Sonya (Sure) Petrovna Yarmolnik

After identifying herself by her Yiddish name Sure Gravits, Yarmolnik gives her birth year as 1929 and birthplace as Proskuriv, and says she was born into a Jewish family. She says her maternal grandfather Shloyme was a blacksmith with twelve children, who spread to Germany, America and a nearby town, so that she remained alone. She says her father was born in Podvolochisk and married in 1924, and mentions his time in German captivity.

Adds her birthday, the father's birthplace and marriage, and his German captivity.

Yarmolnik starts a story about a Petliura-era pogrom that her mother's family experienced in Proskuriv, and then recounts the German arrival in July 1941, when her father got the family away just before the Germans entered. She tells how an aunt's non-Jewish husband's relative, a policeman, handed over the aunt and her two children, who were killed in the ghetto. She lists the deaths of her brother, husband and son, and describes working in a wartime munitions factory in evacuation up to eighteen hours a day.

Adds the 1941 flight and the aunt's fate in the ghetto.

Yarmolnik says that the Yiddish schools were closed before she was old enough to attend, so she went to a Russian school. After the war she found the family house wrecked, and says she wrote to Switzerland about restitution money. She worked for 51 years as an economist and bookkeeper after finishing ten classes and a technical college.

Yarmolnik answers Lemster's and Kerler's questions about her grandparents. She does not remember her paternal grandfather; her maternal grandfather Shloyme went blind, was caught in a flood, and regained his sight after an operation. Her father was killed shortly after the war's end in May 1945, and her mother died in Proskuriv in 1968 (?).

Adds a flood story and her mother's death.

Yarmolnik says that Yiddish was spoken at home, while at her Russian school she spoke other languages with friends. Asked about Yiddish songs, she sings a fragment of "Bay mir bistu sheyn" and recites a dialogue song about two lovers weighing each other's families, and she sings "Papirosn". Her account breaks off with her mother baking secret matzo.

Yarmolnik says her mother baked matzo at home in secret and went to synagogue often after the war, and Kerler clarifies the period she means. She starts to describe the building where the synagogue and technical school stood.

Yarmolnik describes a large synagogue with women upstairs and recalls Yom Kippur, with crowds outside bigger than at a parade and food prepared at home after. She says that now she has no one.

Yarmolnik says that in evacuation in Uzbekistan she spoke Yiddish with her mother, while her father and brother were in the army. She gives her brother's name as Misha and her father's name, and Lemster mentions acquaintances named Gravits in Bessarabia.

Yarmolnik says her husband came from Medzhibozh, home of the Besht (the Baal Shem Tov). She says one Jew lived there recently, now dead, and that a street was named for Sholem Aleichem, with a hotel and a rebuilt synagogue. Her husband once took her to the Besht's grave.

Adds the street named for Sholem Aleichem and a talk of a hesed.

Yarmolnik says people in the Soviet postwar years knew little about the Besht's grave, though her husband told her; she lived 46 years with him. She says her son was circumcised in a private house by a rabbi, and she and her husband were not afraid, not being Party members. Kerler asks her about a Ukrainian-sounding expression she uses ("tishkom-nishkom") and she says neighbors would not tell on them.

Adds her use of the phrase explained as non-Jewish language.

Yarmolnik says she lived on a Jewish street before the war, with some non-Jewish neighbors, and Kerler asks what terms for non-Jews she uses. Lemster prompts her for songs, and she recites fragments of "Itsik hot shoyn khasene gehat" and "Lomir zikh iberbetn". She says people feared speaking Yiddish earlier and now can do so freely but no one remains who knows it.

Yarmolnik retells a story from her mother about the pogrom in Proskuriv, in which a priest who sheltered Jews was killed when he would not give them up. Kerler asks whether the priest was Orthodox.

Yarmolnik says that non-Jews on her street spoke Yiddish because Jews far outnumbered them. She then tells of her mother's sister, whose husband, an official, registered her as a German to hide her Jewishness, and what happened to her and her children.

Yarmolnik says she spoke only Yiddish with her husband and son, and that her grandson attended a Russian school, understands Yiddish and cannot speak it. She says she herself attended the Yiddish school, and Lemster asks about Hebrew teaching.

Adds a remark about Russian school for the grandson.

Lemster and Kerler begin the questionnaire, asking whether she knows words like golem and dibbuk and the Yiddish for face, mother tongue and proverbs. Yarmolnik knows dibbuk and says she has no one to speak Yiddish with. Lemster then asks about relatives.

Yarmolnik says she has relatives in Israel who no longer contact her, and she does not know what city they live in. She states she is alone but for one grandson.

Yarmolnik says she spoke Yiddish with her son, who went to synagogue with his father on holidays. She says her brother finished a Yiddish school, and there were two Yiddish schools in Proskuriv, closed when she was to attend, and many synagogues.

Adds the location of the schools.

The interviewers put questionnaire items to Yarmolnik: words for sick, thank you, a holy place and a good Jew, and dream, with a question about gefilte fish at the end. She explains that a good Jew stays good and a bad Jew stays bad, and says she lacks certain terms.

Yarmolnik gives her gefilte fish recipe (ground fish, eggs, onion, and boiling for about two hours) and tells of being asked to bake fludn for a recent community wedding. She describes the pastry's layers of dough, jam, nuts and lemon, and the interviewers compare other versions. Lemster asks about dialect words for kneaded bread.

Adds the wedding anecdote and other dialect comparisons.

The questionnaire continues with items about the dibbuk, possessive pronouns, greetings, a polite request, the word for a house, idioms of comparison (healthy as a house, beautiful as the stars) and the word for crazy. She also answers questions on stuffed ducks and geese and a type of pastry.

Asked about Hanukkah, Yarmolnik mentions the dreydl and says her mother cooked a good broth and bought a duck or goose, and that latkes were made, and at Shavuot cheese pancakes. Lemster asks about potato latkes and Kerler asks for a name of a food.

The questionnaire resumes with items on honest, pious and believing, a cross, a headache, where someone is from, and sentences like "my father was a believing man". Yarmolnik answers some in Yiddish, tells about evil eye and its cure, and describes Germans being beaten at the war's end. She also gives kinship words for grandmother and a phrase about sitting at the table.

Adds war recollection about defeating Germans within the questionnaire; cities named in the catalogue are not clearly heard.

After a brief Russian exchange about a bag left in the car, Kerler puts several questions from his sociolinguistic and dialectological survey to Yarmolnik. They cover how to say a sentence about Jews living on a street, the words for the attic and the ceiling, and what a well or water pump is called, with the Ukrainian equivalents mentioned. Yarmolnik answers some questions hesitantly, saying at one point that she does not know. Kerler then thanks her and apologises for the trouble.

Besides the survey questions, it includes opening talk about a bag in the car and Kerler's closing thanks.