A man introduces a film about his family. He remembers his mother as a poor, pious widow with ten children and his brother Shmuel, who used the name Artur and was a Bund leader in Warsaw. Artur organized the underground, spoke against the ghetto, escaped through Belgium and France, and represented Polish Jews in the Polish government in London. He took his own life in protest in 1943 (?), and the film, in Polish with English subtitles, is about him. Part of the talk is translated into Russian by another speaker.
Kipnis's apartment, with Kerler and others present. They talk about a book dedication and an inscription, and the conversation includes remarks about the interview and the earlier conversation. The transcript is fragmentary and the topic details are unclear.
Kipnis shows Kerler her father's published books and volumes and explains family photographs. She identifies her older sister, her brother Leonid, her father's brother Herschel, a nephew and nieces. Kerler says that he comes from Podolia and talks about how Yiddish is spoken. Kipnis also mentions the 1996 Yiddish celebration in America. Some Russian is mixed in.
names the relatives in the photographs and Kerler's Podolian origin
Kipnis speaks about the commemoration of her father, Itsik Kipnis, as a Yiddish writer, including a prize and media coverage. She recalls that after he came to Kyiv in 1944 (?), he went on the second day on foot to Babyn Yar. Kerler then sets up the microphone and explains the archive project at Indiana for recording spoken Yiddish, culture and literature. He says that they live near Chicago.
includes Kerler's explanation of the archive project
Kipnis tells about her father's life after the war. On his return to Kyiv he found his apartment occupied by a Ukrainian writer, broke in, and the occupant left a day or two later. She describes his arrest, his imprisonment in Kyiv, his exile to Karaganda, and the censored letters he was allowed to write. After his release he returned to Kyiv and to the family home, and later he was allowed to live outside the city with his older sister Dina.
adds the occupied apartment, arrest, Karaganda and the return
Kipnis talks about her father Itsik Kipnis after his return from imprisonment: his weak health, his arrest and interrogation, and the newspapers people came to read at his home. She describes his three libraries, his love of art albums and of Chagall, his friendships with Ukrainian, Russian and Yiddish writers, and his years in the camps, including a fellow prisoner and a small Jewish group marking holidays. She also mentions his diaries, now mostly archived in Israel, and his heart attacks.
Adds his arrest, interrogation and camp years, and the destination of his diaries.
Kipnis gives personal information: she was born in Sloveshne in 1921, and her mother Simke died five days after her birth. She tells how relatives on her mother's side, including an actor uncle Leybl Khofets (?), refused to take the child and how her grandfather Nokhem and an aunt took her to Sloveshne. She lived with her grandparents until six, when her father took her to Kyiv.
Adds her mother's relatives, the uncle who was an actor, and how she came to be taken in.
Kipnis describes her Yiddish schooling in Kyiv: school no. 33 on Kuznechna Street, where Yiddish writers and her father visited, and later school no. 60, which she attended from the sixth to the tenth class. She recalls teachers including the literature teacher and director, the closing of Yiddish institutions and the school's conversion to a Russian one, and visits to the Yiddish theater.
Kipnis recalls early childhood with her grandparents in Sloveshne. Her grandfather, a moderately observant man, made her carry his prayer shawl to synagogue on Sabbaths, which embarrassed her as a Pioneer. She also mentions children's games and songs in the courtyard, and begins to speak of her father's centenary in 1996 (?).
Kipnis recounts attending events marking her father's hundredth birthday in America, where she spoke and a woman recognised her as a childhood playmate from Sloveshne. She then mentions her father's friendship with the Yiddish poet Moyshe (?) Shapira, who died young, and whose son fell in the war.
Kipnis speaks about her grandparents: her grandfather was a tanner who prepared hides, and the family's workshop was later taken by the Soviets. Her grandmother kept house, livestock and poultry and cared for the grandchildren, and visited Kyiv only briefly because she missed home. The grandfather stayed behind under the Germans and was killed in 1941. The segment ends with Kerler promising to return.
Kipnis names foods her grandmother made, such as buckwheat latkes and a Sabbath kugel, and answers a few questions about words such as the grandmother's name, the word for a cross, and for nursing a baby. She is asked whether she recalls certain words, and says her Yiddish was praised as better than that of Polish Jews. The exchange is informal.
Kipnis tells of seeing off her father's youngest sister's family to Israel at the Kyiv airport, where her relative danced and made merry. The year is given as 1971 (?).
The segment is a story about emigration to Israel rather than life today.
