi what to do when a neighbor makes her pot and then her husband unkosher. He says his father told him it was performed in the village club after the revolution. Kerler confirms he understands.

Kerler asks when the village club play took place, and Lys places it in the late 1920s. He describes Kornitsa as a Jewish shtetl where people traded in cows and boards. His father, a carpenter, had to leave after the militia threatened him and settled in Izyaslav after marrying. The end of the passage is garbled.

Lys says he finished first grade before the war. When the Germans approached in July, his mother packed and the family left by freight train. His father was drafted. After months of travel they reached a destination that sounds like Mordovia (?), where they lived about four and a half years. His mother worked and he studied, they were very hungry, and his mother wept over his swollen legs.

Lys says he spoke Yiddish with his parents, then attended a Russian school and an institute and became a teacher of Russian language and literature. He has been a school director for 38 years. He tells of his daughter, a teacher and translator, his granddaughter and grandson studying, and his son in Moscow, and mentions his father's holiday drink. Kerler asks about his parents' life, and Lys describes their marriage, his mother's elder sister, and his own marriage.

Lys says he heads the local Jewish community and gathers Jews in its office for Sabbath and holidays, since no one in town can lead prayer. He recalls his mother's candle blessing, and baking matzo at home with boards and a Russian oven. He begins on Samarkand, where his mother arranged Yiddish lessons from yeshiva students.

Lys recalls studying about two months with yeshiva students from Poland in Samarkand, after which he could not read or write Yiddish. He tells how, at eight or nine, he held a neighbor's boy at his circumcision. He then speaks of Lubavitch Hasidim and a phone call from Zhytomyr about the rebbe's anniversary. He describes the minyan he organizes in the office, saying kaddish from Russian transcription, and a visiting rabbi from New York who gave him tefillin to pass on to his grandson.

Lys speaks of his granddaughter, who studies Hebrew, lights Sabbath candles and visited Israel, and his hope that she will marry a Jewish man. Kerler then asks about prewar holidays. Lys recalls his mother's strict Passover kashrut and Sabbath, and his grandfather, a kohen. He also recalls his father, who read Yiddish and Russian books and Sovetish Heymland, the seder with the four questions in Yiddish, and that he holds a seder himself now.

Lys offers to show his mother's old baking dishes used for Passover kugel. A woman, possibly his wife (?), explains how the matzo kugel is made, with soaked matzo, eggs and salt baked in the oven, while Kerler asks what the dishes were called. Lys then begins on a letter about the Lys family name.

Lys describes a letter from a man researching the Lys family and his son-in-law's use of the internet. He arranged for photographs of old gravestones, since he cannot read the Hebrew inscriptions, and Kerler comments on how hard they are to read. In answer to S4's questions he gives Jewish population figures before and after the war. He describes how Jewish houses became few in the old town, and mentions intermarried neighbors and his own Jewish family.

Lys tells of the town's synagogues and says Jews prayed secretly in his father's house after the war. The synagogue buildings became an evening school, a music school and a factory. He describes celebrating Victory Day with Jewish veterans, the many Jews in professional and official posts after the war, and later emigration to Israel, America and Germany. He mentions a letter from a former teacher abroad, and Kerler ends with a Yiddish phrase question.