The camera then cuts to a formal interview with Iosef (Yosl) Grigoryevich Grayf (b. 1922 in Kolomyya). He discusses his prewar family, describing his parents, Gershon and Etl, as well as his many siblings. He details the geography of the region, noting how the political borders in Bukovina shifted many times in the last century.
From the machine transcript
Start of a second interview, with Grayf, born in Kolomyya in 1922. Grayf gives his parents' names (Gershon and Etl), names the seven surviving siblings, and says that his sister and parents were deported from the ghetto and perished, while a brother died in Israel. He says that he and his brother David live in Kolomyya and have a niece in Frankivsk. He then describes how the region passed between Poland, the Ukraine and Romania and where the Bukovina border lay, and begins to answer Kerler's questions about his father's work, his mother and his schooling.
Also covers the siblings' names and fates, the later border changes, and the father's work in a forestry organisation.
Grayf speaks about his education in a "kheyder” (traditional religious school for young boys) where he learned to pray, and read and write in Yiddish, although he states it is difficult for him to remember much now. Just before the war, Grayf worked on the trains before being drafted into Red Army. He describes his military service in the Far East and on the front during the war.
From the machine transcript
Grayf says that he can still read Yiddish prayers and holiday texts learned in kheyder but remembers little at age eighty and lost his spoken Yiddish in the army. He worked on the railway just before the war and was moved to Voronezh. He was then drafted into the army in 1941 and sent to Khabarovsk, near Birobidzhan, and in 1942 to the Stalingrad front. After light and later heavier wounds near Leningrad he was discharged and worked in a district elsewhere, returning to Kolomyya in 1945.
Adds the route of Grayf's service (Voronezh, Khabarovsk, Stalingrad, Leningrad) and his two woundings.
Grayf generally describes postwar life in Kolomyya, where he worked in a dental laboratory. He then returns to the prewar period, briefly describing his education in a Polish-language school, and in a Yiddish kheyder. Grayf comments that shabes (the Sabbath) was celebrated at home before the war, in contrast to today, when it is marked in the synagogue. He notes the same dynamic with daily morning "minyonim” (prayer groups), which his father attended regularly before the war, but that do not take place in contemporary Kolomyya.
From the machine transcript
Grayf says he returned to Kolomyya in the summer of 1945, retrained, and worked in a dental laboratory as an X-ray technician until pension. He then returns to his childhood, saying he attended a Polish school and a Yiddish kheyder, and discusses how the older generation pronounced the word 'kheyder'. He says that the Sabbath was kept only at home, not in the synagogue, that his father prayed there every morning, and that daily minyans no longer exist. He recalls a synagogue or prayer house on nearly every street and a great synagogue, now gone.
Adds the date of Grayf's return (1945), the talk about how 'kheyder' was pronounced, and the contrast with today's synagogue life.
This tape is a continuation of a formal interview with Iosef (Yosl) Grigoryevich Grayf (b. 1922 in Kolomyya). He speaks generally about prewar Jewish life in Kolomyya, and mentions that there is another Jew in the town who knows the history better than he does, but not Yiddish. Noting that this person is Jewish only on his father’s side, Grayf shares his negative views of Jewish law vis-à-vis the question of matrilineal or patrilineal descent. He comments on shabes (Sabbath) observances from before the war, focusing on the foods they would eat, including gefilte fish.
From the machine transcript
Kerler asks about prewar Kolomyya and its synagogues. Grayf says it was almost a Jewish town, though Christians lived there too. He names a local man, Boyko, who knows more of the town's history but speaks no Yiddish. Grayf says Boyko has a Jewish father and a non-Jewish mother, and objects to the rule that recognizes descent only through the mother; Kerler explains the rabbis' practical reasoning. They discuss the old synagogue, called the Jerusalem synagogue. Grayf says his parents kept the Sabbath, and answers Kerler's question about the taste of gefilte fish (sweetish).
Also covers the old synagogue, the Jerusalem shul, and Kerler's mention of a professor from Kolomyya.
Grayf details other holiday observances and traditional foods, and speaks about Yiddish dialects and Kolomyya’s contemporary Jewish community. He briefly returns to the subject of general prewar Jewish life, noting the different Jewish professions and many Jewish artisans in the town.
From the machine transcript
Grayf answers Kerler's questions about Hanukkah: lighting candles, the shammes, fried potato pancakes and doughnuts. He also discusses Shavuot dairy food and fasting on Tisha b'Av, Yom Kippur and Fast of Gedaliah. Kerler uses the words for pancakes and for 'shop' versus 'kleyd' to discuss dialect differences, and Grayf says the local forms are Ukrainian-influenced Yiddish. Grayf says Kolomyya had many Jewish tradesmen and shopkeepers.
Includes a dialectological digression on word forms for pancakes and shop, and on Polish versus Ukrainian Yiddish.
Grayf discusses the non-Jews who spoke Yiddish in Kolomyya before the war, and speaks more broadly about anti-Semitism and Jewish-Christian relations in that period. He comments on contemporary economic conditions and the drastic changes in the town in the prewar, postwar and post-Soviet periods.
From the machine transcript
Grayf says some non-Jews in Kolomyya learned Yiddish from living among Jews. He says the Yiddish word for Jew carried no insult and that Jews were not robbed or murdered before the war. Kolomyya's shops were almost all Jewish, while Poles and Ukrainians held butchers' trades and a few other shops. He guesses about forty thousand Jews lived there, and mentions that there were no Jewish firemen. Kerler also asks about converts and mixed marriages, which Grayf does not remember.
Adds Kerler's questions about converts and mixed marriages, and the estimate of the town's Jewish population.
Grayf notes that Kolomyya had many Jewish political youth groups in the prewar period including Zionist and Bundist factions.
From the machine transcript
Kerler asks about Zionist and political youth groups, and Grayf recalls only some of them, among them the Bund. He remembers there was a Jewish football team. He read Yiddish books and newspapers before the war but remembers little, and does not remember a public library. Asked about Hasidim, he says there were rabbis.
Adds Yiddish reading, the football team, and Kerler's question about rabbis.
Grayf answers questions from Professor Kerler’s sociolinguistic and dialectological survey.
From the machine transcript
Kerler puts the dialectological questionnaire to Grayf, giving many items in Russian for him to say in Yiddish. They cover body parts, animals, colours, comparatives and adverbs, verbs and adjectives for illness, belief, fear and listening, and everyday words (house, attic, bed, vodka, the numbers, potato). Kerler also asks for forms for kinship (grandmother, grandfather), prepositions and the plural of 'enemy'. Kerler also asks Grayf to translate sample sentences.
